June first is a beautiful day. It’s a little cooler than what we regard as our norm, true, but leaving aside the fact that all our norms have been obliterated now, on this day the faint chill is a direct result of yesterday’s glorious rains.
For once the forecast was entirely accurate, with an abundance of stormclouds building slowly through the early hours, then moving overhead around midday to deliver a torrent of medicine. And medicine it is — the first of them, in fact: water, which makes up by far the majority of Mother Earth’s body and our own, and in roughly similar proportions; water, in whose rush we are born and beneath which our plant relatives are born, too.
And yesterday brought us this medicine in waves, and then, the gift of the light. It was not in the form of a rainbow, true, but it was a sculpted light all the same: all drifting clouds and sunset fire, creating a rainbow-like iridescence floating on the horizontal instead of falling on the vertical. It was a color gradient that danced with shadow and light, turning our small world here at Red Willow into something at once ethereal and entirely ephemeral, a few moments of magic and mystery and medicine, less transformed than utterly transcendent.
Of course, the spirit of transcendence is one of the salutary aspects of summer here; the one of transformation, too. This is a season of metamorphosis, of caterpillars become butterflies and naiads reborn as dragonflies, of petals and blossoms and blades and leaves, of seeds brought fully to fruition in the space of a mere three months. It’s transformation as process and goal and result as well, transcendence made real through the auspices of water and light.
Today’s three featured images portray this process, demonstrate the goal, embody the result. Wings shot all three as part of a far larger series on an afternoon in August six years ago, a bit later in the season than we are now but it’s clear from the shifting skies outside the window that our current monsoon season is already here. That, too, was the last year in which our climatic and weather patterns could really have been said to be “normal”; since then, we have had some drastic weather indeed, but to a far greater degree an even ore drastic and deepening drought.
So it is that the images from this day have come to have a deeper meaning for me: They represent what was, yes, but more than that, a hope of what might be again.
The photo above is, however coincidentally, is perhaps the perfect manifestation of that hope — green, lush and abundant, the trees heavy and hanging low; skies tossed by thunderheads, but with bits of blue breaking through behind the darker shades; and reaching down to touch the radiant golden blooms in full flower, that sculpted light, a perfect arc of color backlit by the visible rays of the western sun.
Wildflowers flourishing in rainbow medicine, indeed.
Both of those, petals and light alike, are found in today’s two featured works of wearable art; both are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. And both are hand-milled in the same bold wildflower pattern, a serendipitous marriage of an equally-wild ’60s Flower Power feel to a more timelessly elegant and graceful Art Nouveau spirit., but each is manifest in a distinctly different form. We begin with the link bracelet, itself distinctive among its kind, hand-made links in the form of sterling silver hinges. From its description:
Rainbow Medicine Link Bracelet
The storm delivers rainbow medicine, beauty and color flowering when the water meets the light. Wings summons each shade into a shimmering strand of silver with this stylized link bracelet. Each gently shaped rectangular link is milled by hand in a floral pattern, its Art Nouveau-ish loops and whorls standing out in sharply textured relief above the velvety Florentine finish. A tiny round cabochon sits at the center of each link, each a different jewel in its own unique shade: peach moonstone, carnelian, lapis lazuli, amethyst, amber, and jade. No, the links are not arranged in the usual “rainbow”order, but in Wings’s own inimitable style that refuses to be bound by convention; here, they are joined in an inversion and reversion of the color array, as when two rainbows meet and meld while facing in opposite directions. Each link is connected via a hand-wrought hinge strung with sterling silver wire; closure is via a loop saw-cut, freehand, into one end and an organically extending tab at the other; tiny hand-stamped rainclouds dance along the tab’s inner surface. Note: This link bracelet, when closed, functions much like a bangle, and is designed for a smaller wrist. Bracelet is 7″ long, excluding tab (functionally slightly under 7″ when closed); each link is 1-1/8 long by 1″ high; cabochons are 3/16” across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; peach moonstone; carnelian; lapis lazuli; amethyst; amber; jade
$750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This work is its own sculpted cascade of color and light, one that evokes the image of the photo below. It’s a fragment of the broader view above, taken from a closer vantage point, emphasis purely on the rainbow, and the medicine:
It’s also a perfect lead-in to our next work of wearable art, but it deserves a little background of its own.
These are sunflowers, yes, but not the kind that come to most people’s minds when they hear the word. Those are reserved for the long-hybridized garden giants, stalks far taller than the average person and heads nearly as large, with giant brown centers and proportionally small golden petals fringing them on all sides.
Wild sunflowers are different. They grow in stands, too, and they can reach not-insignificant heights, but they are smaller, more slender, more wiry and wily and wild, dancing in the stormy season with abandon even as they turn their faces always toward the light.
It’s a perfect segue into the second of today’s featured works of wearable art. This one is a bracelet in a more traditional Indigenous form and shape, a cuff milled in the same stylized floral pattern and set similarly with a spectrum of brilliantly-colored jewels, all adance like the wild sunflowers of the summer season here. From its description:
Wildflowers Cuff Bracelet
Wildflowers paint a summer earth with color and light. Wings summons a profusion in soft yet brilliant shades, scattered along the length of this cuff in sharp relief. The band is formed of sterling silver hand-milled in a repeating pattern of large blossoms, each formed of multiple bold teardrop-shaped petals and arrayed in a random fashion. Across the length of the band, four of the flowers show their center pistils to the light; at each of these points is set a small round cabochon of a different color: citrine, aquamarine, amethyst, and peach moonstone. Each jewel is set into a saw-toothed bezel, creating an effect of petals within petals. The band is buffed to a high polish, allowing the flowers to seem to dance in the light. Cuff is 6″ long by 1″ high; cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; citrine; aquamarine; amethyst; peach moonstone
$825 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Here at Red Willow, the rainbow is most often the harbinger of clearing skies and sunset light. It doesn’t mean the clouds are gone; it does mean that thirsty flowers have been granted the chance to drink, along with what is these days an equally-thirsty earth besides.
We are blessed here with extraordinary skies no matter the weather or season. In the sharp clarity of autumn, and in spring 9although less so now for the latter), the skies are mostly cloudless save at dawn, so clear that the gradient at sunset blends perfectly, showing its own rainbow from crimson to plum, amber and gold and indigo all so flawless that the jade green in between is clearly visible at the center of the sky. In winter, it’s sunlit cobalt or violet snowclouds turned shades of silver and gold, copper and scarlet by the light of that same sun.
But in summer? Summer is when the sky spirits indulge their penchant for art, painting their home canvas with Impressionist color and carving their own likenesses into the clouds that tower high above a warming earth, their media a mix of water and air and a sculpted light.
The forecast today is for a decent possibility of evening rain. Outside, the thunderheads are growing, reaching, coalescing around the horizon. Perhaps before sunset, we shall have the gift of medicine once more: of the rain, followed by a rainbow light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
