Blue skies everywhere today. It’s currently seventy degrees, the winds is kicking up only occasionally, and while there is no feel of summer on the air, spring is definitely in full residence now.
It’s a small step, but we’ll take it.
Meanwhile, our small world is greening apace. No trees have yet leafed, but two days ago, those on the winterberry bush began to open; there is now at least as much green grass as dormant yellow. Even the maples are now budding, the first scarlet flowers visible on the smaller of the two.
And above all, literally and figuratively alike, is that extraordinary turquoise sky, flawlessly clear, an atmospheric heart dance manifest in a blue of love and joy.
It’s a perfect day, in other words, for today’s featured work, one of Wings’s newest, and one of the newest iterations [of a total of five] in one of his signature series of longest standing, the Warrior Woman. While a few are wrought as pendants, or as combination works, most are pins, and this is no exception. From its description in the Pins Gallery here on the site:
Heart Dance Warrior Woman Pin
Love compels us to the steps of a heart dance, motion animated by spirit and joy. With this newest entry in his longstanding signature series of Warrior Woman pins, Wings summons the spirit of love in the strength and power of the feminine form and the shades and shapes of the sky. The entire pin is saw-cut freehand, with simple and elegant stampwork evoking her facial features and traditional bun. An arc of tiny hoops forms her necklace, while her heart, stamped repoussé-fashion, rises in sharp relief; old-style thunderhead motifs, singly and paired, dance down her dress to impart a sense of motion to her body. In her left hand she holds the crescent moon, five stylized hearts adance around its arc; in her left, she carries a tiny round cabochon of Kingman turquoise in the brilliant clear blue of the alpine desert sky. Over her right shoulder coils a serpent of sterling silver pattern wire molded in a flowering design with Art Nouveau echoes, a symbol of prosperity and abundance. Pin stands 2-3/4″ high by 2-7/8″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; Kingman turquoise
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I have said repeatedly that this is the hard season here: not winter, but spring; spring that delivers the hardest conditions and harshest extremes, with the least return in compensation. That remains all too true.
But days like this remind us that such conditions are temporary. More, they are a necessary precondition to the better days of summer, and a healthy fall and winter, too. And they still require our work, according to the teachings handed down to us — of our obligations to live well with each other, with our nonhuman relatives, with the land and air and water and sky. To do so is more difficult at this season than any other, but love makes it possible: love that compels us to courage and strength, to appreciation and gratitude, to joy in the world we still have, and in the one we might yet help to recreate.
The winds now are brutal, the temperature swings bitter and capricious, the risk of smoke and fire dangerous indeed. And yet, we are still granted days such as this, to live beneath a blue of love and joy. They are to be acknowledged, honored, held in gratitude . . . and channeled to inform our work.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
