Today is true fall, and it is glorious.
A few bands of lenticular clouds stretched behind the peaks at dawn; by early morning they had joined forces with the fragile webs and waves of asperitas clouds to create a haunting. ethereal skyline.
Up until the near the midday mark, the sun still shone brightly, turning amber leaves into molten gold and the mix of blues overhead into a gradient that ranged from turquoise to violet. Now, the clouds are beginning to coalesce into something darker, stronger, and the forecast has returned to us the possibility of a little rain.
Whether any weather develops remains to be seen, but at a minimum, such clouds will provide us with a little light magic at day’s end. Serendipitous, since that is the theme of this week’s edition of Red Willow Spirit, in images and silverwork alike: a little light magic for earth and sky.
Here at Red Willow, that’s a phrase that can be understood in multiple ways, from magic that is weightless to the magic of the light (and interpretations between and beyond, as well). Because autumn here is a season of magic, in weather and wind and air and color, and it is most assuredly the season of the light — as archetype, as historical legend, as mystical manifestation that exceeds the bounds of time itself.
This week’s edition consists of four photographic images linked by three works of wearable art. As I noted in yesterday’s post, the images shown here today are part of a small series that included yesterday’s photo, too. Unlike that upward-looking example, however, these are all focused on the broader atmospheric expanse between and overlapping earth and sky, the mysteries of color and the magic of shadows and light that occur between them. Wings shot all of these on film late one afternoon some seventeen, perhaps eighteen years ago. it was, if I am not very much mistaken, exactly this week of the year; the position of the light, the condition of the distant trees, and the phase of the moon in yesterday’s image make the timeline plain. He was on the main highway that leads out of town, heading homeward; to his right were the northeast fields, shadows cast long and bold across them by the lowering sun in the southwest sky on his left. He stopped along the edge of the road, pulling off the shoulder and pulling out his old film camera (this would most likely have been a year or so before he acquired his first digital camera), and began to capture the light- and shadowscape laid out before him.
He took a panoramic approach to the series, without a panoramic function on his camera. He began at the left end of the visible shadows cast by the giant, increasingly bare cottonwoods that lined the road, and slowly moved rightward, the bounds of each shot overlapping the last. The one above shows more of the mountain than the remaining three . . . and also perhaps captures the greatest number of individual shadows, inscribed long and dark upon an earth turned amber in the light. only a small swatch of turquoise sky shows above, but it’s enough to make clear that it is cobbled with clouds, remnants not yet drifted out past the peaks.
It’s also a sky that is reflected in the first of today’s trio of featured works wrought in silver and stone — specifically, Skystone, the blue jewel that signifies sherds of actual sky fallen to earth. All three are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin with the one that evokes both the fading blues of the image above and the deeper, more intense blues of this day’s early-morning cobblestone sky. From its description:
Cobblestone Sky Cuff Bracelet
We live beneath the arc of a cobblestone sky, pebbled with clouds, dust, and drops of rain, and held limned, day and night, in the silvery light. With this cuff, Wings calls down path of the overhead blue, the gifts of precipitation, and the framing light of sun, moon, and stars. The band is wrought of solid fourteen-gauge sterling silver, weighty and substantial, cut wide and classic with smooth, subtly rounded corners. Lengths of sterling silver braided wire form a narrow border on all sides, the space between it and the edge chased in a repeating pattern of crescents linked by tiny hoops, evoking distant suns and closer moons. In the broad space between borders, Wings has filled the silver with a scatter inlay of lightly polished and very, very old nuggets from Wings’s personal collection — tiny bits of pebble turquoise in brilliant sky blues and soft greens, like celestial cobblestones paving the path of the light. The pebble turquoise is set atop the silver via translucent jeweler’s glue, clear as glass, and sealed in place with more of the same. Cuff is 6″ long by 1-3/4″ wide; inlay area is 1-3/16″ wide (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; old natural turquoise
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Some of you might recognize the turquoise in this work. These old, old polished chips are from the same source[s] as those that embrace the focal stone in the masterwork featured here in Sunday’s post. These are so old that Wings no longer recalls how or when he acquired them; they’ve been a part of his private collection for as long as he can remember. They might have belonged to his father or grandfather, who, like himself, were both also self-taught silversmiths.
Most commonly, such old chips get drilled at one end — with lots of loss of material; such small specimens of such old natural turquoise often cannot survive the drilling process — and such pieces as withstand the pressure get strung as tiny beads. Here, Wings chose a different approach, and a very unusual one, but one that shows both their commonalities and the wide color variability to great effect.
This is, after all the season of green skies.
I’m not joking, and I’m not being ironic. Fall here presents us with such an impossible clarity of air that it sometimes hurts to breathe, the oxygen searing one’s airway and lungs. It does something similar for our perceptions of the skies: At dusk on cloudless evenings, the purity of air leads to a purity of color that forms a perfect gradient above the western horizon, amber on the bottom, indigo at the top, and somewhere in the middle, an almost eerie jade color flanked by turquoise above and gold below, the perfect blend of yellow sun and blue night.
You can see hints of it in the second of today’s images, even though there are clouds present and the camera faces eastward:
It’s a pale turquoise here, shades of aquamarine and white and gray besides, but the hint of green is there. It mirrors the hints of green below, in remnant grass and stands of mountain conifers that find their colors swamped by the amber of the light.
Both colors are more visible here, to the right end of what appears in the first photo and a little beyond. The sun, descendant, still cast long shadows across the land, but what catches the eye here is the lower slopes of the mountains directly above them, where the gold is not quite strong enough to quench the green, but instead infuses it with an almost foxfire glow. Beneath the slate-dark upper portions of the peaks, it seems as though the lower mountain is lit from within, a mysterious fire beneath the pale blue and gray braid of the visible swatch of sky.
Speaking of braids and blues, it’s what marks the second of today’s featured works. It’s a cuff that resembles the lines and bands of the clouds in the image above and in the one below it. It’s also a tangible echo of today’s mid-morning sweetgrass sky, the blue webbed and braided with bands of clouds that are limned with brilliant sun, yet hint at the capacity for gathering into something more powerful. From its description:
Sweetgrass Sky Cuff Bracelet
We live beneath the braided hoop of a sweetgrass sky, flowering blue and scented with the smoke from our prayers. Wings summons the symbolism of them all into a hoop of Skystone and silver with this cuff, an extraordinary arc of paired and braided sterling pattern wire set with an outsized cabochon of finely webbed turquoise in the embrace of ingot blossoms created by hand. The band is formed by two separate strands of heavy-gauge pattern wire in a scored design with a geometric Art Deco feel, the lines criss-crossed with ribbons that create a braided effect. The strands are soldered together at either end, then gently spread apart by hand to create the separation at center that holds the focal setting in perfect balance. The cabochon is a specimen of ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise of incredible size, the inky matrix underlit with faints hints of red webbing throughout. It rests in a scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, flowering at top and bottom like the buds of the fresh sweetgrass plant — four hand-made sterling silver ingot blossoms, for a total of eight blooms altogether. Band is 6″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest (center) point; each strand of the band is 5/16″ across; focal setting is 1-7/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across; cabochon is 1-1/8″ long by 7/8″ across; ingot stars are each 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise
$1,675 + shipping, handling and insurance
The image below picks up some of the spirit of this piece, as well. The green glow of the lower slopes is nearly the shade of a fresh sweetgrass braid; the shadows on the land and the clouds trailing across the sky evoke the ultra-fine webbing of the stone.
Turquoise blues braided with black shadow, and autumn world aglow in the lowering light:
But while this image shows the clouds still amassed above the brilliant green and gold below, the focus shifts yet again: Here, what really catches the eye is the altered shape of these shadows, further rightward even than those shown above. These are shadows cast by trees that have not yet lost all of their rapidly-drying leaves, shadows that resemble, in silhouette, ancient warriors ready to defend the land, feathered warbonnets stretching outward behind them in the wind.
The sky in this image is a bit bolder, too, as though even the clouds are readying themselves to defend both the blue and the light. And our third and final work of wearable art is manifest in the shapes and spirits of those remaining thunderheads — of the much younger ones now gathering as morning nears midday, a warbonnet sky ready to bring all the force of the storm. From its description:
Warbonnet Sky Cuff Bracelet
Summer arrives in a warbonnet sky, bright blues feathered with clouds that become bringers of rain, to the drumming of thunder and the bright bolts of Thunderbird’s arrows. The band is formed of three separate heavy-gauge strands of sterling silver triangle wire, each strand’s upper angles stamped in repeating arcs, like the thunderheads that deliver the First Medicine to a hot and thirsty earth. The strands are fused seamlessly at each end, then spread gently apart to hold the elaborate focal of the piece. It’s a complex setting, saw-cut, texturized, and stamped entirely freehand, set at the center with a highly domed oval of natural Fox turquoise from Nevada in the blues of the desert sky webbed by the purpled shades of the storm. The stone is set into a bezel made entirely by hand, its edges saw-cut and bent inward to hold the cabochon securely, the stone resting upon a bed of tobacco. It sits atop a tribute to the four winds and the sacred directions, the four spokes of the cross texturized by hand using a single tiny divot-end stamp. The spokes are excised from the surrounding silver by hand, using the filament-thin blade of a jeweler’s hand-saw, leaving an embrasure of paired radiant cloud-and-feather motifs, the warbonnet of its name, and scored, stamped, and scalloped freehand and domed ever so gently to rest comfortably atop the band. The band is 6″ long; each strand is 1/4″ wide, conjoined strands are collectively 3/4″ wide at either end and 1-1/4″ across at the widest point at top center; the focal is 2-3/8″ high in total, by 2″ across at the widest point; the cabochon is 7/8″ wide by 5/8″ high (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; natural Fox turquoise (Nevada); tobacco
$1,875 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the power of this piece. It reminds me of the old-style Sunface works of this land from more than a century ago, Eagle’s feathers as radiant as the light. And in the ways of the peoples whose traditions include warbonnets, it’s not mere armor; it’s a mark of courage, of selflessness, of power that comes with honor earned the hard way.
Our world is earning everything the hard way now. We are the ones charged with courage on its behalf. And perhaps this last image is trying to show us the way.
This final photo in this small series-within-a-series approximates the one above . . . but as it, too, moves rightward, it narrows the field of view. What shows here are those old shadow warriors in their warbonnets, striding across the land with the light, they and it alike seemingly headed for the mountain.
That would not be a surprise. The mountain is sacred for so many reasons, and to our peoples, the sacred has always been one of our greatest sources of strength. It’s a source of bravery, too; of love for our peoples and generosity of spirit; of resilience in the face of a half-millennium and counting of deliberately-engineered apocalypse and of a cast-iron determination not merely to resist but to defend, to reclaim and to heal, to ensure the land’s survival and our own, both on local and global scales alike.
It’s hard, especially in these months of encroaching cold and dark; harder still when the whole world is on fire, from planetary collapse and from endless war, both deliberately driven by colonialism and its endless discontents.
And it’s why beauty matters so much, and joy, and hope — in magic and mystery and medicine, in all of the gifts of the spirits that allow us to build up our resilience and strength for what we all know lies ahead.
And I’m not talking about mere winter.
As I write, the forecast has once again removed our chance at rain. This, despite the clouds that still mostly encircle us now: official forecasters insist that it has moved beyond us, no hope of return.
Perhaps they are right.
Perhaps not.
Hope remains, however.
Either way, this day is still a gift, one that will become stronger with the setting of the sun: a little light magic for earth and sky, and medicine for our spirits this night.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
