From April 15th through May 11th, 2014, the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico hosted a one-man exhibition by Wings: Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces. The show included a variety of work from both of his preferred media: photography and silverwork. The photography exhibit features ten large images, all matted, signed, and […]
Welcome to Wings’s online photography exhibition from his recent one-man show, Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces. Below, you will find digital versions of each of the photographs that appeared in the exhibit. During the period of Wings’s exhibit, as you entered the coffeehouse at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, you would have seen photographs arrayed […]
Welcome to Wings’s online silverwork exhibition from his recent one-man show, Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces. Below, you will find photos of each piece that was included in the exhibit. Originally, we planned to use Wings’s own locked jewelry cases at the venue to ensure an attractive and secure display. To that end, we […]
STORIES Our lives are lived in stories — and in stories. Perhaps the first thing visitors to Taos Pueblo notice about our historic multi-level architecture is that it is multi-level — our ancestors, a thousand years ago, divided homes into stories in larger communal buildings. In a way, each story is symbolic of the other […]
SUSTENANCE The earth feeds us, nourishes us. Whether at planting time, with the help of the Corn Maidens; during the monsoon season, when the rain kachinas aid tilling and cultivation; at harvest time, the blessings and bounty extracted from the earth under the watchful eyes of our ancestors; or through the long winter months, warming […]
MUD AND VIGAS Several years ago, I took a series of photographs that I named Walls and Windows. It was an exploration of Taos Pueblo’s famed architecture up close, focusing not on the iconic “macro” imagery seen everywhere, but instead, on its constituent elements. This one had special resonance for me. The building of which […]
CORNERSTONE Summer is mudding time: It’s the time that individual families, when they can afford it, repair and resurface their homes. Sometimes it’s a whole refacing; other times, as here, it’s a structural repair. A cornerstone in the most essential, existential sense, this fresh adobe flange supports the wall of a family home while supporting […]
INTERSTICES Arbors are a traditional feature of Pueblo life, and they capture the essence of our contemporary existence perfectly. Built by hand of native piñon logs, spaced a few inches apart. Arbor “roofs” were used as drying racks — for plants, for meat, for hides. The structures provide shelter and shadow from the heat of […]
THRESHOLD I entitled this Threshold because it evokes such an ominous feeling of portentousness, of momentousness: as though once one steps through the doorway, over the threshold of the church courtyard, there will be no turning back. To a great degree, so it was, and so it remains. After 500 years, that cross is now […]
THE REAL SACRED SPACE I originally titled this Hope Lives Beyond. My focus then was on the colonizing of our lands, our soil, our spirits, the taking of our sacred red earth and using it to build a temple to a god that was not ours. Under the guise of an entryway, forcing us behind […]
BRICKS Brick and mortar. In the era of the Internet, it’s become shorthand for saying that something exists in the real world. In my world, this is as real as it gets. This was taken as part of my Walls and Windows series; it’s a close-up of the exterior wall of a home, built with […]
INGRESS/EGRESS “The act of entering”/”the act of leaving a place.” Today, our homes have doors, but that is something new, within the last century. Traditionally, the way to enter or leave our homes was through the roof. The last person to enter at night would pull the ladder down into the home, keeping the family […]
EMERGENCE It is who we are; how we came to be. It is our history and identity, captured in one image. Up from the darkened depths, rung by rung, on a ladder built of the same materials with which the spirits have blessed us. Rung by rung, out of the darkness, seeing first the warming […]
STORIES Sterling silver triangle-wire cuff: $525 + shipping, handling, and insurance Our very culture rests on a foundation of stories: stories of mud and straw brick; stories of how we came to be upon this land and what our task is here. I try to capture these stories in the ancient symbols and patterns that […]
SUSTENANCE Sterling silver and onyx pendant on onyx and turquoise beads: $1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance The Three Sisters, corn, beans, and squash, were gifts of the spirits to sustain the People. But the spirits also provide sustenance in other ways. The Corn Maidens are sustenance personified: They bring gifts of rain, and food, […]
MUD AND VIGAS Sterling silver ajouré Pueblo cuff: $575 + shipping, handling, and insurance SOLD. For more than a decade, I’ve paid tribute to the mud and vigas that make up our homes with a series of Pueblo pins modeled on Hlauuma (North House), where I was born: the adobe walls and open windows, the […]
CORNERSTONE Sterling silver, Royston turquoise, and coral pendant on antique silver beads: $725 + shipping, handling, and insurance RESERVED. It is easy to forget that a wall, a home, a structure, a society endures only through the strength of the cornerstone that serves as its foundation. So it is with our people: The public face […]
INTERSTICES Sterling silver, snowflake obsidian, and garnet cuff: $725 + shipping, handling, and insurance I have said that, as contemporary Native people, we live and thrive in the interstices between two worlds. Likewise, Spirit mediates between our worlds in the interstices, in those shadowy regions inhabited by the elemental powers, where we are afforded […]
THRESHOLD Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and Sleeping Beauty turquoise cuff: $1,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance We face thresholds every day between sacred spaces and modern places: Some cross them; some of us do not. But there is another threshold in the other direction, between our contemporary existence and ways much older than memory, […]
THE REAL SACRED SPACE Sterling silver and lapis lazuli cuff: $775 + shipping, handling, and insurance Today, we have no choice but to walk in two worlds. But the second world has been imposed on us from without, by a culture not our own, and our people have endured by steadfastly maintaining our connection to […]
BRICKS Sterling silver stamped ingot necklace on sterling silver chain: $295 + shipping, handling, and insurance As our homes are built from the traditional bricks our ancestors used, so, too, my art is built on the time-honored methods used by my father and his father before him. To honor this tradition, I sometimes create silverwork […]
INGRESS/EGRESS Sterling silver and lapis lazuli Spirit Horse pin: $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance As our pine ladders provide us ingress and egress into the safety of our homes and sacred spaces, so, too, do our dreams provide us ingress and egress into the spirit world. Dreams have always guided my art and given […]
EMERGENCE Sterling silver and rose quartz wide floral-stamped bangle: $375 + shipping, handling, and insurance Sterling silver, hematite, and amber smooth-wire bangle: $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and tiger’s eye floral-stamped bangle: $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance Sterling silver and malachite faceted-wire bangle: $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance […]
