If we thought yesterday was wintry, today plunged us back into the deep freeze.
At mid-morning, the wind chill was thirteen degrees; for most of the day, that index remained less than twenty. The winds are a battering, destructive force, rising twenty feet high and forcing temperatures unseasonably low even as they drive five separate wildfires across the state.
Known wildfires, I should say. There may be more.
This is spring, and it is winter too, a time of the most elemental extremes contending and conspiring and failing utterly to cancel each other out. It’s no wonder Meadowlark has refused thus far to put in an appearance; this is not the spring that leads to summer, but the one that threatens to destroy our world.
About three weeks ago, Wings insisted that he saw a butterfly here. It was warm enough, despite being March, but I suspect that what he really saw was a juvenile siskin, one of the tiniest of birds, flitting here and there. The reason is that I had caught a glimpse of the same diminutive being earlier that same afternoon, and my first thought, too, had been that its tiny fluttering wings must belong to a butterfly.
It wasn’t, of course; despite highs in the seventies, the lows were still consistently much too cold for such fragile beings. It was a reminder, though, that such visitors will soon be arriving, and we shall need to have the land ready to support them.
We live along a turquoise trail of migratory spirits, but the path is no longer clear and unobstructed, and the land around it is in need of healing now.
On days such as this, there is nothing we can do; it’s impossible to work outside in winds that can drive magpies and crows in flight backward through the sky. Meanwhile, the damage continues apace, the gale ripping off the topsoil and sending it flying even as it dries everything on the surface and below. At the moment, prayer is our only real tool, and we can only hope that the spirits see fit to halt the winds after a time and send the rains instead. And while it’s Eagle whose feather usually carries those prayers skyward, any reply returned to us may just as easily be carried by these same smaller spirits: hummingbird, dragonfly, butterfly, messengers all.
Today’s featured masterwork is the very embodiment of just such a messenger, in silver and stone, atop a network of migratory paths and more timeless trails, too. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Migratory Paths Cuff Bracelet
Butterflies, small messengers who travel migratory paths, teach us that there are many ways open to us on our journey, and that change can be a gift. With this new and powerful masterwork of multiple silversmithing techniques, Wings has summoned the spirit of Butterfly and the messages she carries upon her wings to show us the dazzling array of paths available and the endless possibilities they hold. The cuff is wrought of heavy, solid sixteen-gauge sterling silver, with a classic wide, hand-cut band; it’s edged with slender borders scored freehand and chased with a repeating diamond motif. In between the borders, more graceful arcs are hand-scored using Wings’s own hand-made stamps; each enclosed space is then stamped freehand in a distinctive repeating pattern of rows and roads, collectively representing hundreds of strikes of the heavy jeweler’s hammer, every path different from every other. At the very center of the band’s outer surface sits Butterfly as you’ve never seen her before, cut and stamped entirely freehand, overlaid securely onto the surface with scalloped wings that rise to flutter freely in the space above the band. Her antennae are individually articulated; her head, an old oval cabochon of sky-blue Kingman turquoise; her body formed from four hand-made sunbursts formed of sterling silver ingot. The band is 6″ long by 2.25″ wide; the butterfly overlay is 2″ high from highest to lowest points and 2.25″ across at the widest points; her wings rise 3/8″ above the surface of the band at the highest point; turquoise cabochon is 3/8″ long by 1/4″ across; ingot sunbursts are 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; Kingman turquoise
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I don’t use the term “masterwork” lightly; with this piece, it fits. It’s an extraordinary example of traditional freehand Native silversmithing, combining old-style techniques wit new visions as only Wings’s creative mind conceives them.
It is indeed a work of trails and paths, of distinct sections clearly defined, and just as clearly offering not the obstacles of borders, but the opportunities of a broad and open perspective that insists upon possibility, upon options and potential and chances to find old paths while we forge new ways that meet our world’s current circumstances.
And then, of course, there is the butterfly. A wholly separate piece, life-sized, saw-cut, scalloped, and stamped freehand, overlaid upon the band and set with an old turquoise gem — it’s a work that speaks of ancient spirits guiding young ones, of elders and ancestors showing the way to generations of children yet unborn.
In a word, it’s a work of and for a messenger: one whose role sets it upon a turquoise trail of migratory spirits here to guide us even as they seek our help to survive.
Today, this work reminds me of our own work ahead. After all, wintry weather notwithstanding, it’s the middle of April. They’ll be here soon.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
