So far this week, we’ve been exploring a series of themes: Spring weather and climate change; hearts and skies; tears and rain. Taken individually, they seem wildly disparate.
In our way of viewing the world, they’re all inextricably intertwined.
On Wednesday, I noted the mirrored symbolism found in some cultures: that raindrops are merely the tears of the sky; and that tears are simply the raindrops of the heart. Both cleanse; both soften the hardened landscape, helping it once again to go fallow, so that new life may grow. And for cultures in which all is inspirited, earth and sky every bit as much as the human heart, such ways of understanding the universe are more links in the sacred hoop binding us together in an unbreakable whole.
It’s a way of conceiving the world that our entire earth needs right now. If we looked at environmental damage as damage to our own bodies, we might be a bit less inclined to dig and dump and burn with such heedless alacrity.
Climate change is at the forefront of my thoughts these days, largely because for years now, we’ve been watching it unfold in real time right here in front of our own eyes. It’s never far from Wings’s thoughts, either, and that comes through with bell-like clarity in much of his current work. I first featured this piece here two months ago. What I wrote then could just as easily have been written today, and is just as apt:
It’s perhaps starkest in this brittle season of Spring, when at the best of times the weather can’t make up its mind what it wants to do. Now, though, it’s a whole other phenomenon: Driven on the winds of change real and metaphorical, it brings minute-by-minute fluctuations and extremes of temperature and tide unimaginable only a few short years ago.
Today, the winds are howling, rocking every structure, and rocking every living creature’s sense of self along with it. Everyone’s on edge: horses, dogs, birds, all ready to bolt without warning. It feels as though the very body of Earth herself is under siege by the elements, whipped into a frenzy and sent on the run by decades of human misbehavior.
Her body needs healing; so does her heart, her soul.
It’s times like this when I truly believe that there is something larger behind Wings’s work than mere serendipity, or even synchronicity. He’s producing showpieces regularly, of course, but occasionally his timing meshes with larger themes so completely that I can’t help but see something more in their creation than simply art.
Like now.
This was finished a couple of days ago. Today’s weather is not at all new; other than the threat of rain from the north, it’s been exactly like this all week. And in the middle of this seasonal unrest, he brought forth a piece that evokes motifs of healing on scales micro and macro alike.
In our cultures, symbols of healing and harmony are as varied as our peoples themselves. Still, there are some that cross cultural boundaries, not only here, but around the world. It’s part of what makes Wings’s work so accessible, so resonant, to people on multiple continents, from myriad traditions.
With this piece, Wings has brought together the entire gathering storm of emotion and pain and love and healing, of both the natural world and the human spirit, in a collection of silver and stone and shell. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery:
A Healing Heartbeat Necklace
Tiny veins and capillaries carry swirling red currents of lifeblood through the chambers of a blue-green Skystone heart. The cabochon is set in a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver; on the reverse, a sterling silver overlay in the shape of a healing hand rests against the heart of the setting. The pendant hangs suspended from an eighteen-inch strand of rondel beads in shades of blue and green, orange-red, and earth tones, all hand-strung in fractions and multiples of sacred numbers. Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; Cripple Creek turquoise; Tibetan turquoise; sponge coral; Picasso marble
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the imagery of the Skystone, how it here melds the blue of the sky itself with the green of the earth to which it falls. I love the blood-red copper matrix, veins shuttling the life-blood of the world itself to and fro, ensuring that the earth breathes and lives. And I love the inclusion of a once-living organism, the coral that continues to add beauty to life eons after the living spirit of the creature itself has departed.
It’s a perfect companion to the earrings featured in Wednesday’s post: turquoise drops from the same mine, combined with hand-fabricated three-dimensional hearts.
It’s also a perfect companion piece to what we’ll feature here tomorrow: All new, stunningly beautiful, in the same blue-green and red colors that represent love and life.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
