The rains of two days ago notwithstanding, the winds are at work drying the earth here once again.
At this elevation, it doesn’t take long. The aridity here is extreme, and where yesterday the surface of the soil was still damp, by end of day today we could see dust again. It’s one of the phenomena of spring, the dust: spiraled into trickster winds that colonial populations call “devil”; vast walls of dirt that sweep across the flats; a constant haze in the air that both mutes the sun’s glow and makes the air shimmer simultaneously.
And it’s a reminder of the essential of beauty of earth, small “e,” dust and dirt and soil and clay that make up the beauty of Earth capitalized, our Mother who sustains us and holds us safe in her embrace.
Today’s featured work is a tribute to both: to the land upon which we walk and the specific spaces to which our peoples and traditions are inextricably bound, and to the greater animated and animating spirit that gives us life and keeps us whole. It’s one that is particularly close to my own heart, and is manifest in the shapes and shades of this specific land, and of lands farther-flung as well. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Earth Mother/Mother Earth Necklace
Earth Mother/Mother Earth, two spirits in one: The latter births the former, the former emerges from the very being of the latter. Wings summons this most elemental spirit of the Sacred Feminine into being in this necklace, one to hang beneath the throat and over the heart. She is wrought, freehand, out of sterling silver, arms stretched high above her head to embrace the universe, separated from head and body by delicate ajouré cutwork. She dances, swaying gently, as she emerges from the womb of the earth itself, all red canyons and warm rocky soil beneath a gray and stormy sky; her face is pure golden light, the radiance of sun and moon reflected off the surface of the world. Her body, and that of the earth, is formed from a bold oval cabochon of exquisite picture jasper set into a hand-made, hand-scalloped bezel; her face appears in the form of a spectacularly chatoyant golden-brown tiger’s eye, highly domed and radiating out of a saw-toothed bezel. She hangs suspended from a bail fashioned of wide sterling silver pattern wire molded in a fertile and flowering pattern, through which cascades a strand of hand-made African barrel beads of varnished bone strung on a sterling silver snake chain. Pendant, including bail, hangs 3″ long; pendant only is 2.5″ long by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point; bail is 5/8″ long by 5/16″ across; picture jasper cabochon is 1-3/16″ long by 13/16″ across at the widest point; tiger’s eye cabochon is 1/2″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; bead strand is 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at top and below. Jointly designed by Aji and Wings.
Sterling silver; picture jasper; tiger’s eye; varnished African bone beads
$1,275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece began life as a pendant, no more than setting, stones, and bail. It was late last year that we visited our friend from Kenya at his shop in Santa Fe, where he and his brother import works of art and beauty from their homeland, plunging the profits back into health care and education for their people back home. One thing we are always sure of finding in their inventory is a selection of extraordinary beads, hand-made by artists from multiple African nations: paper, clay, wood, bone. We buy beads from them on average once a year, and in the past hand purchased ivory-colored bone beads, hand-cut and -polished. On this visit, we found strands of the same bone beads, varnished in earthy shades of brown, like the richest of soils lit by the sun.
It was clear that the pendant had been waiting for them.
And so Wings created a strand of silver-strung beads of this material, looping it through the bail, linking Indigenous cultures from opposite sides of our collective Mother Earth.
In China, there is a proverb: Women hold up half the sky. Journalist spouses Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof, courtesy of a book that became an exhibition, have since linked that phrase forever in the global public mind with Africa, particularly with Rwanda and Congo. But Indigenous African cultures, like our own on this land mass now known as”North America,” have their own proverbs, too, that honor the essential role of women in life in all its forms. And I think perhaps it’s a little less about holding up a sky that has its own space already than it is about channeling the light.
This work was named with purpose, and with a recognition of the identity of her animating spirits. She seems, after all, to arise straight out of the red rock land and stormy monsoonal skies of summer, arms reaching skyward to hold the whole of the world: hold it safe, sheltered and sustained, in an embrace of earth and light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
