It’s ironic that we should have set aside this day as the one to feature Wings’s signature series’ newest collection, The Spring Elementals: Fire. This day, it seemed as though the fire would come to us.
We are fortunate. The smoke plume that, around midday, appeared to rise out of the bone-dry scrub only a few acres away, was in fact from a structure fire in town instead. The winds were cooperative, too, blowing the smoke (and that of the megafire over the ridgeline) away from instead of toward us.
Still. It was a tense first hour or so, until we knew exactly what was happening. And it’s piled onto nearly two full months of tension as massive wildfires have raged out of control all around us. This is all a product of colonialism-driven climate catastrophe, because historically, here? Yes, there have always been the fire forces of spring, but fire season has not typically begun until June is well under way . . . and the afternoon rains of the summer monsoon season are always ready to extinguish any ignition before it has a chance to become a full conflagration.
But these are not normal times; indeed, there is no normal anymore, it seems. And so it has come to pass that on this unsettled day, the very elemental power that Wings’s work honors has visited the area in frighteningly near form.
This is the third set in the third grouping of Wings’s ongoing signature series of gemstone bead jewelry, The Elementals. They are divided by season; he began it last fall, with three works for each of the four elements, all wrought in a design specific to element, season, place, and his own Indigenous perceptions thereof. The sets for winter followed, and now we are three-quarters of the way through spring. This collection, one dedicated to fire, honors three separate expression’s of that elements powers and gifts at this time of year.
Although, to be brutally honest, in our current climate of 1,200-year drought, soil aridification, wildfires raging with no rain in sight? Some seem perhaps less gifts than . . . well, to understate the matter significantly, let us simply say objects of concern. Still, we remember how it used to be here, when each of these phenomena was mostly an unqualified gift, medicine, even, and we honor them in that spirit.
As always, the three works, necklace, pair of earrings, and coil bracelet, are shown together above, and they are expressly designed to coordinate with and complement each other, but each work is also entirely capable of standing on its own, and is thud sold separately. We begin with the first of the three, a necklace manifest as an adobe sun that must dance with the season’s trickster winds, and whose haunting glow has visited us many times in recent weeks. From its description in The Beaded Hoop Collection of the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Adobe Sun Necklace
Spring is the season of the adobe sun here, a giant orb of golden light limned in fiery amber, copper, and crimson by dust of the same clay that creates the ancient village walls and by traces of smoke carried on the winds. Wings honors these moments of beauty in the face of trickster weather with this necklace, strung in all the shades of the spring sky ablaze with the light of setting sun. At either end, old metallic glass trade beads in tapered rondels of a brassy copper hue pair with duets of sterling silver rounds to anchor each side of the strand. Moving inward, quartets of small rounds in all the shades of a sprng daylight sky — cobalt blue kyanite, teal apatite, black-webbed blue turquoise — are separated by single sterling silver rounds. As the size gradient increases and the colors turn to flame, hand-made barrel beads of Ethiopian silver set off a section of larger impression jasper rounds marbled in the shades of a pale hot desert sky marbled with the dust of rich red adobe clay. From there, the sun itself assumes pride of place, moving from old amber doughnut and yellow opal plain rondels in an alternating pattern into giant puffy smoky quartz, set off by single sunstone rondels and punctuated by orange-red sardonyx orbs. At the center, more rondels of the same warm sunstone dance with a pair of giant sardonyx suns, the reds so deep they look like darkest garnet — a snapshot of the sunset sky in these days of wildfire and dustlight. Necklace hangs 21″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Necklace coordinates with Dry Lightning earrings and Firewheel Prairie coil bracelet. From the Fire series in Wings’s new collection, The Spring Elementals (all pieces shown above and at the link).
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings;
Beads: Sunstone; sardonyx; smoky quartz; old amber; yellow opal; Ethiopian silver; impression jasper;
blue spiderweb turquoise; sterling silver; apatite; kyanite; old metallic glass trade beads
$400 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Up until recent years, the phenomenon exemplified by this necklace — a setting sun in the colors of clay, overlaid with shimmering micaceous haze — was one owed to the presence of spring gale-force winds, combined with impossibly low humidity and the usual lack of rain at this time of year.Ours are winds that whip up whole walls of dust, and tornadic devils in miniature, too, and send the dried chalky clay flying wide and high. Now, though, rampant wildfires have added a pall of ash and smoke and particulate matter to the dust cloud, so that together they create the powerful imagery of solar eclipse without the taboo.
And while it’s true that most of our wildfires are caused by human misconduct, there are always a few that have natural causes. Indeed, one of the worst here, from 2003 (and we’ll explore it in some detail tomorrow), had just such a cause: dry lightning. It’s a phenomenon common to the later weeks of spring and on into summer here, and at one time, it provided at least as much benefit as harm; dry lightning might occur in advance of a monsoonal stormfront, igniting a quick blaze in the underbrush on the slopes, but the rains would douse it before it could spread.
It’s also a hauntingly beautiful phenomenon, if a slightly eerie one. And it’s one that finds expression in the second of today’s featured works, two long gleaming bolts in the blue in the form of a pair of earrings. From its description in The Standing Stones Collection of the Earrings Gallery:
Dry Lightning Earrings
In spring, dry lightning electrifies even daylight skies, with no need for rain to attend its birth. Wings pays tribute to its stark illuminating power and eerie capacity for fire with these earrings, long dagger-like bolts of jeweled color and precious metal. At top and bottom, old metallic glass trade beads, color a blend of brass light and copper flame, form tapered anchors, between which a gradient of sky blues falls: large royal blue dumortierite orbs at the top, followed by the turquoise-and-clay hues of impression jasper rounds in descending sizes, separated by hand-made barrels of Ethiopian silver. Near the bottom, hand-made faceted barrels of Indonesian silver, the color of the lightning itself, embrace a cloud-webbed sphere a spiderweb blue turquoise. Earrings hang 3.5″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Earrings coordinate with Adobe Sun necklace and Firewheel Prairie coil bracelet. From the Fire series in Wings’s new collection, The Spring Elementals (all pieces shown above and at the link).
Sterling silver; old metallic glass trade beads; dumortierite; Ethiopian silver;
impression jasper; Indonesian silver; blue spiderweb turquoise
$175 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this pair unreasonably. Even knowing well the full trickster power of what they represent, they embody the storm, and for this stormborn spirit, they feel like home.
The third and final of today’s featured works, the coil bracelet, feels like home in a wholly different way. The fires of spring are sometimes entirely metaphorical, or at least the exist in [partial] name only, and so it is with this work. From its description in The Coiled Power Collections of the Bracelets Gallery:
Firewheel Prairie Coil Bracelet
Spring delivers new green and a profusion of wildflower petals like flame, Indian blanket and paintbrush and tea turning an alpine meadow into a firewheel prairie. Wings honors the medicine of these spirits of flowering indigenous beauty in this coil bracelet, strung with all the shades of the first blooms of the season. At either end of the coil, quartets of electric green chrome diopside, softer leafy jade, and sunny faceted citrine rounds alternate with single old glass trade beads in the shape of tapered barrels and the fiery shades of brass and copper melted and melded together. Moving inward, tiny freeform rounds of cheery amber set of segments of crackling red-orange fire agate and the mysterious gold and gray and scarlet whorls of mookaite. At the center, hand-made Ethiopian silver barrels, dancing with single giant orbs of sardonyx in such a deep shade of garnet red as to appear nearly black, embrace a focal segment of old amber doughnut rondels bisected by shimmering round spheres of iron pyrite. Bracelet consists of four full coils of beads strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Coil bracelet coordinates with Adobe Sun necklace and Dry Lightning earrings. From the Fire series in Wings’s new collection, The Spring Elementals (all pieces shown above and at the link).
Memory wire; old amber; iron pyrite; Ethiopian silver; sardonyx; mookaite; cherry amber;
fire agate; faceted citrine; old metallic glass trade beads; jade; chrome diopside
$350 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Even at this elevation, both prairie and meadow formations are relatively common. They are far different, of course, from those to the north; wilder, more rugged, less lushly green, studded with the hardier wildflowers that can withstand these elemental extremes. A remarkable number of those flowers are named for us, at least indirectly: Indian tea (which goes by other names in other places); Indian paintbrush, which comes in many colors, but here, their long, flame-like petals are usually coral or crimson; and, of course, Indian blanket flower, one of the earliest to blossom here, and more commonly known as the firewheel. The coil follows the colors of this spectacular spring flower, from the green of the stem to the fluttery yellow tips of the petals to the crimson inner stripe to the rust-and-amber glow of stamen and pistil. And because so many of our early blooms share commonalities of color, the rippling spiral of shades in the coil reflect the firewheel prairie that these alpine meadows become at this season.
For tonight, it appears that the fire in town has been put out safely and entirely. The winds this day have blown the plume from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Wildfire Complex away from us, leaving us with clear, if occasionally dusty, skies and air. And there is a small but decent chance of a little rain on Tuesday, if the forecast is correct.
Tomorrow will be soon to worry once more about the conflagrations that surround us. For now, we can enjoy the beauty and medicine delivered by the fire forces of spring for a little longer.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
