Yesterday’s “storm” was not a single event, but several — a day-long system comprising multiple small storms racing through in wave after of wave of wild weather. We had it all: sun, rain, thunder, lightning, hail, sleet, fog, snow . . . and winds that ranged from simply gale-force to those with visible tornadic rotation overhead, accompanied by their hallmark “freight-train” sound.
We were lucky; not only did no tornadoes touch down here, but we never even lost power, which these days is a miracle in itself. We know that folks in the lands east of here were not so lucky.
But it was intimidating, no question. I’ve been on the edges of tornadoes several times over the course of my life, and the sound the wind makes is unmistakable. I threw on my boots and big coat, called the chickens in [they’re far safer in the coop, where they have divots hollowed out beneath the inner coop and can hide among the straw bales], let the dogs out of the dog run, and kept a watchful eye on the sky for the next while.
Today awned perfectly clear and bright for the first time in a few days, but now, at midday, the clouds are gathering once more: monsoonal-style thunderheads already rising behind the eastern peaks; broader bands and banks of pale gray to the west, the kind that could scatter beneath a sudden gust of wind or coalesce into something far more powerful.
According to the forecast, it will be the latter; more rain and snow are projected for late to—do, and we are grateful for traditional skills and forms of shelter. There is much here that the wind can take, but it’s unlikely to move our homes much from their foundations. These homes will be still standing when the storm departs — and that remains true for both the storms of heavy weather and the far more deadly one of colonialism.
This week’s #ThrowbackThursday featured work dates back just shy of eleven years: to early August of 2011 and the very heart of that year’s monsoon season. We are now seeing more such patterns in spring, once a time that the only thing that came from the sky was a constant trickster wind, punctuated by a late snowstorm or three. Summer lately has been nearly bone-dry, although we have hopes for this year once more.
And as always, we are grateful for the shelter we have now — shelter embodied by today’s #TBT work, one entry in Wings’s longstanding signature series of Pueblo pins saw-cut freehand in the shape of the Pueblo’s iconic traditional multistory architecture. He has created scores of them over the decades, perhaps hundreds, each one unique. Just over the last year, he has made a significant shift in their creative process, adding the traditional ladder as a separate overlay, each post and run formed individually, but formerly, he stamped the ladders across the front using a plain chisel-end stamp to score each line on the silver. This one he set with a single round cabochon of lapis lazuli in the color of the storm sky lit up by the glow of the sun.
Wings makes each pin in essentially the same way: He outlines the walls and stairstepped rooflines and parapets with a broad, textured chisel-end stamp, a smaller plain one used to form the old-style windows, and each viga made with a tiny hoop. Once the stampwork is complete, he cuts it free of the silver with a jeweler’s saw, using a filament-thin blade; the saw-work is always freehand, always by hand, always moving forward around each parapet and tiny doorway, never back. Once the cutwork is complete, he turns it over, adds his hallmark, and domes it very slightly, repoussé-fashion — this provides depth and dimension to the pin and permits it to sit properly on a garment — and then adds the pin assembly.
Structure (or perhaps architecture would be a more apt term), he turns it back face-up and chooses a spot to set the bezel that will hold whichever cabochon he’s chosen. They are virtually never set dead-center, almost always offset slightly in a way that is proportional to the overall design. Once the bezel is soldered securely into place, he oxidizes all of the stampwork thoroughly and buffs it, usually to a medium-high polish, then sets the stone.
On rare occasion, he’s created other works in similar fashion: once or twice a slightly larger version as a barrette; once, an adapted version for a cuff bracelet. All hold true to the same form, shape, and spirit. And all honor the architecture of people and place, of homes that have stood a thousand years and more, the oldest continuously inhabited homes on this land mass.
A millennium is, I think, more than enough to prove that they will be still standing when the storm departs.
~ Aji
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