Today was supposed to be warm.
I walked outside to collect eggs, and as I headed into the chicken coop, I was already ruing my sartorial choices: long sleeves, jeans, enclosed shoes; all too hot for the ambient air temperature.
Three eggs and fewer than three minutes later, I was back outside, ruing the fact that I hadn’t worn a coat.
Such is spring here at Red Willow, even in the best of times: a spirit unsettled, unstable, capricious and wild, too. The temperature can swing fifty degrees and more in the space of the day, and the weather can change in the beat of a bird’s wing. But what is most constant now is the wind, and as climate change tightens its grip, that trickster element gains traction and force seemingly by the hour.
But the work doesn’t wait, will not wait, and we must navigate its hardships as best we can. For us this week, that means readying the earth when possible, and tending to the horses regardless of the weather.
It’s no longer the case that we need the latter for the former; a power tiller will handle the first, and as far as the second, we are down now to a pair of rescues, spoiled by years of regular feeding, comfortable shelter, and no labor required of them. Where Wings’s father and my grandfather (and my father, too, as far as a child could do the work) were known to plough extensive fields with only a horse and traces, to plant and tend and harvest hay and food crops alike, which would then be loaded onto horse-drawn wagons. It was hot, heavy, hard labor, and it was routine. The scale of our own work now is very much smaller and partially automated: tiller; seeder; hired cutter and baler; everything eventually loaded onto our flatbed trailer hauled by our own truck.
That’s if we have anything to harvest. We already know that, in a deepening drought such as this, all our labor may be for nought.
Now, the constraints are, if not precisely metaphorical, at least far less tangible than in our parents’ day. But there is still hard labor associated with this season, and harsh conditions, too: sun and smoke and steel in the traces, even if the heavy hard leather straps are symbolic now.
The six images presented here today are all ones that Wings shot, if memory serves, with his earliest digital cameras; the most recent, I believe, dates back to 2013, while the others range from that period to perhaps five years previous. All represent aspects of the work here, centered mostly around the horses in one way or another. The signal difference between our labor and that of our parents is that for them, the horses were one of the tools, the machinery of planting and cultivation and harvest, while for us, they are the primary reason that we grow the hay in the first place. And whether working or not, horses need regular maintenance, too, as much as any vehicle or farm machinery, and later this week, the farrier will pay ours a call for that purpose.
The shot above (and the one at the very end, too), though, is of a different farrier, and a different horse . . . and to a small degree, a different time: a time when climate change had not yet caught us firmly in a deathgrip, when our usual patterns still mostly held, and when we could be sure of two and possibly three full cuts to feed the four-leggeds all year round.
Those days are all long gone. The imagery, though, remains to a degree, and I have always found it at once fascinating and oddly elemental: fire, air, water; a mix of earth and smoke and light. The image above shows the process, not the nuts and bolts but the nails, perhaps, of shoeing, a process replete with heat and smoke.It’s remarkable, really, how little such processes have changed in any fundamental way over the years — centuries, even. And what few outsiders realize is that Indian people were among the first “cowboys” on this land mass, a term that frankly bears little resemblance to what it represents. I remember, as a child, asking my mother why they were not called “horseboys,” because to me the essential feature was the presence of the horse, not some erstwhile cow somewhere in the Back Forty.
As with so much else in childhood, the answer was deeply unsatisfying. I would come to learn to expect that more often than not in a world that was perforce at once colonial and colonized.
Still, despite the best efforts of colonizer and certain colonized alike, our ways persist. They adapt, evolve, bend and move and stretch and reform to accommodate changed conditions and circumstances, but they remain rooted in ways as old as time, far older than the deformations of invasive forces could ever be. Todays’ five featured works in solid sterling silver echo and evoke these ways, all in Wings’s inimitable style. All five of today’s featured works of wearable art are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin first with the newest of the group, completed two weeks ago but only posted to the Web site this morning. From its description:
An Ancient Medicine Cuff Bracelet
Fanned smoke dances with the dust of the earth and the light of the sun to summon the echoes of an ancient medicine into our world anew. Wings honors the elemental forces and the oldest of ways with this new vintage-style cuff, crated through a texturizing technique called brazing. Solid sterling silver is cut and hammered freehand, then shaped with ends rounded gracefully and comfortably. The band is then stamped three times with two simple yet bold motifs: at center, a flowing pattern, usually used to evoke water but also tendrils of smoke and the arc of the light, flanked at either side by the image of a traditional fan wrought with an undercurrent of old Art Deco style. Then, sterling silver dust is introduced to the surface of the cuff by way of an open flame, melted evenly across its expanse to create the vintage look and raised, nubbly texture. Each stamp is then restruck, just slightly offset from the first to create the look and feel of an echo, a tangible medicine that appears, fully formed, through the lens and space of time immemorial. Cuff is 6″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If ever there were an illustration of “vintage style,” this is it: antique in process as well as form and shape; an echo, yes, but also a reminder that the song still sounds and the words still hold the ring of truth. It’s n arc of dust and metal, heat and smoke, gifts of the earth hammered into shape to glow, and eventually weather, in the elements and the light.
A bit like the shoes that have so often saved our horses’ hooves. They are created through smithing, too, albeit in a far less delicate form — another glowing metal arc, raised and textured and useful for protection in their way.
Over more than twenty years, and some eight horses later, Wings has accumulated a sizeable collection of shoes. Our remaining two go barefoot now; they do no work beyond grazing, and it’s better for their hooves as long as they remain on soft earth. And so the shoes accumulate, hung over a metal loop outside the studio to weather in the elements, their flat silver surfaces long since oxidized a rusty red.
That, too, brings back memories, of a time when rust was the natural order of things, expected, planned for and treated and kept at bay as long as possible but with the knowledge that things made of metal by human hands would never be eternal.
How much human expectations have changed.
Colonialism, which necessarily goes hand in hand with capitalism, too, breeds simultaneously opposing ideas about longevity now: the notion that we can buy cheap and yet it should somehow last forever, even as mass production deliberately builds early obsolescence into an object’s lifespan. It’s what bedevils Indigenous artists daily, the need to compete with cheap, shoddy knockoffs of their own designs, stolen outright and marketed to make colonizers rich.
Our notions of creation are different; so, too, of what should last and what should be allowed to decay and die in its own time. It’s a worldview that takes its cues from, yes, the actual world rather than some fantastical idea of cheapness and waste, both without consequence. And it’s one that finds expression in our next work of wearable art.
Wings created all of today’s cuffs relatively recently. Our second feature today is also his second-newest in our inventory here, one that embodies the open flowering of the season, and of the light as well. From its description:
The Dawn of Creation Cuff Bracelet
The spirits are present at the dawn of creation, to lend their own wisdom and light. Wings brings together the birth, the illumination, and the radiant life in full flower with this cuff in solid, sculpted sterling silver. The focal point of the band is a series of five evenly spaced repoussé flowers, each a half-inch across, their fluted petals emergent from the silver’s underside to find and embody the light. In between each burst of new petals sits an Eye of Spirit, a powerful symbol of the wisdom and guidance of the most elemental of forces. The lightweight, flexible band is edged on either side with arcing sunrise symbols, each linked to the next by a tiny sacred hoop, with bolder images of the dawn light anchoring either end. A repeating arc in a different radiant design traces both edges of the inner band. Cuff is 6″ long by .75″ across; the repoussé flowers are each .5″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As a child, I once read that the universe provides a limited number of shapes, a curtailed geometry made available to us to use, and that the human mind and spirit will naturally default to those shapes and replicate their symbologies across cultures and purposes.
I think there is perhaps some truth to that, even as I believe that the universe remains unconstrained by anything we can imagine.
But it is not lost on me that the same petaled, radiant-sun motif in the cuff above finds an analogue of sorts in the objects below, a pair of old spurs, long since put out to pasture, so to speak.
These have not been used in . . . well, frankly, no one can remember. They are perfectly functional. They’re also oxidized into a mix of red and bronze now, completely unrecognizeable as the steel they are. And they are beautiful.
Their beauty lies in their radiant form and shape, the Art Deco-ish designs on the curving crescents that holds the spur arms in place. Wings captured them when the arc of the light was just right to cast their shadows against the wall, creating the image of a quartet of shadowed suns.
They, too, were created amid heat and smoke, but here they call down no less than the late-day light itself to turn their practical form into a fantastical shape. What holds them is evoked in the next of today’s featured works, too, but it’s what creates the image that it embodies. Our third cuff is wrought in an old style, and a somewhat simpler one, but no less beautiful for that. From its description:
The Arc of the Light Cuff Bracelet
From a rainbow of color to nearly pure white to shimmering silver to something invisible to our eyes, the arc of the light is always present, and always illuminates our path. Wings recreates the path along the arc itself with this small glowing crescent, a cuff hand-milled in heavy-gauge sterling silver. Cranked by hand through and old-fashioned rolling mill, the strand’s silver is displaces into two deep channels on either side of a sloping apex, its center spine standing out in sharp relief. Smaller peaks serve as borders, creating parallel range of peaks and valleys, all running with a river of pure refracted light. The inverse of the grooves are perceptible on the inner band, the ends are shaped, rounded off, and filed smooth, and the entire arc is oxidized and buffed to a shining antiqued shade just a bit brighter than classic Florentine. [Note: This cuff is designed for a small wrist. The outer band is a very scant 6″ long; the inner band is closer to 5.5″ (dimensions approximate).] Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$385 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Old-fashioned and millwork is a remarkable thing. What it produces is at once subtle and complex, layers and rows and ridges and lines of shadow and of light. In that respect, the rolling mill functions much like the old ploughs our fathers used, creating furrows in hard surfaces, opening the earth to the light even as it also summons the shade and the shadow.
We have had people see this object and not know what it is. Admittedly, the rocks might mislead someone who has no familiarity with it whatsoever, but in truth, the rocks were there simply as a weight, to keep the blades down where they could inflict no injury on any passing creature.
And then, at the end of a spring day when the clouds elected to dance with the rays of a setting sun, the light turned rocks and rusty steel and splintered wood held together with old baling wire into something that was pure magic.
Such is the way with ordinary objects; the way, too, with the tools of hard labor. We only need see them as they truly are. It’s not a luxury the modern colonial world provides us much, although since we have the great gift of having all our work centered here at home, we are afforded opportunities to notice them that most people are no longer granted.
Wings long ago began recording such captured moments and images on film, and then digitally, and in recent years, I have picked up the slack, so to speak. It forms a diary of our days, our months and seasons and years, and shows us at a glance both the consistencies and the changes in climate and weather and light as time races ineluctably onward. It also shows us where we need to focus our own energies and efforts: what work is likely to be productive; what is now lost to us due to colonialism and climate change.
And where the work is possible, the need for medicine is unequivocal. And that requires other work of us, including that of ceremony and prayer.
Fourth is a work of wearable art with lines as graceful as the light itself, manifest as one of the tools of prayer, of ceremony, of medicine too. From its description:
Soaring On the Light Cuff Bracelet
Feather fans send our prayers aloft on tendrils of smoke, soaring on the light. Wings summons feathers and fans, prayers and smoke, into this curving arc of pure silver light. It begins with a medium-wide band of sterling silver, cut freehand and gently tapered at either end for a flowing line and comfortable fit. The band is then hand-milled in a similarly flowing pattern that evokes the traditional old-style fans made of a full wing of feathers, their tips dancing gently in the wind. The band is then forged gently into its anticlastic shape, each edge rising gracefully upward to create a par f arcs that catch, hold, and refract the same light on which our prayers ascend to the spirits. Light oxidation and medium polish mimic the shades of the smoke and coax the lines into bold three-dimensional relief. Band is 6ths ” long by 1.25″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The millwork on this piece has always reminded me of multiple objects at once: of the fronds of the plant spirits, of the feathers of prayer, of the fripperies of leatherwork, art and protection in one. These are patterns we see replicated not only in modern life, but in the artifacts of days, years, generations past, in the tack and traces used in the work of the warmer seasons, in the gear of saddles and spurs and the leads that steer horse and plough alike.
These are objects impossibly ordinary, made magic in the light. The haze of spring winds and summer heat help, too, softening edges and blurring the flaws that accrue to years of use, a diffuse lens to smooth the wrinkles and make what passes for their own skin seem young again, or at least animated.
It’s a word that holds layers of meaning, in our way: animated. Yes, it can mean simply “lively,” but more often it’s a word use to refer to the spirits, to their own actions and their effects, and to the fact that in our way, “spirit” is present in everything. In that way, it links even the most mundane of activities to something deeper, to the work not only as it seems on the surface, but to the less visible work of ceremony and the sacred.
Now, in these days? To the work of prayer.
Last but by no means least, our fifth featured item of silverwork is at once bold and graceful, spare and elegant and as powerful as the feathers that are its sole adornment — feathers that embody that work of prayer. From its description:
Prayer Plumes Cuff Bracelet
Prayer plumes turn everyday objects into offerings and works of ceremony. With this cuff, Wings turns a wide strand of silver into a bundle of these tiny silken down feathers, signs of honor and tools of medicine. It’s a cuff in the most archetypal sense, wide, simple, spare, substantial: a single sheet of sterling silver cut to size and milled by hand in a flowing, drifting pattern of plumes. Each end is cut freehand on either side into a gentle taper, adding to the graceful lines and ensuring a comfortable fit. Cuff is 6″ long by 1.5″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$545 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is a simple piece, one forged in stages, from the polishing of the finished work backward to the laborious cranking of the rolling mill, to the freehand cutwork that birthed its form and shape, finally, back to the ingot that preceded its sheet-like form, the silver pulled from the earth and cured with fire, melted and polished in the smoke of the forge.
A forge that forces changes in form and shape, that hammers and stretches and turns, and that eventually adorns or protects.
Or both. Shoeing a horse is an of protection — sometimes, even, of medicine, where the horse needs corrective control to keep its hooves healthy.
Silverwork is a scaled down version of such smithing, but as ornamental as it is, it is protective, too. Our peoples know well the value of spiritual armor, and works animated by spiritual symbolism keep us not only safe and sheltered, but mindful or our obligations, too.
Because as we also know, our work does not exist in a vacuum, and it is not given to us to serve us alone. Every moment of labor in the sun, every minute in the smoke of forge or prayer, every hour in the leather and steel of the traces, is work meant to better our world.
And as the season of heavy labor begins, we would all do well to remind ourselves of the truth of its purpose.
~ 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.
