Yesterday was at once beautiful and, upon reflection, an astounding disappointment. The clouds moved in a day early, settling close around the land, and we hoped that perhaps the weather would follow.
The forecast snow never materialized, and today’s predictions have been upended entirely, the dawn cloud cover already being displaced by brilliant sun. To most folks, that probably seems like a good thing, but we need the weather.
The long-term forecast shows nothing save a small chance in the morning five days from now. But we know how inherently unstable such projections are here, how quickly (often dangerously so) the weather can turn, and so there remains cause for hope despite it all.
And there remains the work: of prayer, of offerings, of honoring the ancestors and the spirits, of preparing for the new year now just around the corner.
Today’s small set of featured work, an informal collection in miniature, reminds us of the need for the work, but also of the great blessings that flow from it. It’s a set of maidens by one of Wings’s oldest friends in the Indigenous art world and a master of his medium, Mark Swazo-Hinds of Tesuque Pueblo, each carved in his trademark spare and elegant style. From their description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
Master carver Mark Swazo-Hinds (Tesuque Pueblo) coaxes stylized Corn Maidens from plain smooth blocks of stone. Each is hand-carved from very pale, very fine pink sandstone, almost a translucent peach in color. With surfaces so smooth you can hardly keep from touching them, they feel a bit like large worry stones. In lieu of the traditional tablita headdress, each wears Mark’s trademark bundle of brilliantly-hued macaw feathers. All dimensions are approximate: The two smaller ones are in the 3″-4″ high range; the largest is about 6″; the one in the back on the far right is about 5″ high, and is narrower — almost an inverted teardrop shape. Individual views shown below.
All made with treated sandstone; macaw feather bundles
Large Figure (center in top photo) : $425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
The largest of the four bears the signs of the storm, the jagged lines and shimmering circles and the lightning and the rain (or, at this season, the snow; lightning and thunder are still a phenomenon even in winter now, courtesy of a warming earth and atmosphere). Her headdress, feathered with all the tools of prayer, is manifest in all the colors of the rainbow.
The second of this diminutive quartet is unique among the four: shown in semi-profile, tall and more slender than her peers. Her dress bears a plainer motif, but it’s one that, in traditional iconography, doubles as part of a thunderhead symbol:
Medium Figure (right background in top photo): $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
Her feathers are all the shades of the storm itself: the blues of a monsoonal rain, the white of a winter’s snowfall.
The two smaller sisters are very nearly identical, save for slight differences in ornamentation. The first bears small circles on her traditional dress, the shapes of rain and snow, of storms and sacred hoops:
Small Figure 1 (at left in top photo): $275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
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And above the rain that adorns her regalia, a headdress of feathers in a rainbow of light.
The final entry in this informal set of four is the smallest, and the simplest, too, no adornment on her regalia and feathers only in the color of the sun, that winter’s fire:
Small Figure 2 (at right foreground in top photo): $275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
Her headdress is the embodiment of a pre-storm sunrise or post-storm sunset here, all feathery flames fanned across the sky.
There is a tendency on the part of the human spirit to regard heavy weather as an inconvenience at best, as an active obstacle more generally. But we are learning anew in real time here what a world with no weather is like. Despite the brilliance of the sun, such a world is a dark and dangerous place indeed.
It’s facile to repeat the adage that water is life without any clear understanding of what it means, or what it requires. In this place, rain is existence itself; snow is survival. Both are more scarce than ever, more in need of our prayers, and of our work.
That work involves a new respect, a new honoring, of what keeps our world alive. The shapes of storms and sacred hoops are one and the same, and they depend upon our prayers, and our work.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
