Over the last week, we have looked at themes of resistance, of being willing to stand and fight for a better world. This week, we turned to conceptions of what such a world might look like: how the ancestors, warriors that they were, sought to dream their vision of a better existence into being.
I said last week that Wings has elected, in the aftermath of such a disastrous failure of community and civil society, to make his work more overtly political. It’s always been political, of course; the very fact that of its creation, at the hands and by the mind and spirit of an indigenous man, renders it necessarily political in a colonial culture such as this. But the first element of resistance is stepping up, standing up, being willing to take sides and self-identify in ways large and small, and for him, the most elemental means is through his work.
And, as should be clear from last week’s posts, in the public sphere, such identification begins with names.
Wings has always named his work as he saw fit — as the spirit of each piece spoke to him, as it communicated through silver and stone and lenses and light. But there are names, and there are names. And going forward, clients can expect his work to be framed squarely within the latter: within identities that are aimed squarely at both resisting the horrors that threaten the present and at dreaming a visionary world into being, one in which our children and grandchildren can go well through life as our ancestors and the spirits have tried to dream for us.
There will be more of the former coming soon, a collection within a collection that is intensely idealistic and affirmatively political even as it speaks of an warrior ethos. For this week, however, in which we will feature Wings’s latest informal collection, three pairs of earrings in the form and shape of earth and sky itself, we focus on the latter category: pieces that invoke the power of visions and dreams to birth a new world into being.
We begin with those centered around a pair of stones that, in my judgment, are the most spectacular of the three — and the most mysterious. They were part of a mixed lot of natural American turquoise undistinguished by mine, but the color and matrix pattern lead me to believe that they originated not far north of us, in Colorado. They are simultaneously Skystones and gifts of the earth, but to me, they look like nothing so much as what might be called The Beginning . . . the birth of the world, the dawn of time, the dust of creation. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
The Dust of Creation Earrings
In some traditions, Spirit dreams the world into existence, molding it by way of mystery, medicine, and the very dust of creation. Wings captures those early moments of our world with these earrings, a pair of freeform ovals of natural American turquoise in pale robin’s-egg blue aswirl in the golden brown dust of the earth itself. Each cabochon looks like a slice of the sky, slowly revealing itself beneath the parting whorls of a creative whirlwind; each sits in the embrace of a simple scalloped bezel. Beneath each of the larger stones hang three teardrops, bright bits of new rain in the brilliant blue of old Sleeping Beauty turquoise, set in spare bezels and separated by tiny sterling silver ingot spacer beads. The earrings hang 1-15/16″ in total length (excluding wires), and are 11/16″ across at the widest point; the large turquoise cabochons are 1″ long by 11/16″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; natural American turquoise (likely from Colorado); natural old Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$875 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This pair evokes this week’s theme in another way, too. It combines the new cabochons with very old ones from his private collection, a way of bringing together past and present, the ancestors and ourselves, in an image of the future. In this instance, the path around the hoop is reversed: The dust of creation exists in that which is new, and yet it births that which is very old, small sky-blue drops like the tears of the ancestors, like the water that is life here, and everywhere else in the world.
Wings has created many works in recent months that speak to me personally. This is one such. For me, even the freeform shape of each piece hints at the random beauty of the cosmos, but the way that they are put together is structured thoroughly in the spirit of our traditions. They are the dust of creation, that which the ancestors passed to us by way of our own immanent spiral strands, and which we in turn will pass to future generations. They are also a reminder to us to make sure that we pass on the dreams that will help those generations create a truly visionary world.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
