After an unseasonably cold start, summer here is ramping up the heat. According to the weather experts, we have not yet hit ninety, but our thermometer disagrees.
What we have not yet gotten is any real monsoonal rain.
Oh, there’s been plenty in the larger vicinity; it simply continues to pass us by on all sides. The thunderheads build daily to east and west, and the latter encroach by afternoon — only to bypass us to north and south, thence to coalesce again east of the peaks. But for the moments they are overhead, the mercury can fall precipitously: ten, fifteen, twenty degrees or more in a matter of minutes, depending on cloud mass and force of wind.
And so it is that summer here is a place when both fire and shade are necessary, sometimes simultaneously. It’s the genius of adobe architecture, Indigenous to this place (in both senses of the word) — homes whose very construction keep the worst of the heat outside their doors while maintaining a comfortable balance between cool and warm indoors.
But this is also the season when much of our work occurs out of doors. Indeed, Wings grew up spending his summers on this very piece of land, working the fields, sleeping under the stars. He has always known well the importance, in this place and its climate, of a little summer shelter.
Today’s featured work is by one of his peers, a man who is, in our way of extended clan and familial relationships, a brother. And it captures, vividly and powerfully, land, season, people, and spirit. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site:
Frank Rain Leaf (Taos Pueblo) evokes both ancient and modern representation of person and place in this acrylic painting of a traditionally-dressed Pueblo flute player. This is one of Frank’s most iconic and popular images, one he has used as a model for smaller art media such as greeting cards. It’s an image of the warm season, as awash in color as the bed of the Rio Pueblo it depicts. A young man in traditional moccasins, leggings, wrap, and braids sits beneath an old-style arbor, built by hand, blanket off to the side and a fire at his feet, while he plays a Native flute, an accompaniment to the song of the river.
Acrylic on canvas; wood frame
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I have always loved this work, both for its imagery and intensity of color, but also for what it represents: an indescribably old and beautiful way of life that is also perfectly contemporary, a way of living that walks in the steps of the ancestors but is very much the path of the living, as well. The river is perhaps a signifier of this dynamic, and the fire’s smoke, spiraling spiraling skyward. Both connect us to past and future, to this world and that of the spirits, and both are necessary not merely for comfort, but for survival.
But it is the arbor itself that makes the work.
The outside world is not much given to such structures in these days of not merely central air conditioning, but so called smart houses and smart cars that regulate internal temperature via computer without being told by their human occupants. A little shade formed of a few gnarled trunks topped with green leaves? To that world, it seems laughable. but they have never felt the sudden drop in temperature between the edge of the suburbs and a tree-lined rural highway, between a desert sky that goes from electric blue to thunderhead black in a matter of seconds. Shade is a great comforter in the heat of summer here, and the twisted trunks that form its structure are the very rib bones of our small world.
Our own arbor serves as shade from the elements. It’s an essential part of a home here, and the landscape on our side of the highway is dotted with them, small wood structures not far from each family’s main house. They are used for far more than mere shade, of course — pressed into service as drying racks, adapted for use as sacred space.
An at this time of the year, they provide what is often most needed: a little summer shelter, for the body and the spirit.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
