It’s a week when we’ve been looking at the spirits of winter: a season the calendar insists remains two days hence, yet the earth itself has other ideas. After a sudden warm-up into the mid-forties yesterday with the chance of snow forecast as zero, we’ve been given another dusting overnight, with new flurries just beginning to fly. Winter is here, and has been for some time.
It’s also a week that is cold for another reason, one that brings with it an anniversary of sorts, a marker of loss. That anniversary was three days ago, the day seven years ago on which a human spirit who was an outsized presence in our lives passed into another plane. And so, for us, the days leading up to the solstice and the Christmas holiday are now days in which the spirits assume an equally outsized presence, taking up residence in mind and memory.
I had already intended to feature this particular work today, long before the date reminded me that it was here. And yet, who’s to say that, in some visceral level beyond conscious perception, that is not what prompted me to plan this theme for this particular week? Perhaps it’s the bitter cold or the clarity of the air or the depth of the snowy silence, but this time of year, the threshold between the worlds has always seemed thinner, more permeable, the bridge that connects them shorter. In the early morning hours of the days surrounding this marking of the season, the dogs chase the spirits, their greater powers of perception permitting them to see things that we cannot.
The spirits choose to visit how they will, of course. But I like to think they arrive, resplendent in traditional dress, dancing their way to this place upon the arc of the light between night and day, day and night, their moccasins leaving invisible tracks in the snow as they whirl upon the winds.
It is that dance, that Wings has captured in today’s featured work, a spirit animated in both senses of the word. From its description in the Collectibles Gallery here on the site:
Kachina Mixed-Media Figure
He is an elder among elders, a dancer, a long-haired spirit being. This figurative piece combines multiple natural elements with an inspiriting sense of motion to create a single dynamic, unifying form. Head and upper body are hand-crafted of sterling silver bearing images of power: His head bears the forces of the sacred directions; his body, elemental forces meeting in the sacred space. His lower body is a single very old piece of deer antler that diverges naturally into the two prongs that form his dancing legs. His traditional long hair is made of genuine horse hair, restored to him in the spirit world now full and dark. Like his namesakes in the spirit world, he wears an “eagle” feather at the back of his head (in this case, produced by one of our Barred Rock chickens and carried by the winds directly into Wings’s hands), accented by the brilliant blue and orange macaw feather used traditionally here. Both feathers and a rainbow-hued strand of old-style beads hang from the crown of his headdress, an old copper tube bead; he stands atop a cedar wood base. Entire piece stands 9.5″ high; figure alone, 5″ high excluding feather and base; feather adds another 3.5″ in height; base stands 2″ high by 3-3/8″ wide by 2-1/8″ deep (all dimensions approximate). Close-up and back view shown above and below.
Sterling silver; copper; feathers; old trade beads; horse hair; deer antler; cedar
$2,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fragility requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
This piece is one that came from the depths of Wings’s own spirit. All of its constituent elements have been present in his studio for years, some with a history that perhaps traces back to his childhood and beyond. There they lived apart, no thought that perhaps they were all pieces of a greater whole.
Until last winter.
Last winter, to the sound of a drum outside the range of human hearing, they began to move, assemble, joining their voices in a song likewise beyond the human ear’s ability to hear . . . but not beyond the human spirit’s ability to perceive.
And Wings heard their song.
He brought the pieces together, a gathering of elements of a different sorts, and set to work.
The result is one of the most inspired and inspirited works as an artist.
I like to think he dances for the spirit who left us seven years ago this past week. But I suspect he dances for others’ spirits, too.
~ 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 owner.
