Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces. The Silverwork.

SOLD.

Welcome to Wings's online silverwork exhibition from his recent one-man show, Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces.

Below, you will find photos of each piece that was included in the exhibit.

Originally, we planned to use Wings's own locked jewelry cases at the venue to ensure an attractive and secure display. To that end, we inserted small cards into lucite holders to be placed between the various silverwork pieces. Silverwork items were coordinated in groups according to their relationship to the show's theme and subsidiary narratives. The cards provided background into Wings's artistic vision in creating them and the relationship the pieces bear to the imagery in the photographs, as well as information on materials used and pricing. 

Upon arrival, we found that they had readied the locked and lit case built into the beautiful coffee bar, where George R.R. Martin normally displays his Westeros collectors' coins. It was an elegant solution, and displayed the some-forty separate pieces perfectly. However, it meant that no room remained for the cards, so we simply tagged the items and created a corresponding inventory list for the staff containing the information on the materials used and the price of each piece.

The photographs of the silverwork pieces include the original interpretive text associated each group, where applicable. Because the silverwork prices vary along a spectrum of some $1,200, costs of shipping, handling, and insurance will likewise vary by item and are not included here.

Finally, there are two silverwork pieces that will not appear here. They were originally intended for the show, but not for sale: They were exhibit gifts for our hosts, the venue owners. Wings did not get photographs of the two pieces before giving them; if the time comes that he is able to do so, I will post them here.

For now, come with us, and let us walk with you through this special collection of Wings's silverwork. 

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STORIES

Sterling silver triangle-wire cuff:  

$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Our very culture rests on a foundation of stories: stories of mud and straw brick; stories of how we came to be upon this land and what our task is here. I try to capture these stories in the ancient symbols and patterns that those who came before us left as a record on our surfaces and spaces, to bring their stories and lessons to life. Sometimes it’s the sacred peaks and waters so wholly a part of our collective being; sometimes it’s the thunderheads that bring the rain and allow life to blossom in the desert; sometimes it’s the sacred hoop of life, reminding us that there is no beginning and no end. Sometimes it’s large symbolism writ small and personal: the rain’s abundance; the protection of a  life lived under the eye of Spirit; the need for balance in all things; a reminder that the path will be neither easy nor unbroken, but we will travel it with purpose.

Sterling silver triangle-wire cuff:  

$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver triangle-wire cuff:  

$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver anticlastic finger cuff:  

$255 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver wide-band ring:

$245 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver narrow-band ring:

$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver narrow-band ring:

$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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SUSTENANCE

Sterling silver and onyx pendant on onyx and turquoise beads:  

$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance

The Three Sisters, corn, beans, and squash, were gifts of the spirits to sustain the People. But the spirits also provide sustenance in other ways. The Corn Maidens are sustenance personified: They bring gifts of rain, and food, and with them, abundance.

The Corn Maidens, of course, are female kachinas, and as enigmatic and mysterious as any archetypal Woman. Some 20 years ago, to honor their nurturing power and essential mystery, I launched a series I entitled The Mona Lisa on the Rio Grande. Each necklace is a unique personification of our Spirits of the Sacred Feminine, embodied in a single gemstone set into the traditional kachina headdress made of sterling silver.

Sterling silver and onyx pendant on onyx and turquoise beads, reverse:  

$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and onyx anticlastic cuff:  

$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and onyx cuff:  

$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and Royston turquoise on rough-cut turquoise beads:  

$825 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD.

Sterling silver and Stone Mountain turquoise cuff:  

$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sustenance is also personified by another female spirit: Grandmother Turtle, who comes with the waters that give us life and who in some traditions supports this world on her shell. Occasionally, a piece begins as one vision and ends as another, and so it is with this concha-style barrette. Concha is the Spanish word for shell, and the stampwork indeed resembles tiny shells. But once the pick was added, this piece manifested itself as a much larger shell, that of Grandmother Turtle.

Sterling silver barrette with twisted-wire pick:  

$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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MUD AND VIGAS

Sterling silver ajouré Pueblo cuff:

$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance

SOLD.

For more than a decade, I’ve paid tribute to the mud and vigas that make up our homes with a series of Pueblo pins modeled on Hlauuma (North House), where I was born:  the adobe walls and open windows, the hand-made pine vigas and traditional ladders, all manifested in sterling silver. Here, I’ve extended that design into a larger, more complex piece that embodies the interconnectedness of our homes and lives, coupled with a sterling silver rendering of the traditional pine ladder that allows us every day to emerge, renewed, into the light.

Sterling silver pine-ladder necklace:

$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver ajouré Pueblo cuff (underside; inner band):

$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD.

Sterling silver and smoky blue turquoise ajouré Pueblo pin:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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CORNERSTONE

Sterling silver, Royston turquoise, and coral pendant on antique silver beads:

$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
RESERVED.

It is easy to forget that a wall, a home, a structure, a society endures only through the strength of the cornerstone that serves as its foundation. So it is with our people: The public face is male, but the underlying strength and support, the cornerstones, are the women.

Honoring women guides much of my work. Hearts are a common motif: Feminine, nurturing, and incredibly powerful, they pump the lifeblood through the body and sustain it with love. Fiery accents of spiny oyster shell and brilliant red coral, essential woman’s “stones,” couple with the male Skystone to create a vibrant whole. 

Sterling silver, Royston turquoise, and coral pendant on antique silver beads (reverse):

$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver, Sleeping Beauty turquoise, and spiny oyster shell earrings:

$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance

I created the first in my signature series of pins, the Warrior Woman, as a gift for my mother fifteen years ago, to honor her courage, strength, and heart in her battle with diabetes. She is now with Spirit, and in her memory I continue to create others, each unique, and each to honor the strength and bravery of women.

Sterling silver and gaspeite Warrior Woman pin:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and moonstone Warrior Woman pin:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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INTERSTICES

Sterling silver, snowflake obsidian, and garnet cuff:

$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance

I have said that, as contemporary Native people, we live and thrive in the interstices between two worlds. Likewise, Spirit mediates between our worlds in the interstices, in those shadowy regions inhabited by the elemental powers, where we are afforded an occasional glimpse but are not admitted entry. It is there that Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, bringing them to life in our world, their full strength and power yet held back, so that if we are careful, we may use their gifts rather than be consumed by them.

Sterling silver and snowflake obsidian ring:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and garnet triangle-wire cuff:

$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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THRESHOLD

Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and Sleeping Beauty turquoise cuff:

$1,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance

We face thresholds every day between sacred spaces and modern places: Some cross them; some of us do not. But there is another threshold in the other direction, between our contemporary existence and ways much older than memory, and it is in our dreams and in the old stories that we are given the choice to cross them, to learn from the spirits, to embrace the old ways that are the foundation of our people. In indigenous cultures cross the continent, Spider Woman and Serpent play roles as gatekeepers at such thresholds. Today, we still use the gift of Grandmother Spider’s web to protect our dreams, while Serpent reminds us that all power must be handled carefully.

Sterling silver and antique natural spiderweb turquoise ring:

$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD.

Sterling silver repoussé earrings:

$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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THE REAL SACRED SPACE

Sterling silver and lapis lazuli cuff:

$775 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Today, we have no choice but to walk in two worlds. But the second world has been imposed on us from without, by a culture not our own, and our people have endured by steadfastly maintaining our connection to our own world and to the real sacred space of our traditions. This sacred space is a tangible place, such as our Blue Lake; it is a spiritual space, where the Water Bird flies; it is the intangible space between earth and water and sky and all the blessings of the spirits in between; it is the space that lives forever in our hearts and spirits and ancestral memory. My art sets magical stones amidst mystical symbols, to capture these sacred spaces in all their infinite variation. 

Sterling silver and lapis lazuli ring:

$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and lapis lazuli earrings:

$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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BRICKS

Sterling silver stamped ingot necklace on sterling silver chain:

$295 + shipping, handling, and insurance

As our homes are built from the traditional bricks our ancestors used, so, too, my art is built on the time-honored methods used by my father and his father before him. To honor this tradition, I sometimes create silverwork in the old way, hammering ingot from melted sterling silver. These vintage-style pieces follow the natural flow of the silver, then are given form and shape with hand-stamped accents reflecting my own time and place in our world. It’s another way I express our existential evolution and endurance.  

Sterling silver stamped ingot necklace on sterling silver chain (reverse):

$295 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver ingot overlay necklace on white deerhide thong (front and reverse):

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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INGRESS/EGRESS

Sterling silver and lapis lazuli Spirit Horse pin:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

As our pine ladders provide us ingress and egress into the safety of our homes and sacred spaces, so, too, do our dreams provide us ingress and egress into the spirit world.  Dreams have always guided my art and given it form and shape. 

When not creating art, I rescue, raise, and train horses. One night many years ago, a silver horse came to me in a dream, running, mane and tail flowing behind him. He took tangible form as my signature series, the Spirit Horse made manifest in sterling silver: each unique, each with its own power, yet each faithful to the image of the powerful animal spirit who visited me in the night so long ago.

Sterling silver and coral Spirit Horse pin, Florentine finish:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

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EMERGENCE

Sterling silver and rose quartz wide floral-stamped bangle:

$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver, hematite, and amber smooth-wire bangle:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and tiger's eye floral-stamped bangle:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and malachite faceted-wire bangle:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver and tiger's eye diamond-pattern bangle:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and garnet braided-wire bangle:

$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance

Every day, when we ascend the ladder into the light, we enact again our emergence, how we came to be upon this beautiful earth. Our emergence, midwifed by the spirits of earth and sky, and by the spirits of the waters, who bless and protect us to this day.

Every day, we arise into the gifts of this world. On our best days, we do so bearing gifts of thanks in return.


A note from Wings: Originally, I had intended that two additional pieces would be shown here to accompany the Emergence theme.These pieces were not for sale; they were gifts for our hosts, the owners of the venue. I did not have a chance to take photos of them before they were delivered. If I am able to do so at a later date, I will add those images here.

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All photos copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.  All text copyright Wings and Ajijaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.  None of this content may be used without the express written consent of the owner.