It’s warmer today, having hit seventy well before noon, although the light-breeze-turned-suddenly-trickster-wind makes it feel much colder. Our skies today are not as clear, either: bright spring blue, yes, but covered with a patchwork of puffy white clouds on all sides and overhead.
Puffy white clouds that, as they drift together and coalesce, are increasingly gray.
This is not, of course, the gray of a gathering storm. These are the pre-monsoonal skies more common to the first days of summer, as the atmospheric patterns seek to find their early rhythm — not the kind that produces rain, but that will lead, in a matter of weeks, to the sort that routinely will. It’s a pattern that’s well over a month early, but if it produces the same results, we won’t object to the change in arrival time.
Normally, by the time we see skies like this, the trees are fully green — in full leaf for the summer season. At this moment, more than half the trees remain bare of branch . . . save, of course, for the strands of pollen that by now are equally divided between limbs above and earth below. In town, most of the trees already bear some green, if of a lighter, more fragile sort, but here at Red Willow we are situated at an elevation just enough higher that we don’t see much in the way of real green until April begins to ceded space to May. Of course, head south even just a little farther, and the leaves are already opening themselves to the light in the first half of April (and in Albuquerque, it’s a process that begins in March).
The images from this wee’s edition of Red Willow Spirit are from that “little farther” south — down through the Gorge along the Río Grandé just some twenty miles or so south of town. They were shot in the first half of April ten years ago — a decade ago almost to the very day, April 10th, if memory serves, of 2014. The reason I can be so specific about the day is that Wings shot them on the way down or on the way back from Santa Fe, where we had taken his work to set up for his one-man show, and it was a beautifully cloudy [and subsequently, unseasonally rainy] day, the kind in which my own storm-born spirit feels most at home.
The drive along the river is beautiful at any time or season. It’s one of the great compensations for having to make a trip southward, for whatever reason. In winter, you might catch sight of an eagle; in summer, perhaps a great blue heron. Spring and fall are usually the time of the ducks and geese, mostly, although spring sometimes brings us a sandhill crane or two, my namesakes. But at this time of year, it also brings something else: the delicate green of trees newly in leaf.
Those trees are largely cottonwoods, although invasive Asian elms take up space and water, too. Most of the coniferous trees are squat piñon, and they are outnumbered by those that are less trees at all than shrubs, mesquite punctuated by shorter stands and chamisa and sage. Those that appear in the four photos that are part of this week’s edition are all cottonwoods, some very old and no longer fully “alive” in the sense that the outside world understands the term . . . and yet they teem with life, particularly at this time of year.
Those that are at least partially alive, like the one shown at the center of the image above, are also stubbornly resistant to the notion of dying; while half the tree limbs are now bare, the other display a leafing resilience, green and bright and open to the gifts of the sky — which, on that particular day, filled as it was with line after line of small rain showers, presented leaf and limb with gifts indeed.
Those gifts are manifest in the three works of wearable art featured here today: pairs of earrings all, Wings’s newest, completed only last week. Each is saw-cut in the same traditional shape, each hand-milled in its own unique pattern, each etched on the reverse for a subtly rich and glowing texture. And each channels different aspects of the spring landscape, particularly as exemplified on the traditional lands of the river on that day ten years ago.
All three pairs are found in the Earrings Gallery here on the site. We begin with the pair that channels both the grace of new leaves just unfurling and the beauty of the feathers of rain and light that filter through them, a slightly eerie, haunting, and yet somehow comforting beauty, as appears in the photo above. From its description:
Feathers of Rain and Light Earrings
At this elevation, it seems possible to touch the clouds, the storm tipping its wings in feathers of rain and light. With these earrings, Wings catches both their luminous radiance and the grace of the falling First Medicine. Each dangling drop is saw-cut freehand from lightweight sterling silver, flared shapes terminating in a mirror-image pair of inverted stair-stepped forms that evoke, especially aptly, the geometry of old-style thunderhead symbols. Both are hand-milled in a spare and elegant pattern animated by more than a hint of Art Deco’s bold, sweeping geometry. Both are gently etched on the reverse to provide rich texture, dimension, and depth. And both are hand-drilled at the top to hold sterling silver jump rings, threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 2-5/8″ long, excluding wires, by 1/2″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Etched reverse shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If you follow the link, it will show you an image of the reverse of this pair (and of both others). The etchwork is very fine, small, subtle strokes, but comprehensive, covering the whole of the reverse side of each long, dangling drop. It resembles the silvery effect of the light in these photos, tempered by clouds and yet capable of illuminating the rain.
In the first photo, the lower trunk of the focal tree shows clearly the work of the beavers that are an elemental part of the Great River’s ecosystem. In the second photo, we see a tree whose bark has not been removed by creatures seeking to build dams, but by the weather effects of the elements themselves: of sun and heat and wind and rain and time on a geologic scale.
The trunks of these trees, the one immediately above and the one in the next photo below, remind me of the wrinkled leathery hides of old elephants, legs as wide and sturdy as trees even if their own trunks are much slimmer and more animated, bark peeled smooth by weather and time, dark gray skins still solid against the elements even without it.
And even though the one above shows a few remnant leaves off an upper branch, the trees as a whole are very old and very weathered, like elders showing their well-earned wrinkles, skin lined by ears of hard experience and the wisdom gained from it. It’s a special kind of beauty that our own cultures recognize, one that shows in every line the traces of a life well lived, lessons learned and ready to impart to those to come.
And it’s a beauty found in the second of today’s featured works. This second pair was actually created third, but it’s beautifully apt in its placement here — honoring, as it does, the beauty of branches and bark simultaneously, of weathered faces and skin lined by age and work. Its distinctive design makes this pair my favorite of the three, too. From its description:
Branches and Bark Earrings
Spring is the season of branches and bark, of transformation from bare bones to leaves and lush fronds once more. With these distinctive earrings, Wings honors both in a form and shape that are at once alike and uniquely different. Both dangling drops are saw-cut freehand from lightweight sterling silver, their flared shape terminating in an inverted stair-stepped shape that evokes the geometry of old-style thunderhead symbols. Both are hand-milled in graceful designs that rise from the silver’s surface in sharp relief: the left earring, as a tree’s branches ready to leaf; the right, as the whorled beauty of the bark. Both are gently etched on the reverse to provide rich texture, dimension, and depth. And both are hand-drilled at the top to hold sterling silver jump rings, threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 2-5/8″ long, excluding wires, by 1/2″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Etched reverse shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Yes, the drop shown here on the right [the left earring] is milled in the same pattern as the first pair; the one on the left [the right earring] is milled in a wholly different design. It’s a pattern that usually symbolizes the nested marbling of earth and rock, but it also resembles the wood of old deciduous trees, whorled bark and wrinkled skin beneath it . . .
. . . much, in fact, like the surface of the trunk on this second “dead” tree from that day, one that nonetheless still played — indeed, undoubtedly still plays, ten years on — an important role in maintaining the life and well-being of the land along the water, and its inhabitants.
I love the tiny little gap on the left side, where a shard of silver sky shows through. I also love the spareness of the shot, smooth trunk against pale clouds, knowing that there is rain looming, ready to revive the leaves nearly out of range on the right, and such grasses and growing medicines as lie beneath.
Speaking of medicine, they may be out of range of this shot, but there are there all the same. And our third and final pair today (the second that Wings completed in this group) is one animated by their spirits, and those of the wind that sweeps through these mid-spring days, scattering new falling petals across the land. From its description:
Falling Petals Earrings
It is the falling petals that most perfectly catch the rain and light. With these earrings, Wings captures their graceful drift as they dance with drops of water and the shimmering glow of the sun. Each dangling drop is saw-cut freehand from lightweight sterling silver, flared shapes terminating in a mirror-image pair of inverted stair-stepped forms that evoke the geometry of old-style thunderhead symbols. Each is hand-milled in a graceful, looping floral pattern, the arced edges of petals small and large rising in sharp relief, their sweeping lines equal parts Art Nouveau and Flower Power. Both are gently etched on the reverse to provide rich texture, dimension, and depth. And both are hand-drilled at the top to hold sterling silver jump rings, threaded with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires. Earrings hang 2-5/8″ long, excluding wires, by 1/2″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Etched reverse shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The wildflowers milled into the surface of these are as bold and graceful as the bending, looping branches of the tree in the image below: great sweeping arcs and lean, flowing lines, not of flowers here, but of limb and leaf.
And this tree, too, is one of my favorites: already forked by its own growth patterns, struck by lightning and scorched at its base, yet still somehow seemingly full of life.
The tree itself is dead, of course; the leaves you see here all emanate from others above, below, and behind it. But this tree is hardly devoid of life; it will be shelter to countless small creatures, and its decaying wood provides sustenance to that which grows, alive, around it. It’s also one of the gifts of the trees, that — absent present fire or fungal, viral, or borer infestations — a dead tree does not tend to infect those around it with its condition; rather, its presences reduces some of the stress and strain and the more fragile living ones of its kinds, allowing them to thrive.
One glance at the base of this image, green spreading rapidly across the earth, small flowering plants alive and ready to thrive, confirms the truth of it.
We need to be like them now, these fragile stalks and limbs that nonetheless return every spring to the dance: We need to embody a leafing resilience, a strength and certainty of spirit, that will allow us to engage with a world in need of our work now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
