It feels as though we are now suddenly down to the business of summer: mercury in the nineties, periodic cloudbursts, and a sense of time slipping away all too fast.
This time of year is our busiest; the pressure is always on to get as much done as possible before the weather turns cold. That means long hours of labor in the extended daylight, and careful planning as the night begins slowly to encroach again. And no matter how much daylight we have, it’s never enough; by dusk, there are always tasks that remain undone, deferred for yet another day.
Still, summer is the time of year when much of our work occurs out of doors, beneath vaulted turquoise skies and across an earth rich with green. Such is the case this year, although we are monitoring that greenery with a watchful eye: Our rains delayed their arrival this summer, and as wet as winter and spring were, it was nowhere near enough to neutralize the effects of last year’s deadly drought. And so we labor in the light, enjoying the colors of the season, but knowing better than to take them for granted.
Yesterday was the fifth birthday of this space, and it also marks the two-and-a-half-year point of this particular series. I think it’s time it got back to its roots: roots, and branches and leaves, too; earth and water, wind and sky; the spirits of summer in silver and stone. Originally, this series was never envisioned as one solely of images, for neither Wings’s photography nor his silverwork exist independently of each other; each informs the other. It is the natural world of Red Willow, his world, that inspires and inspirits all of his work.
And so, beginning today, this space will return to its roots and leaves, its water and sky. It will pair silver and stone with pixels and film, subject and object, inspiration and result. Today, we begin with the shades of summer: blue of sky and storm, green of blade and branch, and the colors of the light.
Wings captured the photo above, and the two to follow, on a summer’s afternoon three years ago — in the very heart of the monsoon season, when it still followed a mostly predictable pattern and path. On that day, the extreme weather moved through hard and fast, the storm-darkened sky clearing to bathe pond and willows and wild sunflowers and southern peaks in ethereal light. It’s a common enough phenomenon at this time of year, but it’s rare that the light holds long enough to spend time walking in it, as we did on that day. And while he was able to catch a bit of its magic in digital form, its real medicine lay in the inspiration the memory of it would provide.
For three years later, those same colors — and the mysterious light that shimmered though them on that day — appear in some of his recent works.
The necklace’s name, Borealis, pays tribute to summer’s Northern Lights — a phenomenon supposedly not visible this far south in this hemisphere, yet in his youth, Wings himself occasionally witnessed these sky spirits honored by my own people, harbingers, perhaps, or omens, signs that needed to be seen beyond their usual northerly reach. But the name hints at earthier spirits, too: the boreal forests that most generally regard, too, as a product solely of northern environments, but whose populating trees are found here on our own peaks, including those just north of this land where I now sit. From the piece’s description in the relevant section of the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Borealis Necklace
Summer is the season of jade grass and turquoise skies by day, of the electric blue-green fire of the Aurora Borealis in the dark hours. Wings summons these flowing fiery spirits of the summer night skies with this cascade of glowing graduated spheres strung on sterling silver bead chain. Each end is anchored with tiny round beads of translucent kyanite, spanning a color spectrum from ice blue to teal to midnight and sparkling with inclusions like the glimmer of distant stars. Those stars seem to fall to earth as they touch the next segment, malachite banded in shades of deep emerald green, followed by the fluorescent green of jade, luminous as the shimmering green bands of the late-night northern sky. Each jade segment flows into a length of four larger turquoise beads, intensely blue, delicately matrixed, and flanking a focal segment of four large round silvery Labradorite orbs, alight from within with the all blues and greens of the Northern Lights. Bead strand hangs 20″ in length, excluding findings (dimensions approximate); price reflects length and value of beads used. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Beaded Hoop Collection. Coordinates with Aurora earrings. Long view shown below.
Sterling silver; kyanite; malachite; jade; blue turquoise; Labradorite
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Of course, boreal forests are those filled with conifers, and while piñon and juniper and spruce dot our land, the placement of the trees in relation to the sun means that the willows are the ones that most often catch and filter its post-storm light. In a good year, when there is water in the pond, the water itself forms its own aurora, a shimmering pool of light rippling outward beneath the touch of weeping willows and laughing sun alike. We have not been so lucky with the water this year — yet, although there is still time. The light, though, is a different thing. And Wings has captured it in the earrings that, while not matching, complement the necklace above in both substance and spirit. They resemble the willow fronds, too, the long graceful leaves of both the weeping the variety and upright ones that lend to this place and its people their name. From their description in the relevant section of the Earrings Gallery:
Aurora Earrings
In the darkest hours of a summer’s night, the Aurora Borealis flows and glows across the night sky. Wings evokes their cosmic cascade with these earrings, each a series of graduated orbs meeting at the center in a single large sphere of iridescent Labradorite, alive with the blues and greens that flow from either end. Flanking the luminescent silver of the center stones are turquoise beads in the brightest of blues, followed by jade glowing with an electric green fire. Beyond them sit smaller malachite orbs banded in rich emerald greens, followed by anchor beads at top and bottom of shimmering kyanite in shades of teal. Each drop is strung on sterling silver wire, dancing, suspended, from sterling silver earring wires. Earrings hang 2.25″ long excluding wires (dimensions approximate); price reflects value of beads used. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection. Coordinates with Borealis necklace.
Sterling silver; kyanite; malachite; jade; blue turquoise; Labradorite
$195 + shipping, handling, and insurance
There is, of course, more to earth and sky, water and light, than our immediate perceptions; more, too, to the blessings and risks that ride with the storm, and with its aftermath. In our cultures, any act is undertaken with the knowledge that it is not committed in isolation; what we do holds repercussions that move in both directions, informing and shaping our ancestral history as surely as they do our children’s future. And while Wings created the necklace and earrings above with each other in mind, in turns out that one of his coil bracelets from an earlier collection complements both, even as it reminds us of our obligations to children yet unborn. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery:
The Seventh Generation Coil Bracelet
We seek wisdom in our daily lives and hope that our acts accord with it, but the truth of our existence will be actualized only in the seventh generation. Wings honors the future of our grandchildren’s grandchildren and the sacredness of their spirits in this coiled hoop of identity and renewal. Each ends is anchored by the young spring green of jade extending into the sunny light of gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell, thence into the more intensely luminescent hues of green garnet, their orbs infused here and there with flashes of red. The garnet flows into the shimmering snowy shades of white-lip mother-of-pearl shell, which in turn reaches for the webbed blue turquoise of water and sky. Beyond the blue lies more powerful illumination by way of round Labradorite spheres, coming together at last in an elemental expanse of identity, of blood and bone and DNA realized in the earth, air, fire, and water of lightly polished nuggets of crimson Mediterranean coral. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Coiled Power Collections.
Memory wire; jade; gold-lip mother-of-pearl shell; green garnet; white-lip mother-of-pearl shell;
blue turquoise; Labradorite; Mediterranean coral
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The necklace and earrings seem to embody all the shades of summer in the form of earth and water, light and sky. The bracelet, however, takes those shades a step further, an eternal hoop uncoiling in all the colors of the light — a rainbow of identities and personalities made manifest in future generations, each spirit a wildflower, each a child of the rainbow’s light.
We have no wild sunflowers yet; they usually appear toward the very end of July or into August. The storm three years ago that brought us these images occurred a bit later in the season, monsoons well into the swing of things and the midseason wildflowers, too. For the moment, others of their extended clan have joined us: tiny white and pink and purple blossoms, the yellow petals of sagebrush buttercup and even still an errant dandelion or two.
And if the clouds now moving rapidly overhead are any indication, there will be rain as well.
Perhaps we shall yet today get to see the children of the light, dressed in all the shades of summer.
~ 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.
