It was clear (or it should have been, at least to anyone who’s paid the slightest bit of attention these last four years) that we would have no answers anytime soon, and two days on, we are still waiting. It feels now as though the earth waits with us, breath bated and hope in abeyance lest the worst come to pass after all.
What the colonial world fails to realize — or, more accurately, simply refuses to acknowledge — is that there is no good result here. Too much damage has been done, too much violence and harm inflicted, too much essential cowardice and craven fealty to colonial white supremacy for that. There is only mitigation, harm reduction, a hope that we might lay a little of the groundwork that will be necessary for true healing and renewal one day.
To our peoples, this has been obvious, of course; we have lived our lives this half millennium and more at the center of a storm not of our making, a catastrophic collection of systems forced upon us from without.
Frankly, it makes our view of what surrounds us far more clear than those on the outside, not merely less or entirely unaffected, but also inflicting and sustaining it. And what more than five hundred years of such resistance has given us is a solid understanding, coded in ancestral memory and now the spiraling strands of our very DNA, of the need to fight, and fight wisely. The survival of nothing less than our Mother Earth depends upon it.
And so we abjure colonial sources and assertions of so-called “received wisdom.” They are neither granted nor received by anyone or anything of ours; rather, the very opposite: They exist specifically to further colonial interests, which necessarily depend upon our subduing and eventual extermination. We look to far older sources of knowledge and wisdom, seeking the light that illuminates the storm.
It’s a concept, and a dynamic, too, that finds expression routinely in Wings’s work: the natural storm as friend rather than foe; its metaphorical colonial counterpart the inverse, to be resisted and repelled at every turn. He uses the symbolism of the spirits and forces of the former to achieve the latter goals, and it produces works as powerful as they are animated.
Today’s featured #TBT work is one such piece, a solid sterling silver cuff that dates back a dozen years. It was one of three or four he created in fairly rapid succession that, while all distinctive and unique in size and shape and stampwork, nonetheless all shared something of the same spirit. This was one of the smaller ones, itself a throwback to an older style of traditional Indigenous silversmithing here, a plain narrow band scored freehand into multiple rows, a small number of them accented with simple freehand stampwork chased along its length.
It began, of course, with the silver. It was perhaps a fourteen-gauge weight, solid and substantial enough to hold its shape and support the design, yet flexible enough to adjust comfortably without weighing down the wrist unduly. Wings cut it to length and width, six inches long by perhaps an inch across, maybe an inch and a quarter at the most. With the rectangle still flat, he selected a stamp with a plain chisel-like end, this one with a fairly bold blade end, and chased five separate lines down its full length, each equidistant and scored deeply and entirely freehand into the surface of the silver.
Once the scorework was complete, he chose a single decorative stamp, this one in the shape of a triangle with an open base. It’s a motif he often uses for multiple purposes, from directional arrowheads to mountain imagery to the symbolism of the tipi or lodge. But taking than one open-based point and alternating its orientation, chased in a conjoined and repeating pattern all the way down the length of the cuff? Becomes lightning.
And in true stormy-weather fashion, Wings randomized its placement. Instead of edging the cuff with two such animated borders, or placing them side by side at the center, or even placing them an equal number of rows inward with one or more rows between, he instead chose to place them on the second and fourth of the six rows. It created an offset effect, and provided a distinct top and bottom to the cuff, albeit ones whose placement the wearer could choose. And it created a perfect storm on the surface of the cuff, two bolts of lightning surrounded by rivulets of silver rain . . . and silver light.
This was one of Wings’s simplest cuffs in terms of style, and yet its creation was complex and labor-intensive, requiring great skill, and sure and steady hand, and meticulous attention to detail. It encapsulated some elemental truths: that the storm is never all there is, and that the storm possesses its own essential wisdom, guidance for the path. And it reminds us that our obligations lie not merely in doing something, but in doing it wisely — that our tasks include seeking the light that illuminates the storm, and putting it to work on our own journey.
~ 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.
