There is an edge to the air in the mornings now: that sharp blade of autumn cuts hard and clean in the hours surrounding the dawn. By midday, the heat has become oppressive again, but the days are bookended now by the feel of fall.
Because of the drastic alterations now in our weather patterns, our growing cycles are just as radically changed. Five years ago, the corn would by now have been taller than we are, ears already sprouting on each stalk. Instead, the tallest are something less than four feet high now, and just this day beginning to reveal their braided cornsilk center stalks. The squash, too, are flowering late, the first blossoms having opened only this week, but now their part of the garden is adance with golden star-shaped petals enshawled by wide green leaves.
Such delays are not cause but effect, not illness but symptom. Our Mother Earth is wounded, and the time for fertility, for gestation, for delivery and birth is shortened now. And still, within the brief moments allotted to her, she continues her work, birthing, midwifing, nurturing, and summoning earth spirits to dance in aid and celebration.
Today’s featured work embodies both the spirits and the earth, the greens of late summer dancing in the light. From its description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Spirits Dancing Upon a Green Earth Earrings
Summer is the season of spirits dancing upon a green earth, guardians and guides whose gifts are prosperity and abundance. Wings summons the spirits to the song of the leaves and the drum of the earth’s heartbeat with these earrings, granted a stylized figurative form. Each earring is wrought in layers of 20-gauge sterling silver, each layer designed and cut entirely freehand and fused together in overlay fashion, each embracing three intensely-hued malachite gemstones. Near the top, small round cabochons of boldly banded malachite serve as head and face. At the center, perfect squares turned diamond-shaped become the earth’s body, its lines a graduated contrast that produce a nearly ombre effect. Lower body and limbs revolve in large round cabochons, striated in the shades of an electric emerald. Each hangs suspended by way of an organically wrought and drilled tab from sterling silver wires. Earrings hang 2.25″ long, excluding wires, by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; small round cabochons are 3/8″ across; square cabochons are 1/2″ along each edge and 3/4″ across the diamond’s center; large round cabochons are 5/8″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; malachite
$975 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This vintage-style pair is as weighty and complex as Mother Earth herself, layered, substantial, full of motion and of life. It makes them heavy, but they remain one of my favorites, green regalia showcased in the embrace of two layers of Florentine silver, open to the world and filled with the sheer joy of the dance. The banded greens that form their jeweled bodies are manifest in all the flowing strands of the corn: stalk and leaf and silk braided together, rising from the earth to open itself to the sky. And in a year of pandemic, when dancing is mostly denied us now, it’s a gift to see the spirits do it in our place.
There is not much time left. Autumn is not so much just around the corner as already here, and it will take work to keep the corn and squash alive and growing and thriving through the weeks leading to harvest. But we are accustomed to the work, and so is Mother Earth . . . and now, she is summoning her spirits to dance.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
