I said that today we would highlight a companion piece for the work featured yesterday: a piece made using the same stone, designed to reflect the melding of similar elemental dichotomies.
That piece is this one, one of my favorites.
Wings created it, as I noted yesterday, specifically for his one-man show last year, crafted in a style simultaneously classic and bold, traditional and yet with elements combined in new ways. It’s a piece of solidity and substance, yet not too heavy —one suitable for wear by anyone, regardless of gender or size. The stones are a Native envisioning of yin and yang, fire and ice, elemental forces that contain the seeds of their opposites and an ability to combine in new and yet more powerful ways. But the band . . . the band is something else entirely.
You see, the stones are pure gifts of the earth itself. Wings can take credit for how he chooses them, how he combines them, how he sets them in final form, but the stones themselves are crafted by Nature and Time, via the media of the very elemental powers they here represent.
But the band? That’s all Wings. And it’s perfect.
From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Fire and Ice Cuff Bracelet
In the interstices inhabited by the elemental powers, Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, bringing them to life in our world, their full strength and power yet held back: a reminder that if we are careful, we may use their gifts rather than be consumed by them. Here, Spirit’s Eye traces the length of the band of this heavy-gauge cuff, accented on all sides by traditional symbols. At the center, two fiery garnet cabochons flank three larger oval stones: snowflake obsidian, representations of ice born naturally of the union of earth and heat and flame. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice solitaire ring in the Rings Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian; garnet
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I’ve written at great length about the interstitial nature of our lives, about how we daily must walk in two (or more) worlds, about how the lines that separate this world from others are less walls than windows. Wings spoke about many of the same themes, overtly and through the imagery of his art, in his exhibit last year. This piece was one such work.
The stampwork on the the band is near-flawless, the lines heavy and the pattern even. Eyes of Spirit, power symbols of guidance and guardianship, medicine and mystery, trace the length of the outer band, repeating down its center in design both simple and complex. At the adjoining points of each Eye, traditional symbols fan out on either side, a pattern reflective of blossoming, of growth. The inner band is marked by conjoined thunderhead symbols, representations of fertility and abundance melded together to point to the Sacred Directions, demarking and encapsulating a sacred space.
It is a piece of ingress and egress, of crossing between and among and through the directions and the elements and the acts of daily living themselves, of transgressing boundaries between worlds.
It’s mystery and power, elemental forces combined into a yet-greater whole, all in a compact wearable form kept literally to hand.
~ 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.
