We awakened this morning to a return of the smoke.
Since then, the wind has shifted, and much more blue is visible on all sides, but the early inward drift of particulate matter still wraps the land in a hazy shimmer now.
It’s not pleasant for us, of course, but the bigger worry is for the well-being of the smaller spirits with whom we share this land: the wild birds, particularly the small finches and siskins and the tiny hummingbirds; the local bees, bumbles and otherwise; and of course the butterflies that only just beginning to show themselves in force here ow. This is a major migratory path for them all, and our particular plot of land was long ago encoded in each generation’s ancestral memory as a place of refuge. That gift of trust in turn heightens our own obligations to their safety.
It’s a task that’s nigh on impossible if you’re not familiar with their patterns — both historical “norms” and current altered states of existence. It requires knowing who comes here, when, for how long, and why . . . and being ready, too, to welcome those whose changed circumstances have led them here in search of sanctuary. But the work has its own compensations, too.
Understanding our relatives’ migration patterns teaches us in turn how to adapt. The path of summer’s wingéd spirits guides us on our own.
This week’s featured #ThrowbackThursday work is one that had, to be frank, slipped my mind until I stumbled over a photo of it a few days ago while searching for something else. It’s a piece that dates back at least to 2008, probably, and I believe actually to 2007: one of Wings’s first generation of traditional miniature collector’s spoons, an old style of Indigenous silverwork here with a long and storied history. [It was in one of those two years that he first turned his attention to creating them, and I’m reasonably sure it was in 2007.] In this style’s early days, smiths melted silver coins into ingot and poured it into molds to create cast works. Now, sheet silver of every conceivable gauge is widely available, obviating the need for that step, and it frees artists to focus on the designs, which are no longer limited to the carving of molds. And, as is usually the case with his preferred media and submedia, Wings took freehand saw-work and stampwork to new levels with his spoons right from the start.
Wings usually creates spoons in the same way he does some of his other signature series, such as the Warrior Woman and Pueblo pin series: he sketches a few quick outlines of several them at once, alternating direction and placement to minimize waste of the metal medium, then sets about creating each unique design before freeing them of the surrounding silver. This one, if memory serves, was created at the same time as two or three others, in the summer of that year, I believe (over the course of that year, he created probably a dozen or so). It featured a moderate-sized bowl at the end of a long shaft, lightly tapered to narrow at the far end, terminating in the stylized shape of a raptor — specifically, Eagle. Once he had the outline set in his find, far more detailed there than on the silver, he set about evoking its identity and spirit with the stampwork.
Wings edged the bowl in a chased pattern comprising two separate stamps: a sunrise-like arc, smooth and clear save for the crescent outline; and inside each arc, a tiny round hoop. It’s imagery that is used to represent a variety of traditional symbologies, from the illuminating light of the rising sun to the placement of the hoop, life itself, within the gift of each new day to the similarly guiding motif of Eyes of Spirit. I suspect that all played in role in his choices, but I also think to the spirits that guided his hands, it’s no coincidence that they numbered exactly twelve in a larger hoop of their own: a cycle of the sun, a year of life upon this earth. At the center, he placed a tiny flowering medicine symbol, fitting by any and all of these interpretations . . . and fitting for what adorned the spoon’s handle.
At the end, as noted, was Eagle: the greatest and most powerful of the wingéd spirits, the one capable of flying closest to other worlds. He used a single tiny divot-end stamp to create the eye on its head, turned in profile with its giant fierce beak showing; a radiant sunrise symbol inverted upon its chest to separate the strong heart at the center of its body from its wings; and a series of score marks of varying lengths to outline the feathers of wings and tail.
Eagle complete, he turned his attention to the rest of the handle beneath that diamond-like geometry of its tip. For that, he chose an equally geometric motif, one representing a wingéd spirit at the other end of the size spectrum: Butterfly, delicate and fragile, yet holding in its wings all the transformative power of the spirits’ own messenger. He chased fourteen of them down the shaft’s length in a repeating pattern, all headed for the bowl . . . and for the flowering medicine at its center.
Which is, of course, the migratory pattern of their real-life counterparts, an annual journey in search of the sustenance and shelter found in warmer winds.
But that’s not all the butterflies do on their journey (nor the eagles, either). Spirit has granted all of us our relatives and ourselves alike, our own special tasks and areas of responsibility. And while the butterflies are here to feed in safety, they also work. Their task is pollination, of course, but it’s one that is absolutely vital to our world’s survival, and ours with it.
This year represents our first chance in the last four years at any sort of planting and growth, to say nothing of harvest. We need the work of the butterflies now more than ever. And in these times so terribly altered by colonialism, by its history and half-life and present, too, we need now to adapt in ways that magnify their contributions, and our own. We can learn a lot from our own traditional and historical arts, and from the path of summer’s wingéd spirits.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
