Weeks like this are difficult: time bound by circumstance, every moment circumscribed by factors neither of one’s making nor within one’s control. Digging out from under two feet of snow now rapidly hardening into ice in this bitter cold, and it feels as though our worldview is limited mostly to white, touched here and there with mud brown, and lit bright enough by the sun’s glare to blind mere mortal eyes.
In the still severely-curtailed hours that constitute daylight, it’s hard to hold onto a sense of reality, of a world well-rounded and full.
It is, perhaps, why I’ve reached for the raptors this week. It seems counterintuitive, from these spirits of the skies, but the great birds ground me, help me find my place again in this world. They remind me that while in recent days, we’ve barely had time to look up, this world remains waiting for us. It will be here — earth and sky, winds and storm, sun and moon and stars — indeed, is here, even when its existence is lost on our small and simple sensibilities.
And they have come to visit, sometimes only for the briefest of moments, but they show themselves: the kestrel whose name my grandfather bore; the two red-tails whose land this also is, and whose task it seems to be to guard it, and us.
And so for today’s featured work, there was really only one possibility for this day, a day now rapidly fading into night, a day vanished beneath the weight of tasks that have kept us both preoccupied from one moment to the next. It is one of Wings’s pieces that invokes the powers of the raptors, and of the night skies over which they preside. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Constellation Necklace
The hawk’s eye sees Mother Earth from the height of the stars: a sweeping panoramic view in 360 degrees. Occasionally, her spirit shares a part of that view with us in visions and dreams. Here, that visionary spirit rests in a hand-scalloped bezel, embraced front and back by a constellation of guiding stars formed up in a sacred number. On the reverse, an ajouré star allows her translucent blue eye, the color of darkening sky, to rest against the body. The pendant, wholly Native in its imagery, hangs suspended from a multi-strand necklace of cut-glass African beads in the colors of the stone, two indigenous cultures from opposite sides of the earth linked by a bail of flowering petals. Beads 22 inches long; pendant 2.5 inches long (including bail) by 2-1/8″ wide; cabochon 1″ across (all dimensions approximate). African beads by Kenyan artisans in support of hospital and education programs on Lamu Island. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; hawk’s eye; cut glass African beads
$1,250 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is one of my favorites among his current works, for so many reasons: the powerful bird its stone represents, the spirits of the night sky that light our way. But with this particular piece, there is another reason, too, one that grounds me in a different way.
It’s explained by the penultimate sentence in the description: It incorporates beadwork from half a world away, beadwork that we purchased to help a brilliant young restaurateur in Santa Fe send funds to his home island, where education and medical assistance are much needed. On the rare trips that we make to Santa Fe to deliver an order or to pick up supplies, we eat at his restaurant to support his work, and now that he has opened a boutique, we patronize it as we’re able as well.
In the fuss and flurry of everyday life, it’s easy to forget that we have other responsibilities, obligations to the wider world, as well. Sometimes, it is our brothers and sisters on the other side of Mother Earth, in faraway lands that we will never see, who need our assistance. Sometimes, it is they who aid us, whether they know it or not.
On the back of this piece, Wings excised the metal in the shape of the Morning Star that accents the work, front and back, allowing the stone to touch the skin. It feels like a way of bringing Hawk’s view of the world, fuller and more rounded than any we will ever see, home to one’s own soul. When the days are yet short and the nights long, when our paths are only dimly lit by stars so far away, it’s a reminder the world is there for us, waiting.
~ 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.
