The day dawned cold, mercury hovering below the freezing mark, but it has blossomed into one of pure sunlight. There are, for once, no clouds in the sky, the wind no more than a steady breeze. And the air is so impossibly clear that the colors of our world have intensified, blues and greens in impossible shades.
While we were out running errands, I saw the female red-tail hawk across the road from where we were parked momentarily. I know it was her, because she is the only one in the area large enough to mistake, in silhouette, for an eagle, and that was what I at first thought she was. It was only when she swooped up from a grassy meadow to settle on a fencepost that the light caught her the copper of her tailfeathers. She, like her larger cousin the Golden Eagle, seems borne aloft on feathers of earth and fire.
Today’s featured works seem to embody the same elemental spirits. Both are eagles, at least nominally, although in theory they could be any of several of the larger raptors, I suppose. Both are wrought in vintage style, and yet in singularly distinctive shapes, by the same artist: Randy Roughface, a nephew of a friend of ours who walked on nearly four and a half years ago. Like his uncle, his people are from lands north of here, but he is married to a woman from the Pueblo and makes his home here now. And in his art, he uses natural stones indigenous to this region, local-ish materials such as alabaster and Pilar slate.
The first of these two works is wrought in the latter material — a small but powerful eagle perched in shades of purple and red and gray. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
This vintage-style Eagle rises out of a chunk of Pilar slate to call to the spirits. Carved by Randy Roughface (Ponca), the finish is smooth like soapstone, manifest in an unusually soft red color smudged with the more typical gray. Stands 4.5″ high by 3″ wide at base (dimensions approximate).
Pilar slate
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a beautiful representation of a local raptor at rest — or, perhaps, not wholly at rest, but ready to speak, contemplating flight. And it emerges from local earth in the colors of fire, a bit of geological alchemy wrought of time on an epic scale.
The second work is designed very differently — still in the old vintage style, in which the stone speaks through a few bold, spare lines, but seemingly ready to take flight from a more ancient time and place. From its description in the same gallery:
Alabaster comes in a diverse array of colors and shades, sometimes several combined in one chunk of stone. The chunk of alabaster that here gives birth to Eagle is an example: Shades of bright orange and soft lime green swirled gently into white give the stone the appearance of sherbet. Rendered in a deliberately rough-hewn vintage style by Randy Roughface (Ponca) this strong and sturdy spirit bird perches upright, wings just beginning spread as though ready to take flight. Eagle stands 4″ high by 2.5″ across by 3″ deep (dimensions approximate). Another view shown below.
White/orange/green alabaster
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I’ve chosen to show this one from two different angles, to highlight the differences in the wings. Randy carved it in such a way that the wings appear to move independently of each other, much in the way an actual eagle adjusts wings and feathers before gathering himself for flight. This one is wrought from alabaster, but as is often the case with that stone, it manifests in a swirl of very different shades — in this instance, a sandy off-white, the spring green of new grass . . . and the orange fire of sun and flame. Its colors make me think of the giant red-tail who appeared this morning, coppery reds and earthy whites against the jade green of the meadow.
What we have on this day is only a momentary reprieve; the winds are projected to return with a vengeance on Sunday. But for today, and perhaps tomorrow, too, we shall enjoy the warmth and light, the fiery brilliance of the flowering petals and leaves against the rich neon blue of the sky. For today, we share space with summer birds large and small, and their feathers of earth and fire.
~ Aji
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