Yesterday, we began looking at the role the Pueblo’s architecture plays as inspiration for Taos Pueblo’s own artists, featuring two of Wings’s relatives who create Pueblos in miniature via the medium of the local micaceous clay.
Today, I want to begin looking at the role it plays in Wings’s own art, beginning with the silverwork. Let’s take a little tour of the village, seen from his eyes through his chosen medium.
For probably close to twenty years now, Wings has produced a signature series of Taos Pueblo pins. They are all similar in general shape and design, but the stampwork varies, as do the stones used, so that each is unique to its own wearer. One appears at the bottom of this post, and we’ll highlight a few more tomorrow.
The general design, however, is one that he’s used the entire time. The crenellations on the roof may appear in different places — the doors and windows certainly do — but the shape is instantly recognizable.
Some eight to ten years ago, he decided to enlarge it a bit, and the result was this:
It looks just like the pins, but it’s a barrette: On the back is a French clip. It needed to be larger to accommodate the clip, of course, but also purely for proportion. And because it was a bit longer and higher than the pins, he added a second cabochon to it as an accent: here, malachite and garnet. it was a beautiful piece, and one that got a lot of attention for visitors to the gallery.
It was also stolen from the gallery in the fall of 2008.
It was neither the first time nor the last. Overall, we’ve been fortunate to lose only a few pieces to theft over the years. Unfortunately, a couple of them were very valuable. This was one of the less expensive of the various stolen items.
That same year, he decided to try something different using the Pueblo motif: Instead of an ajouré (i.e., “saw-cut”) piece, he created the architectural imagery using stampwork.
Hand-cut in a shape vaguely resembling a butterfly, this piece shows a facsimile of the entire village: North House to the left; South House to the right; both bisected by the Rio Pueblo just as they are in life. He used stampwork to create the doors, windows, and vigas on and the traditional pine ladders in front of the homes; the hornos, or traditional ovens, dotting the grounds in front; the piñon forest behind South House; the clouds that dot the sky. He used only one stone on this piece, a tiny lapis cabochon set in the sky; what you see to the far right is a tiny repoussé blossom set into a hand-made bezel.
What’s most interesting to me about his piece, though, is that the photo above does not show it in its original form — not precisely. Wings always says he tries to let Spirit guide his hands while he works; that if he tries to force the materials into whatever preconceived notion might be in his head, it never works. This was an example.
It began life as a necklace:
Well, actually, even that’s not wholly accurate. It began life as the piece that it was (with the Sleeping Beauty turquoise cabochon instead of the lapis), but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it. He finally decided to extend it into a necklace. He attached the little pendant, made separately. For those interested, the center stone is gasepite; the others, jade and citrine.
It got lots of attention, lots of interest, lots of people trying it on . . . but no buyer.
Eventually, dissatisfied, he pulled it. It sat on his workbench for a time. Then one day, he went back to work on it. Straight through; no breaks in the work. And what came out of it was the barrette shown above, with the lapis stone.
It sold in a matter of days.
Such is the way of Spirit and silver.
This year, for the very first time, he extended the Pueblo architectural motif into something wholly new and much more substantial: the cuff shown at the top of this post. It was piece created specifically for his recent one-man show, Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces, and was intended explicitly as a complement to the photographic entries of the old village homes. In the accompanying narrative, he noted that this piece paid tribute to Hlauuma, North House, where he was born, and that it “embodies the interconnectedness of our homes and lives.”
Additional views of the cuff appear in its entry in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
North House
Wings has expanded his signature series of Pueblo pins into new forms with this ajouré cuff bracelet modeled on Hlauuma (North House), where he was born. The cuff extends the design of the series into a larger, more complex piece that embodies the interconnectedness of the Pueblo’s traditional homes and life. Meticulous stampwork pays tribute to the mud and vigas, the walls and windows, the traditional pine ladders and the earth on which they rest, all given form and shape in sterling silver. Additional view shown below.
Sterling silver
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD
This was one of the first pieces to sell after the end of the show — almost immediately after I posted the retrospective of the exhibition online. It went to a new client, one who been searching for decades for a replacement of a lost cuff bracelet featuring the Taos Pueblo architectural motif.
As always, the pieces find their homes.
Of the exhibition pieces in this design, only one remains in inventory, the Pueblo pin he created specifically for it:
Adobe Rain
For more than a decade, Wings has paid tribute to the mud and vigas that make the village’s ancient homes with his signature series of Pueblo pins in the style of the Pueblo’s iconic architecture. Each pin is unique, yet each features the adobe walls and open windows, the hand-made pine vigas and traditional ladders, all manifested in sterling silver. Here, the ajouré pin with its meticulously-detailed stampwork is accented by a tiny turquoise cabochon: a deep robin’s-egg blue aswirl with an inky matrix, the color of the stormclouds that cool the dry village walls with much-needed rain.
Sterling silver; blue turquoise
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The pin is about 2.5″ long by about an inch high. It’s more expensive than earlier iterations; it’s more reflective of actual costs, and actual value. That said, we have one older one remaining in inventory — you’ll get to see it here tomorrow — and in keeping with our usual practice, its price remains as it was. New pieces will be sold at the current price, but we haven’t raised the cost of the old pieces to match.
It’s a striking design, one that is his and his alone. And it’s one more way that he gives form and being to the inspiration, the spiritual sustenance, provided by his home, the home of his ancestors for more than a thousand years.
Tomorrow: More in Wings’s signature Pueblo series.
~ 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 owners.
