Sometimes, the fire isn’t the visible flame, but rather the vessel.
So it is with this miniature olla, a small perfect piece made by Wings’s own niece, Camille Bernal. Her chosen medium requires fire for its existence; it’s in integral and wholly essential part of the artistic process. But sometimes, what emerges from the fire is something that embodies it in other ways.
I featured this beautiful little piece here at the end of last year. Three days remaining in the year, in the newly cold heart of the winter; the motif of a traditional fireplace, captured in a small clay vessel itself hardened by flame, was a welcome and warming image.
At the time, I had just pieced together what it was about the shape of this brilliant little water jar that had been nagging at my brain. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t place it. And then, on a bitterly cold winter’s morning, I knew, and I posted an accompanying photo that Wings took some years ago of a beautiful piñon-wood fire burning strong and hot in the kiva fireplace of the old gallery. As I said then:
It’s seven degrees below zero this morning, with a wind chill of twenty-two below. Just looking at the flames in two dimensions on a screen is enough to make me feel warmer. But what isn’t visible to you in this photo is where this fire is burning.
It’s a traditional (i.e., a so-called “kiva”) fireplace in one of the ancient village homes.
The shape of such fireplaces varies a bit, but they share certain commonalities. One is the material from which they’re made — the same adobe that forms the walls of the homes, the same local earth and straw. Another is the general shape, which tends to be rounded and occasionally somewhat bulbous at the bottom, then sloping upward and inward toward a narrow, often square-ish flue. The shape, combined with the material of which is is made, make the fireplaces function much more effectively than most: The material provides wonderfully efficient insulation, and the rounded shape of the fireplace itself has the effect of pushing more heat outward into the home, rather than losing it up the flue to the cold air outside.
But it also reminded me of something else, of another vessel for fire:
The kiva-style fireplace has its free-standing counterpart, too, one that you’ll find all over New Mexico (and, indeed, the Southwest generally), but it’s especially popular in the southern two-thirds of the state, where it’s regarded less as something practical than as an accoutrement of backyard design. It’s called a chimenea.
It’s the Spanish word for “chimney,” and it fits. It’s a free-standing stove, traditionally made of clay (although today you can find expensive cast-iron versions) with a long, narrow-ish neck and a bulbous body set atop spindly legs. There’s an opening, sometimes one with a door, on the front of the body, and coals or kindling are placed inside and lit. In the old days, it would have been used to heat actual objects, such as dishes containing food or even pottery to be fired. Today, they’re mostly used for heating a limited area, such as a patio or deck. In a high-desert environment where temperatures can fluctuate fifty degrees in the course of an ordinary day, they’re useful even for warmer seasons when people want to spend evenings out of doors.
You can read more about chimeneas, and their relationship both to today’s theme and to the more permanent fireplaces they resemble, at the link.
I love the seeming contradictions inherent in the natural world: the elemental dichotomies that oppose each other, yet also combine together to create something far greater than the the sum of its parts. I love the fact that we are given the opportunity to harness such elements and their associated forces, provided that we do so with the respect and care that such power requires. This, indeed, is what art is: the application of fundamental materials and movement, form and force, to create something wholly new and beautifully affecting.
Camille does it expertly.
Of all of her pieces that we have in inventory, this one is Wings’s personal favorite. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
This untitled miniature vase by Camille Bernal (Taos Pueblo) is one of Wings’s personal favorites: Fired from red area clay, its sturdy round base slopes gracefully upward, like a traditional kiva fireplace chimney, into a square opening onto the world. The exterior is a paler peach shade, accented with long-stemmed flowers tipped in gentle blues and grays and whites, stretching toward the sky. Stands 4″ high by 3.5″ across at widest point, with an opening at the square lip of 7/8″ (dimensions approximate). Top view shown below.
Tewa clay; plant-based paints
$180 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
In this season, the pattern of this little jar take on a different feel: one that evokes the fiery heat of summer in its form and function. The clay itself is flame-red, a silky Tewa clay that Camille extracts and processes herself. In this instance, she’s slipped the vase’s outer surface in a lighter shade of the clay’s own fiery hue, lightening it to a soft pale peach. The delicate blooms that emerge from the earth to grow up the vessel’s sides ascend on stems of fire, brilliant orange-red stalks that contrast boldly with their cooler, paler blossoms. And while in winter those blossoms seem to hold the promise of spring’s catkins, in this opposite season they embody the desert wildflowers that dance boldly in the summer heat.
As I said only yesterday of the tiny wingéd spirits of summer, the butterflies, the emissaries of the Little People:
It’s perhaps appropriate, in light of this week’s theme, that our three largest, most visually-significant butterflies should appear in the colors of flame: yellow, orange, red. True, the mourning cloak is a deep, dark red, maroon tinged with violet-black, but it is distinctly red nonetheless.And they are drawn to the fire of the flowers themselves: the dandelions and the daisies and the roses and the poppies; the pure yellows of the wild sunflowers and the deep orange-to-crimson spectrum of the Mexican sunflowers; the blazing red of Indian paintbrush and molten gold of Indian blanketflower, also known as the firewheel.
These flowering plant spirits, themselves fire dancing upon the earth of this land, are perfect for a vase like this one. Many of them are tiny blooms, some simply a series of petals that ascend their short stalk like tongues of flame. They are perfect for this vase, its very raison d’être [note: interior is not waterproof; requires a plastic vase liner with reservoir to hold live flowers].
As we move toward the end of this week in which fire takes a leading role, this graceful little olla combines embodies the flames themselves, melded with its fellow elements of earth and air and water to create a thing of perfect beauty.
~ Aji
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