Finally, a day that feels like spring.
By that I mean the way we think of spring feeling, not how spring, especially at this early stage, typically manifests here. In this place, it’s the hardest, harshest season, usually far colder than the mercury would suggest, earth and air and sky and everything in them routinely battered by dangerously high winds. Then there’s the pollen, another irritant added to the constant haze of dirt, and too often in recent years, the pall of wildfire smoke, too.
We have had all three for days, and they are still present, but the temperature will pass seventy tis day, and the wind is not much more than a brisk breeze. We have clouds today, too, already here with the dawn: iridescent bands of luminous white between the peaks; thunderheads and lenticular clouds contending for space across the rest of the sky.
Beneath it all, the haze remains, but between the clouds and the sun, it’s assumed a shimmery aspect — a golden glow that seems to infiltrate every square inch of space now. Combined with the early warmth, it lends our small world here a distinctive air of hope now, of the promise of warmer winds and summer rains and perhaps — just perhaps — an abundant and prosperous year to come.
That alone is enough for gratitude. Enough for prayer and smoke, for an honor song for the Creator and the elemental spirits, for renewed inspiration for the work.
The work of smoke and song and shimmering light.
Today’s featured work embodies all three, in its way: a posture of prayer and song as an animating spirit, manifest in the golden glow of local cedar and emergent from gleaming, mica-infused alabaster. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
This traditional sculpture by carver Paul Dancebow (Taos Pueblo) is done in classic Pueblo style. Carved of cedar, his upturned face is finely detailed, as is his long hair, tied back in traditional style. He’s wrapped in a blanket, and his body curves gently, following the natural line of the wood. He stands atop an alabaster base, golden in color with silver-white matrices throughout. Another view shown below.
Cedar on alabaster base
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Traditional Pueblo carving, in wood or in stone, has always honored the medium, working with its natural lines instead of against them. It makes for a style particularly well-suited to figurative works, producing not just lines and angles that reflect our own human bodies, but a sense of motion that evokes the animating spirit within. To me, it has always made this style of carving warm and inviting and particularly relatable.
And this piece is nothing if not warm: the wood is silky smooth but never cold, its color as brilliant a gold as any sunset flame. The alabaster stand that holds it is a cooler shade of fire, but it its own glow dances from deep within the stone, spangled with mica and quartzite and the tiniest jewels of the earth. The elder it holds holds his own posture of engagement with world and spirits alike, leaning froward, face upturned to the skies, lips parted in prayer, song, or, most likely, both — supplication, thanksgiving, honor and respect.
And it reminds me that this, too, is the work: the work of gratitude and celebration, the work of smoke and song and shimmering light.
~ Aji
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