Today’s clear skies belie the forecast for this evening, all cold winter sun and not a cloud in sight. That can change in a moment, though, and we know better than to depend on the skies of dawn for the weather of dusk.
In truth, we welcome the prospect of snow. The land, forced by drought into a deadly aridity, needs the gift of the water to be reborn.
And the date of such rebirth approaches soon now. Time is nothing if not relentless; it not only waits for no man, but for no season, either. In fewer than ten days, this world ends in its shortest day, and finds renewal in its longest night.
The Solstice is a moment of a winter’s spirit, a world’s birth, wedding itself to season and year to facilitate that most powerful of forces, the creation spirit that brings the new world into being.
It is also the spirit that infuses one of Wings’s newest works, completed only a week ago. It’s the latest entry in his signature series, The Mona Lisa On the Rio Grande, and like her sisters, it bears the name of the force that animates her. From her description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Creation Spirit Necklace
The silver-spangled blue of the cosmos and the lush green velvet of a fertile earth are the tools of the Creation Spirit, the One who combines the dust of the universe and the breath of life to create a world living in the light. Wings summons the likeness of its force and being into a powerful necklace that hints at worlds of which we can only dream. The latest in his signature series, The Mona Lisa On the Rio Grande, this entry features the characteristic tablita headdress above a jeweled face that hints at mysteries beyond our comprehension. The tablita, cut freehand of hand-milled sterling silver in a repeating pattern of spangled lines, holds in its embrace a phenomenon of a jewel, a gigantic cabochon of stunning spiderwebbed variscite, most likely from Utah’s Snowville District, manifest in the midnight blues of the cosmos aswirl with brilliant earthy emerald greens to create an impression of hidden depths. The matrix is nearly pure ivory, with tiny points of copper light here and there throughout its bold and complex webbing. A small arcing space in the shape of a crescent moon separates the top of the stone, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, from the setting. On the reverse, the back of the bezel opens in the shape of a heart pointed downwards, toward the wearer’s own heart, allowing the blues and greens and matrices to touch the skin and catch the light, while a cluster of tiny butterflies dance around the tablita‘s edge. The pendant hangs from a lightly flared hand-made sterling silver bail, stamped from and back with vintage-style lodge symbols and a Morning Star at its apex; the entire piece is suspended from a brilliantly polished sterling silver chain. The pendant is 3″ long, including the bail, and 2-1/16″ wide; the bail itself is 5/8″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point; the variscite cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; chain is 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at top and below.
Sterling silver; deep midnight blue, emerald green, and ivory variscite (most likely from Utah’s Snowville District)
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
When I first laid eyes on the stone, I said to Wings that it was a Mona Lisa, so clearly one of the feminine spirits of his signature series, emblematic of all that is nurturing, renewing. The stone seemed alive, somehow: as though it were the very dust of the cosmos aswirl in its depths, dancing around and between the fertile green peaks and rolling valleys of an Earth in miniature.
He thought so, too.
It’s what led him to edge her traditional tablita headdress with tiny butterflies — messengers of the spirits that embody love and life and a world reborn. It’s what led him, too, to create the ajouré heart on the reverse — a heart of this mystical stone that seems the very essence of genesis itself, pointing to and resting over the heart of the wearer, as though continually to share its regenerative powers.
The colors, too, are fitting: the evergreen of winter adance with the midnight blues of the storm and deep space, caught in the swirl of near-white snow and the embrace of the silvered winter light.
Perhaps its presence here today will summon the power of the storm for us, as well. For now, we await, in prayer, a winter’s spirit, a world’s birth, and hope for the Earth’s new year to come.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
