Over the days of this long weekend, I’m going to be exploring contrasts: darkness and light, ingress and egress, the places and spaces where they argue and adjoin, overlap and underscore, all one to travel into and out of and over and and under and through and in between.
Sometimes, it’s a battle of opposites, black and white, darkness and light, what’s “in here” and what’s “out there.” Sometimes it’s the tracing of the paths between and among and across them, ebb and flow, crossing and recrossing in an endless stream of shade and shadow.
Today, it’s color and light. From the description of the piece above in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The moon symbolizes the Sacred Feminine in cultural traditions the world over. Among our peoples, she plays her own role, as counterpart to the sun, in sustaining the people through each night. Even when she is new and dark, like a sacred hoop of mysterious jet, still she gives off ripples and waves of shimmering light in which the night flowers bloom. Here, she appears in her new dress, as a sphere of glistening onyx, casting hundreds of tiny and shining reflections of her essential light. The cuff’s gentle anticlastic shaping and hammered effect created by hundreds of tiny individual strikes magnify the shimmering effect; the onyx stone rests in a layered bezel with scalloped edged, trimmed with delicate twisted silver.
Sterling silver; onyx
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this instance, it’s a reversal, a positive/negative rendering: The moon itself, black as the night sky, reflects from the surface of a shimmering silver pool of light, the hues reversed, the light inverted. It’s symbol and metaphor, tuned in on itself and redisplayed . . . in a whole new light.
[And, I freely admit, it’s one of the very few pieces that I actually covet for myself, but it’s meant to find a home elsewhere.]
Tomorrow, more contrasts, inward and outward, and an exploration of safety in spaces.
~ Aji
