We haven’t had the water nymphs since last Spring. It’s just possible there may be a few in the earliest gestational stages now, but truth be told, I don’t expect them just yet. After all, we aren’t likely to have any significant amount of standing water before next week at the earliest, and their preferred breeding ground is the pond.
Still, as happened last year, the honeybees and hummingbirds have both arrived extraordinarily early, and so we may well see dragonflies and damselflies before the month is out. If so, that will mean that they’re already here, in the naiad (water nymph) stage; it’s only upon metamorphosis into full-fledged wingéd ones that they transform into creatures more of air than of water.
We visited with Dragonfly yesterday — specifically, with his most recent incarnation here, as evoked by Wings’s hands and spirit. We looked at a bit of the symbolism associated with his likeness, from serving as an exemplar of romantic love to fulfilling his role as a messenger of the spirits. We did not especially dwell on his more elemental associations, but in keeping with last week’s promise to devote our current #ThrowbackThursday series to some of Wings’s past masterworks, it seems the right time to look at that particular symbolism as embodied in this delicate being.
We have the perfect piece by which to do so.
Many of the works that I’ll be featuring in this series in the weeks to come will be ones that our readers have never seen: pieces made years ago, long since sold; or commissions that were tailored for a specific individual and that never appeared on the Web site. However, regular readers may recognize this one from last year’s post introducing Dragonfly (and long-time visitors may even remember it from its appearance here as an item for sale some five years ago). As I said last fall:
The dragonfly motif is one that appears frequently in Southwestern Native art, ancient and modern, and in media ranging from Indian jewelry to pottery to fetishes and other carvings to painting and other art forms. It’s especially popular among the various Pueblo peoples, including the Hopi in what is now Arizona, and among the Diné.
Part of its popularity no doubt stems from its association with water, discussed above. For desert peoples, as we’ve discussed here on many occasions already, water is life, a sacred element, a blessing of Spirit. Any being so closely associated with it, particularly in a way that involves the actual spawning of life and growth into adulthood, is bound to carry powerful symbolism.
That association may also be one reason why dragonfly imagery appeared so frequently on ancient pottery, such as ollas, or water jars. Honoring spirits associated with birth, growth, and life in general seems a natural choice for people going about the daily tasks of getting water, cooking, serving, eating, and drinking.
Such connections were likely very much in Wings’s subconscious thoughts as he designed the piece above, sold some four years ago to a dear friend who bought it as a gift for her mother. The oval Skystone was a brilliant sky blue with just a hint of green, evoking summer waters; the braided tail and curved antennae gave it a sense of motion, of actual flight. But the stampwork on the wings was something unique and entirely its own. Separate individual stamps in sunrise, crescent moon, and sacred hoop patterns, all in a repeating pattern on extended oval wings, joined together to form an image greater than the sum of its parts: another symbol of life, of food, of sustenance, embodied in four fish. I don’t think it was planned; I think it took shape on its own, from his mind and spirit directly to his hands, to create a complex and multi-layered expression of related symbols.
It’s one of my favorite pieces, and it found the home for which it was intended.
And when I say “for which it was intended,” I mean exactly that. Neither of us knew at the time that Wings crafted this piece, but the friend who ultimately would buy it would become like family to us. Wings was especially honored to learn that it was a gift for her mother, who has since walked on.
Our friend told me that she loved that juxtaposition of the fish imagery on the wings with the larger evocation of the dragonfly itself. How it came to be is yet another example of serendipity, or synchronicity, or more likely, both. Because once you see the fish image, it’s simply there; you can’t miss it. But what’s interesting to me is the collection of individual stamps he used to create that image, however unconsciously, because possesses its own independent, elemental symbolism. And it’s something you won’t see unless you know to look for it.
Lets begin from the body and working outward along each wing. The body, of course, is something special, too: an unusually large piece of natural Royal Blue turquoise from Nevada’s Royston District, brilliant blue aswirl with the sheerest bit of white mist, edged with coppery-gold bits of matrix. Where it attaches to the body, the base of each wing doubles as a fish’s tailfin, formed of what is typically used as a sunrise symbol. However, a mirror image appears at the opposite end of the body, just before the head, to serve as the gills: In context, such paired symbols are sometimes used to represent sunrise and sunset, the circularity of the day. Between the two, an extended stamped relief design ebbs and flows the length of the body, zigzagging a bit like lightning . . . or like flowing water. Each wing terminates at the head, with a single eye formed of a tiny perfect circle, the orb he typically uses to denote the sacred hoop of life. More paired sun symbols, rising and/or setting, form the dragonfly’s eyes, while his whipping tail is molded into a braided pattern that ties all the imagery together.
For a being that undergoes its own metamorphosis, from a spirit of the water to one of the air, it’s especially fitting symbolism.
And as so much of Wings’s work so often does, it weds elemental forces and the beings bound to them, creating a new and more powerful dance of their spirits: from the waters, to the air, and in all directions .
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
