Last night, the air smelled of rain.
Oh, nothing fell here, of course, but when I checked the humidity index, it was 65%, far and away the highest we’ve seen in a good while. There was rain somewhere close by (by which I mean on the other side of one of the mountain ranges that surround us), and the air was clear enough to carry the scent to us.
This morning, low trailing bands of iridescent clouds enshawled the peaks, and broad bank of the violet-blue kind that portend real rain hovered over the western horizon. Those have long since dissipated and the day is clear, if still hazy, but the air feels of summer, and still weighted with a faint possibility of a little rain.
All in all, a good day so far, just a soft breeze in place of the high winds that have carried the smoke plume to us for so long. It’s a day to remember all that is good about summer in this place, and there is much: from planting to pilgrimage to the spirits that visit the pond, it’s a season of beauty (and usually, of abundance).
Of course, that last is in short supply now; after all, the most important of the pond spirits, the water, is nowhere to be found. The ditches are as dry and dusty the fields, and the Great River is running low, its motion less languid than simply exhausted.
All the area watersheds are experiencing like difficulties. Lake levels are at record lows now, and some of those portend other dangers for the surrounding area now. It’s testament to how cavalierly colonial society has treated that which is sacred — a phenomenon we see writ large upon the surface of the planet now, as Indigenous cultures struggle to save what remains.
This week’s #TBT work is a throwback to 2012, if memory serves — a work Wings created that summer, right about this time of year. It has always called to mind the spirits of water and light for me, orb and raindrop, but also, perhaps, the silver of the pond and the bluest of lakes. It’s built around an extraordinary triangle of rich Afghanistan lapis lazuli, a jewel that evokes and embodies both faraway waters and familiar spirits.
We’ll get to that in a moment. First, I want to note the fact of multiple shots of the same piece, each on a different background.
Photographing this piece bedeviled Wings to no end; I’m not sure that he ever got what he felt was a satisfactory shot of it. Part of it had to do with the upper portion of the pendant, shown to beautiful effect in the image above. It was, in effect, three circles in one, formed as a concha and yet producing the look of a mirror. I think originally he had intended to add a gemstone to the upper portion, but was instead taken with the silvered orb-like presentation of the bordered silver.
It was created with a plain large medallion of sterling silver, a perfect circle. I also suspect that prior to deciding upon a necklace, he considered created one of his miniature pots, because the techniques used to create their lower halves and that used to form and shape this are the same: doming the medallion from the reverse side, repoussé-fashion, thus shaping it into a traditional concha, then hammering the very center of the convex side into a smaller circle, sufficient to allow the pot to stand upright when completed.
For whatever reason, he decided against it, keeping the sloping sides of the concha low and graceful (and simultaneously keeping the size wide and open). He fashioned a very how-profile bezel of sorts around the flattened center, no serrations or scallops to distract the eye. By now he had already chosen the lower stone, that dagger-like lapis teardrop in fabulously variant blues, and he fashioned a similar plain, low-profile bezel for it, with the broad base soldered to the concha just below the center, the pointed tip hanging below. It produced a figurative appearance, and I suspect that may have underlay Wings’s decision not to set the upper bezel with a stone.
We’ll get to that in a minute. First, I want to take a look at the stone itself. In the image above, and in the third and final one below, the blues in the stone appear as they did to the naked eye: mostly a gradient between indigo and midnight blues, extremely deep, intense, and rich. The matrix appeared mostly white (common enough with calcite) with a little chartreuse here and there, more unusual, but not uncommon in lapis from Afghanistan.
But the photo below shows how the appearance of the stone changes when a flash is used:
Here, the blue looks like pure cobalt, with faint patches of sky scattered across it. What looks white to the naked eye suddenly turns beige, even brown, and the chartreuse inclusions look like quartz.
That’s not unusually, actually; both quartz and calcite can manifest, depending on surrounding and included minerals, in chartreuse shades and a clear, translucent appearance. But they are two different materials, and given the nature of the gem, this would be calcite.
Some cultures around the world regard lapis as a stone of royalty. to me, it’s always seemed one of mystery, and this shift in visible shades with the addition f the flash only adds to that.
Here, in this photo, it looks less like a darkened sky, and more like a sacred lake.
I did say “faraway waters and familiar spirits.”
You see, the Blue Lake that is central to Wings’s ways and place and people? It’s a phenomenon found in other parts of the world, too: here, Australia, Liberia, . . . and yes, Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, there are multiple “blue lakes,” six of them, in fact, which together constitute one of that country’s most beautiful national parks, known as Band-e Amir. The color in these spectacular watersheds, worldwide, is a result of a scarcity of algae and other substances and life forms that tend to green or cloud the water; such waters are possessed of such remarkable clarity that they capture all the blues of the sky to show off to the observer as their own. [Yes, the bed of Liberia’s blue lake, Bomi, was formed a bit differently than the others, but the waters themselves are a natural formation due entirely to rainfall only, and so it qualifies for inclusion here.]
Also, note the smithing marks on the center; they show up in sharp relief here, but to the naked eye, especially in natural light, they appeared much more like a textured mirror — like, in fact, the surface of a lake in the sunlight.
You can see that effect below:
In this shot, you can also see the figurative aspect of the piece, the sense of motion, perhaps that of a dancer, perhaps a kachina in silver mask and headdress.
Wings has always said that spirit guides his hands in making each piece, and one of the hardest aspects of the creative process for mere mortals is to know when a piece is done. There’s always that urge to add something, fix something, touch it up here or alter something there.
But in this case, whatever voice narrated his internal process of creation told him that it was time to stop. He added a small bail on the back at the top, and strung it on plain sterling silver snake chain.
The result, it seemed to me, was of waters and spirit both: the former not so very far away after all, and the latter always present.
The sun is dimming just the slightest bit.
I think perhaps it might rain later, just a little.
~ Aji
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