Much of what I write here is spontaneous, almost to the point that the words nearly seem to write themselves. For much of the week, particularly the posts on Mondays and Wednesdays (but also semi-regularly on other days, too), I have no idea what the topic of the post will be until I sit down to write. Wednesday’s choice, however, sets tone and theme for the remaining posts that highlight Wings’s own work, and by the time the weekend rolls around, I usually have both day’s posts already planned, at least in terms of what pieces will be featured. Even so, I often have no idea of the course the post itself will take until I sit down and begin writing — the subjects themselves go where they will — but I try to observe a certain thematic rhythm in the Wednesday and weekend entries.
Occasionally, the works themselves have other ideas.
Weather and circumstance here have conspired lately to put me in mind of how limited our worldview often is, and that theme has presented itself throughout this week’s posts. So it was natural that, for Wednesday, I should have chosen Constellation, one of Wings’s more recent and exceptionally dramatic works, as a reminder that there are broader views out there for us to keep firmly in mind, even when they exist beyond our limited ability to perceive.
That choice carried an added benefit, as well: For today, I had planned to highlight a complementary work, Messenger, a cuff that features the same enormous hawk’s eye stone as its focal point. The cuff’s band takes the form of a raptor’s feather, but with a twist — an anticlastic band with sides forged into a mirror-image pair of elegant upward slopes. It’s a style of forging that we covered on Tuesday in the first entry in our new Indigenous Arts series, and this cuff played a prominent role in that post.
That cuff, featured today, would have provided the perfect segue into what I had planned for tomorrow’s post for other reasons, as well. The band is accented on one side with a single tiny cabochon of warm red-brown tiger’s eye (and, indeed, the hawk’s eye stone is actually a variant of tiger’s eye). Thematically, it would have led naturally to a work that featured tiger’s eye as the focal point for tomorrow’s post.
But as I said, sometimes the works have other ideas, and in the intervening days, Messenger found the person for whom its message was intended.
And so, today’s post instead features what I had originally planned for tomorrow: a work built around tiger’s eye, one that embodies the view from the heavens through the eyes of Father Sun. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Sun’s Eye Earrings
Father Sun’s gaze is chatoyant warmth and golden fire, captured in a pair of earrings that embody this powerful spirit’s own eyes. Two solid, substantial sterling silver conchas lightly domed, repoussé-fashion. Each is stamped with concentric rings of traditional symbols: the sun’s coronal flare spiraling clockwise, extending into sunrise symbols. Beyond the small signs of the dawn symbols of life itself open and flower, each secure in the embrace of a ring of larger sunrises edging each concha. At the center sit the spirit’s eyes themselves: round tiger’s eye cabochons of near-feline aspect: the same warm rich golden brown of our people, gaze touched with a pearlescent fire that forms the light and warms the earth.
Sterling silver; tiger’s eye
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is, perhaps, fitting symbolism for today. The weather remains unsettled, Father Sun unsure whether he wants to show his face and turn his gaze bright. While he decides, however, he has nonetheless sent his messengers this morning: Our pair of red-tailed hawks, their feathers the same golden red-brown of the tiger’s eye stones, sit atop the dead cottonwood, watching our small world here from their own more panoramic view, a view closer to the sun.
Even while the sun’s light remains mostly shadowed, we need only look to them to be reminded that there is much more to this world than our land-bound gaze can see.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
