The heart.
It’s perhaps the most fundamental symbol of life, a signifier that crosses cultures and epochs alike. It’s that same significance that underlies its meaning as a symbol of love: romantic love, platonic love, parental love, love for humanity.
The metaphors write themselves, of course.
Hearts have always been a frequent motif in Wings’s work, and one day here I’ll show you examples of how he incorporates them, image and meaning alike, in both his silverwork and his photography. For today and tomorrow, though, I want to focus on only a couple of small facets of that work, as rendered in stone and silver.
Today’s piece is one that Wings created for the part of his recent one-man show devoted to his silverwork. This piece was grouped with three related ones, under the subheading Cornerstone — not an image typically linked with hearts, but the association became clear in his accompanying interpretive text:
It is easy to forget that a wall, a home, a structure, a society endures only through the strength of the cornerstone that serves as its foundation. So it is with our people: The public face is male, but the underlying strength and support, the cornerstones, are the women.
Honoring women guides much of my work. Hearts are a common motif: Feminine, nurturing, and incredibly powerful, they pump the lifeblood through the body and sustain it with love. Fiery accents of spiny oyster shell and brilliant red coral, essential woman’s “stones,” couple with the male Skystone to create a vibrant whole.
The narrative, of course, referred collectively to all four of the pieces in that particular grouping (three of which are no longer in inventory). But it’s been a constant in his work since he first began his career as an artist. Native imagery and symbolism is conducive to heart-related metaphors on its own; combined with an artistic vision that seeks specifically to honor women, it’s no surprise that it finds expression in heart-related metaphors.
Today’s featured piece is no exception. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Feminine, nurturing, and incredibly powerful, hearts sustain sustain the body and spirit with love. Here, the heart motif is rendered in verdant green turquoise with a shimmery golden matrix, bezel-set, trimmed in twisted silver, and accented with a tiny, fiery piece of coral, then suspended from a chain of hand-strung antique silver beads. Coupled with the protective male symbolism of the Skystone, the images merge and meld to create a vibrant whole of security, prosperity, and abundance. Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; Royston turquoise; coral; antique silver beads (reverse)
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The stone itself is nearly magical. When I first saw it, I thought, based on the clear golden-colored matrix, that it might be from Turquoise Mountain in Arizona. Closer examination, however, revealed precisely what the photo shows: that translucent emerald-green overlay atop the stone’s basic robin’s-egg blue shade, an effect that is a hallmark of Nevada’s Royston turquoise. The cabber who created it polished it to a high gloss, and it feels silken to the touch. The matrix is copper, but its color ranges from a soft golden glow to a subtle bronze shade. The tiny offset coral cabochon underscores the brilliant colors in the larger stone.
The stampwork on the bail and on the back of the bezel repeat the heart motif, accompanied by broken-arrow imagery: hinting, perhaps, that Cupid is taking subtler approach, or perhaps that while the matrix may expose cracks in the heart, love is strong enough to keep it from breaking. The setting supports interpretations of survival, and even abundance: a single stamp that, depending on perspective, can be used to represent thunderheads or kiva steps — life-sustaining rain falling from the sky like liquid turquoise, or the entry into the most sacred of spaces — placed at the Four Sacred Directions so that their ends meet and merge. Physical sustenance; spiritual sustenance; existential harmony and abundance. And while the pendant is wholly new, it links back up to that which is old, hanging as it does from a strand of old sterling silver beads, each accented with its own subtle traditional stampwork.
Normally, I’m not the sort of person who wears heart imagery. Too much of an association with the forced frilly pink hearts-and-flowers faux femininity of my younger years.
Wings’s hearts are another matter entirely.
There’s nothing remotely frilly about these: They’re bold, brilliant, vibrant, pulsing with life and spirit. And this one, in some of my favorite brilliant jewel-toned colors, is something special. By design, that life, that spirit, is intended to be worn close to one’s own heart.
Tomorrow: Hearts in a series of special significance.
~ Aji
