Most of reality manifests in shades of gray and every other shade of the spectrum. But once in a while, circumstances come clearer than that: not monochrome, but truly black and white.
That was the case three days ago, with a little black velvet and a lot of snow and some microphotography via Wings’s cell phone.
We mostly think of snow in the aggregate, accumulated flakes amassed into piles of white. We don’t usually have the luxury of seeing each flake individually; it falls too fast, blows and drifts too much, freezes too fast or too hard. Even when we do catch a glimpse of one apart, its structure exists mostly outside the perceptive abilities of the naked human eye.
But give a photographer a camera and access to an intermittent snow, and what materializes is both magic and medicine.
Here at Red Willow, what is equally black and white is the need for water — and also the fact that the vast majority of our useable surface water comes not in summer, but in winter, not in the form of rain, but of snow. And while stories abound of Indigenous alpine cultures around the world with seemingly countless names for snow, here, we know the importance of understanding , and honoring, its identities, its forms and shapes and spirits.
Snowflakes are, of course, the world’s most essential hexagons: essential in the sense of elemental, foundational; essential also in the sense that our earth does not survive without it. But hexagonal forms can be staid, spare, plain, even downright ugly. Snowflakes are none of these.
A snowflake is a jewel formed of air and water, beads as ice crystals, gems of pure white and shimmering silver and a translucence, a clarity, that defies description. They are rods and needles and columns, mandalas in miniature sculpted by the skies and set free upon the winds. Snowflakes are the first medicine, more precious than gold, frozen to feed the world for months at a time.
At this season, snowflakes are healers for a new year’s Earth.
Today’s featured works comprise a collection of three like items, one slightly smaller than the other two but of similar style and substance. It’s a trio of eminently traditional pieces wrought in an old style: miniature collector’s spoons summoned from sterling silver milled and stamped in elemental patterns that suit the gifts of the winter season. The first is the smallest, but also the most painstakingly wrought, hammered freehand and edged with flowing patterns that together evoke the flowing rains of summer and the shimmering snows of winter. From its description in the Collectibles Gallery here on the site:
Medicine Water Miniature Collector’s Spoon
Like that found in mineral springs and sacred lakes, rivers of rain bring medicine water to the world. Wings calls together clouds and rainfall and watershed alike in this miniature collector’s spoon, sized to deliver its medicine at a personal level. Cut freehand from sterling silver in a classic traditional shape, both bowl and handle are hammered entirely by hand, creating the effect of a rolling river, its waters racing downstream to pool in a shimmering lake. Along either edge of the handle, Wings has stamped a repeating pattern in a graceful flowing water motif, imparting a sense of motion and the feel of falling rain. Spoon is 4-5/8″ long; the handle is 1/4″ across at the widest point; the bowl is 15/16″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Side view shown below.
Sterling silver
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I freely confess that, like the starkly contrasting image at the top, this smaller spoon in snowlit silver is my favorite of the three. It’s not its size; or perhaps, rather, it’s that like the silvered flakes arrayed against the black velvet ground above, its beauty and effect are outsized relative to its modest dimensions. The tiny mandalas at top, impossibly fragile and delicate, nonetheless carry all the force of the blizzard in the aggregate . . . and packed together over the courses of a winter, they will thaw in spring to irrigate this valley for all the warm months of the year.
Snowflakes, of course, evoke other imagery from our traditional symbologies and cosmologies, too: of six-pointed stars and sacred directions, of spirits of the skies traveled to earth to midwife and nurture, to help and heal.
And it is that earth that manifests in the two remaining pieces of this small informal series, one that echoes the lines and paths of soil and rock, the other blossoming in the random flowering beauty of its plant children. Both are found in the same gallery as the first; we begin, at left, with the ground itself:
Precious Earth Miniature Collector’s Spoon
The map of our world is inscribed upon a precious earth, one that yields the shimmer of silver to the light. Wings brings together earth and light and the lines, long and lasting, writ by time, in this traditional collector’s spoon. Cut freehand of sterling silver as a single piece, its surface is hand-milled in an earthy pattern of layers and lines that tell the world’s story. On one side of the bowl’s surface, occupying the interstices of these gently flowing strata, seven tiny crescents are stamped freehand, moons gathered in a sacred number to illuminate the way. The spoon is 5-3/16″ long; the handle is 5/8″ across at the widest point; the bowl is 1-1/16″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The second of these two, third in the series, opens into glowing silver flowers at right:
Scattered Petals Miniature Collector’s Spoon
The winds bring a gift to Mother Earth, adorning her robes with scattered petals of high-desert wildflowers. Wings gathers the petals, and a few whole blossoms too, to shimmer in the light along the length of this miniature collector’s spoon. Cut freehand of sterling silver in an old traditional style and shape, the piece features a wide bowl and a flared handle scalloped at the end. The entire piece is hand-milled on its top surface in wildflower pattern,
petals scattered across it in sparkling relief. The spoon is 5-1/8″ long; the handle is 9/16 across at the widest point; the bowl is 1-1/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Side view shown below.
Sterling silver
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Taken together, the three spoons show the cycle of our world: water to earth to flower;; the medicine of birth and healing and harmony.
And here, in this place at the foot of the peaks, it all begins with tiny white flakes.
There are good reasons for Indigenous cultures to mark the seasons by the moons and the year by the solstice. Good reasons, too, for the new year to coincide with midwinter.
For now, the cold-blackened earth is nearly invisible, blanketed thoroughly by inches of white. It is there all the same, at rest at the moment, but still at work in its own way: gathering strength for spring, to make itself once again vulnerable enough to accept the gift of the snow, the thaw and melt that soak in and satiate its thirst, the runoff that it will then route to where it is needed most.
It’s perhaps difficult to conceive of needles and spokes as magic, of fine crystal as medicine, of tiny rays of frozen water our world’s salvation and its birth. But in this place, snow is all of these, and more. And at this new year, we rest, too, beneath a blanket of flakes, secure in the arrival of healers for the new year’s earth, bearing hope for the world to come.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
