At last, dawn broke once more in the company of a radiant Father Sun, his arms enrobed in glowing lenticular clouds outstretched to embrace the world beneath. It’s the first time in days that we’ve had a visible sunrise, but still the early morning hours felt more of fall than of the last full calendar month of summer.
Now, those shelf clouds have not so much burned off as shifted form and shape, gathering themselves into the rounded thunderhead towers that mark the middle of these late hot days of the season. there is rain forecast, but if recent days are any indication, we shall have little to none here at the feet of the peaks.
Here at Red Willow, what links sun and earth and sky is less the spirit of the rain than it is the arc of the light.
The light here is a magical thing, a mystery, its own medicine, and never moreso than in autumn. We are not there yet, as the calendar makes clear, but it appears that elemental and cosmic powers have other ideas now, bringing us early markers of fall already. It turns the whole place, landscape and earthen architecture alike, into works of natural art.
It was, after all, the light shining upon the mica-infused clay walls of the old village that convinced colonial invaders they had found the fabled Cities of Gold.
It was, unfortunately, a wholly unforeseeable consequence of the sturdy and beautiful sanctuary that this land mass’s oldest still-standing architecture represents.
But the crimes and tragedies of colonialism aside, the strength and beauty still hold. This is a place that long ago called upon spirits older than time to guide its creation, and that sense of substance is inherent in every brick, every mortar fill, every viga and parapet reaching for the sky.
The images included here today pay tribute to that timelessness, to the beauty of it, the solidity, the sense of the sacred that imbues every line and angle. Wings shot all four on film many years ago, dating back at least to 2006, perhaps earlier yet. These were taken, if memory serves, around the midpoint of a summer’s day, when the northern skies were indigo and the earthen walls and wooden doors of North House infused with the gold of a warming sun’s light. All four were shot from roughly the same vantage point, a slight shift in angle for the third to face the front more squarely. All are of the exact same subject, showing different parts of the giant multi-story building, more than a thousand years old and still standing in its original form, each separate image highlighting different details of workmanship and its relation to mountain and sky. The first, above, is of North House’s upper stories at its own northernmost end, the focus less on the skyline itself than on the geometry of the structure, of the right angles between rooflines and ancient wood doors, between canales (gutters) and the coppery extension of a single fireplace flue.
The colors put me in mind of the first of today’s three featured works of wearable art, all taken from Wings’s signature series of gemstone bead jewelry. First and third are pairs of earrings, the second a necklace — none created to match any of the others, but all, to my mind, of more than a passing family resemblance and relation. All are formed of jewels in the colors of this place, of the rusty-gold earth and turquoise skies, of its fiery sun and always, always the shimmer of the mysterious, magical light.
As noted above, the first of today’s featured works is a pair of earrings, one that embodies its own form of timelessness by way of old, old Skystone beads, rough-cut and barely polished as befits their vintage, set between subtle shimmering suns. From their description in The Standing Stones Collection in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
High Desert Dawn Earrings
A high desert dawn lights the world with a gentle glow. Wings evokes turquoise skies and soft golden sun with these earrings, a cascade of spheres in the shades of the sunrise. Each drop is strung on sturdy sterling silver wire and is anchored by sterling silver earrings wires. The focal point is formed of large old freeform turquoise beads in pale robin’s-egg blue, nuggety in texture and only lightly polished. Each is flanked at top and bottom by a delicately luminescent orb of shimmering sunstone, each of which in turn flows into a pair of tiny round impressions jasper beads that combines the colors of the others, a fragile turquoise sky marbled with radiant peach glow of the morning sun. Earrings hang 2″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection.
Sterling silver; old freeform robin’s-egg turquoise; sunstone; impression jasper
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The photo of this pair doesn’t do it justice; two dimensions cannot reproduce the depth of their shimmer or of the contrast between ancient pale blues and polished suns. They embody the colors of this place, at any season, for regardless of temperature or weather, there will always be days of blue skies and red-gold earth and light.
In the second of today’s photographic images, it is the blue skies and the gold of the red-gold earth that predominate, a stark and striking contrast in lines and angles and pure color.
This photo was shot from the same vantage point as the one above, but it represents a higher point yet in the building’s skyline. If you scroll to the last image in this post, you’ll see it at the very top of North House, slightly back from the corners shown above, straight adobe lines studded with a profusion of vigas, the support beams that hold the roof in place.
From the ground, the top of the uppermost story of this structure that has stood, inhabited, for a millennium and more seems to transcend the lower lines of the mountain itself. It doesn’t, of course; the mountain stands more than twelve thousand feet high, even at this late stage of its existence. Its own ridgeline truly does reach the sky, and the contrast between its wooded shoulders and the indigo backdrop is rich and stark indeed.
Against it, the adobe walls seem wholly of the earth, dusty reds and golds that catch the sun and hold it close — which, of course, they are and do. There is no insulation quite like adobe: Walk into one of the ancient homes on the plaza in the century-high heat of summer, and the temperature drops twenty degrees as soon as you gain the threshold; do the same in sub-zero winter, and the fire has made the whole interior warm enough for sleeveless comfort.
The Pueblo photos immediately above and below evoke that earthy feel, one that reminds us that, despite our high elevation, despite our bitterly cold winters and our [now seemingly mostly erstwhile] rainy seasons, this is still a desert land. the second of todays featured works of wearable art makes this identity explicit even as it, too, links earth and sky. From its description in The Beaded Hoop Collection in the Necklaces Gallery:
Desert’s Sky Necklace
The desert’s sky is purest turquoise, fallen to a richly marbled earth as hardened rain. Wings blends the magic of Skystone and sandstone in this necklace of glowing browns and blues. Strung on sterling silver bead chain with sterling silver findings, the strand is anchored at either end by tiny round orbs of impression jasper, manifest in shades of translucent aqua, opaque sand, and shimmering copper. Each side flows into a length of small round beads formed of matte-finish picture jasper, beautifully matrixed in bright golds and dark sepia tones. Moving toward the center, each side is marked by alternating lengths of brilliant blue-green turquoise, round webbed beads with a color as intense as indigo and electric as emerald, with larger spheres of picture jasper, bold brown bands and speckled earth tones so warm they resemble polished wood. At the very center rests a single larger bead, more freeform than round, of old sky blue turquoise, as heavily textured as the storm-ridden summer sky. Necklace hangs 18.8″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Beaded Hoop Collection. Coordinates with Heaven’s Earth earrings [sold]. Long view shown below.
Sterling silver; picture jasper; turquoise
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece seems to me to embody the image below perfectly: the brilliant blues of the sky, the crackling golden surface of the earthen walls.
This particular shot has always been a personal favorite; it captures the ancient character of the architecture, the ethereal contrast of shades, the bold geometry and the timeless beauty of earth and wood and sky and light. It’s rare to find any sort of building, any physical structure, so fabulously enhanced by simple sunlight, but all the more so because this building is more than a thousand years old. The walls shimmer; the weathered wooden doors are impossibly rich-looking when one considers their exposure to the elements. Bold lines, sharp angles, rounded flues and parapets appear otherworldly in the interplay of shadow present here.
Such geometry exists fully in three dimensions, but more: It exists in that netherworld of history and memory and future, too, that liminal space of the sacred that infuses the spirits of place and animates those of its people. It’s a faceted earth, a rough-polished sky, and all the fire and water that keeps both alive.
Kind of like the third and final of today’s featured works of wearable art. This, like the first, is a pair of earrings, and both pairs have always seemed to me to be cousins at the very least, perhaps siblings. Both are built around those old, old turquoise beads; the former pair features the shimmer of flame, while this pair is an earthier match to the necklace, with bolder lines and sharper edges. From their description, also found in The Standing Stones Collection in the Earrings Gallery:
Earth, Fire, Water, Sky Earrings
The high mountain desert in summer is a land of earth, fire, water, sky, a place of starkly beautiful extremes and fertile abundance. Wings gives form and shape to all four elemental powers with these old-style earrings formed of faceted fire and vintage Skystone. Each cascade gemstone beads is strung on sterling silver wires, anchored at the base with tiny faceted mookaite in dusty, earthy rose tones. Immediately above sits a medium-sized free-form orb of sky blue turquoise, each bead little more than polished rough. A golden mookaite bead like a tiny faceted sun leads to the large vintage free-form rough bead at the center, each a soft robin’s-egg blue with glowing golden matrix. Above the center bead, a fiery red mookaite leads to the last rough piece of Skystone, thence to a final mookaite in rich earthy brown. Earrings hang 2″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection.
Sterling silver; mookaite; free-form robin’s-egg turquoise
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s an elemental work that finds an echo in the fourth and final of today’s photographic images: vintage blues and an earthy faceted fire.
It’s the classic image that the phrase “Taos Pueblo” calls to mind for the outside world: that iconic view of North House, seen at a stair-stepped angle, glowing against a backdrop of mountain and sky. It’s a beautiful image, but one that reveals only the surface. For Wings, there is so much more depth to this place, one that transcends the walls and windows and rooflines, one that reaches from the earth beneath all the way back to the mountain and beyond it to the very blue of the vault above.
Yes, it is both the spirit of the rain now and the arc of the light year-round, but it is also the medicine of place and people, that intangible space of the sacred, that here is what links sun and earth and sky . . . and it is as timeless as the world it connects.
~ 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.
