We’ve been looking at perspective this week: slope, gradient, angle, arc; the lines and edges of peaks and valleys and roads and detours and all the spaces in between. We frequently conceive of them as hard-edged things, and, indeed, that’s often not far (or at all) off the mark; one’s vantage point, the angle at which one is able to approach a given task, has the capacity to make life very difficult indeed.
But however much any vantage point or worldview seems razor’s-edged and crystal-clear, chances are, it’s really not. Life is full of soft and misty grays, of drifting curves, of the ebb and flow of context and circumstance. It’s often less a road than a river: not so much a single path branching off into detours unwelcome or unwise, but a the rapids of a living current, an artery from which smaller veins snake outward to explore life and to give it, only to return back to the main flow yet again.
It’s the symbolism that gave today’s featured work its name. In a place where water is life, the motif of river as artery, carrying the earth’s own lifeblood, is particularly apt. From the piece’s description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Tributaries C uff Bracelet
Like the shining silver ribbons of the Quartzite and the Red River tributaries as they feed into the rapids of the Rio Grande, this solid sterling silver cuff of hand-rolled triangle wire parts one line into three and then merges them into again into a single flowing line. The band is simple and spare, with no stampwork or other ornamentation; milling has flattened either side into smooth silken ribbons that rise in the center to meet in a graceful peaked wave. Florentine finish. Another view shown above.
Sterling silver
$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is a work created the old way, rolled and milled and wrought by hand, carefully given form and shape. Its spare, unadorned elegance harks back to ancient styles, when technology’s limits ensured that the focus was on the spirit of the silver itself , and the symbolism that inspirited the form summoned from the metal’s essence.
It’s also a perfect symbol for our own peoples, when now a majority no longer live on lands explicitly designated as tribal (although every square inch remains indigenous). Fewer are born on reservations; most of us leave our ancestral homes and live among the rest of the world for at least a time; some live their entire lives in urban or suburban areas. And yet . . . .
However much our essential selves are tied to the lands of our ancestors, it is in our hearts that the lifeblood of our peoples pumps most strongly, in our spirits that our existences find their fullest expression of life itself. It is that heart, that spirit, that is the river, and we may drift outward periodically, sometimes purposefully, but those tributaries always carry our spirits home.
~ 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 owners.
