Dawn has brought bright sun and bitter cold. Even now, with the sun high in the sky, the wind chill hovers near zero. The atmosphere is one of near-perfect clarity, save for the inversion layer that hugs the land, a product of several thousand woodstoves and fireplaces working overtime to expel the chill.
Today is the Eve of All Souls, and in this air honed to a scalpel’s edge, there is an unmistakable feel of spirits abroad now, whether walking the land or only the paths of ancestral memory.
There will be time enough to feed them when darkness falls: tonight; tomorrow; perhaps the next, and perhaps the night after that, too. There’s never a bad time to leave an offering, a bit of food, some water, a little tobacco. It lets them know that we remember, and we honor them, as they were, and as they are.
It is, after all, through their efforts that we survive and thrive. For the people of this place, the ancestors chose well: between the spirits of the peaks, beside the spirit of the water. For many of our peoples across this land mass, such truths no longer hold; their lands have been ripped and stripped away by the violence of colonialism, a spirit of greed far more dangerous and deadly than any mythical creatures Halloween pop culture can conjure. And for those like me, a guest resident here by marriage, there are enough of the essential characteristics of my own homelands for me to find that feeling of home, always lodged firmly in memory, given tangible form.
This notion of homelands as an Indigenous embrace of elemental spirits brought to mind one of Wings’s works from some seven to ten years ago. It was one that took some time to find itself, so to speak, its true identity initially veiled by wrongful categorization. But Wings never gives up on a piece, and sometimes, all that’s required is a little time for its spirit to reveal itself more wholly.
Today’s throwback featured work began life as a necklace. You can see its original form here, in the upper middle of the post. As I said then:
Well, actually, even that’s not wholly accurate. It began life as the piece that it was (with the Sleeping Beauty turquoise cabochon instead of the lapis), but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it. He finally decided to extend it into a necklace. He attached the little pendant, made separately. For those interested, the center stone is gasepite; the others, jade and citrine.
It got lots of attention, lots of interest, lots of people trying it on . . . but no buyer.
Eventually, dissatisfied, he pulled it. It sat on his workbench for a time. Then one day, he went back to work on it. Straight through; no breaks in the work. And what came out of it was the barrette shown above., with the lapis stone.
It sold in a matter of days.
Such is the way of Spirit and silver.
Spirit, and spirits. Not merely those that once assumed human form, nor even those we credit with supernatural status. In our way, our whole world in animated by spirit, from earth to sky, wind to waters, fire to light, mountains and rivers and animals and trees, even the rocks contain the breath of life and the dust of creation.
And this piece was animated by them all.
And as always, in one way or another, it began with the silver. Wings cut the piece freehand into its unique “butterfly” shape, much like a set of small wings spread wide, eventually lightly shaped into a slight embrace. He had originally included a tab at the lower point, drilled with a hole to hold the original pendant; when the piece found its place as a barrette, he simply trimmed it off and filed it smooth.
But key to its magic, in both iterations, was the stampwork.
Wings has long created a signature series of Pueblo pins, along with the occasional barrette, cut freehand in the iconic shape of North House and set with one or more tiny cabochons. You can see a variety of them at the same link. It’s hard for people to believe, upon encountering one for the first time, that he works from no set pattern or mold, and that no lasers or power tools are involved. Each piece is cut freehand, including the parapets along the roofline and the tiny excisions for windows and doors. The walls of each individual home are created via scorework wrought entirely by hand with a plain, basic chisel-edged stamp. A tiny hoop-motif stamp, chased repeatedly, creates the vigas. More scorework via chisels of varying lengths allow for the forming of the traditional ladders, poles and rungs both. And he recreated the imagery of his traditional Pueblo signature series, scaled smaller, on either side of this piece of silver. Because of the nature of the piece and the smaller scale, the doors and windows are stamped, not saw-cut. And instead of just a representation of North House, the side of the old village whence his own family comes, it recreated both North House and South House, bisected in silver as in life, by the Río Pueblo, the village’s traditional water source.
But Wings brought the detail on this work down to minute levels. Small clouds, formed of conjoined broken arrows, drift across an otherwise-clear sky. To the back at the right sit distant peaks. And scattered across the open plaza, tiny hornos, the traditional adobe ovens, are already hard at work, tendrils of smoke drifting from the openings in their roofs. The real-life counterparts of those hornos will be pressed into service again this week.
Stampwork complete, he turned it over and domed it lightly from the reverse, repoussé-fashion. When it was a necklace, this allowed it lie properly while still retaining a sense of depth and dimension. Later, this would be essential to its identity as a barrette, since the doming provided both a cradle for the French clip he soldered onto the back and a means of holding the hair elegantly and securely.
In its first iteration, after doming the piece, he soldered a compact bail to its upper edge; this he later snipped off and filed smooth, all evidence of its presence entirely erased, as with the organic tab bail for the pendant below. He also soldered two more details onto the surface: in the sky at the far right, a tiny sterling silver ingot bead molded into the shape of a sunburst; at the same height, just left of the middle, a tiny round bezel. Initially, that bezel held a round turquoise cabochon, the color of the clear desert sky. When he converted the piece to a barrette, he retained the radiant small sun at the right, but replaced the turquoise with a tiny round cabochon of brilliant cobalt blue lapis lazuli — a hint, perhaps, of stormclouds forming, of rain in summer or snow at this season.
Once complete, Wings oxidized all of the joins and the stampwork, and buffed it to a high polish; the oxidation brought the scorework into sharp relief, giving a sense of dimensionality to the two ancient multi-story buildings and the ladders resting against their walls.
As I noted above, when the piece found its actual form, it sold almost immediately; to whom is lost now to the mists of memory. But its image serves as a reminder to us, even now when the water turns to ice and a bitter wind blows, when the veil between the worlds grows thin and the spirits venture abroad in search of business to finish or simple mischief . . . even now, with the harsh depths of winter arrived early, there are still spirits who mean us well, and in their embrace are we safe: between the spirits of the peaks, beside the spirit of the water.
~ 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.
