A friend of mine in Alaska sent me a few strips of birch bark recently. As soon as I pulled them from the box she shipped them in, I knew they were destined to be pieces of jewelry. Last week, I used a dash of birch bark in a necklace design! Pure, natural, organic, soulful magic.
This pendant features a hollow form sterling structure with birch bark set under resin on the surface. Dropping down from it is one of my sterling twirlygigs with an enameled feather in chartreuse. A bit of pearl appears on a silk cord as well as a wee hunk of coral.
It’s Northern Exposure.
Don’t it feel good?
There’s a chill in the air.
The nights grow longer in leaps and bounds and
up in the sky the northern lights comb neon fingers through the stars.
What does it mean to me, working with birch bark?
It brings me closer to the home I miss so much, my home in Canada, and more specifically, Northern Saskatchewan and the chain lakes and river systems that bury Precambrian shield in icy waters. There, along the shore, grow the jack pine and the birch. In such a silent place of deeply carpeted, dark forest, the birch tree brings lightness; lightness of being, lightness where there is so much dark. And in that light, that delicate filtering of sunlight down to forest floor, is hope, growth and green.
Can you see it?
I can.
xx
Plume
What does it mean to me, working with birch bark?
It brings me closer to the home I miss so much, my home in Canada, and more specifically, Northern Saskatchewan and the chain lakes and river systems that bury Precambrian shield in icy waters. There, along the shore, grow the jack pine and the birch. In such a silent place of deeply carpeted, dark forest, the birch tree brings lightness; lightness of being, lightness where there is so much dark. And in that light, that delicate filtering of sunlight down to forest floor, is hope, growth and green.
Can you see it?
I can.
xx
Plume
Ooohhh!!! I am so drawn to this. Nothing makes me homesick for Alberta like birch bark… *sigh*
Lovely work and words, as always.
Buffalo Luce, I feel the VERY same way about birch. I nearly cried when I opened the package from my friend…here's to home. May it always last and may we always return. xx
That's a beautiful piece of work, J!
I LOVE birch. On a shelf I have a great wide curl of birch bark I found on the ground near a tree. There's lots of birch here, especially in the mountains. I'm going to miss it when I move back to Maryland; will have to make many trips to New England to visit these beautiful trees.
x
D
I love birch bark because it is so lovely… xx
Ah, you are always so inspiring to me when I start to doubt myself as well as we all do as an artist, I just check out your blog, and then I am once again on the road to creativity. Thanks so much for being such a wonderful person and journalist, photograper in fact you are just a great all around artist lady very inspirational when we need it.
AHHH!!!! Birch lovers UNITE!!!
D: I image you WILL miss it. Be sure to take that giant curl home with you, if you can. It's a natural sculpture and deserves to be viewed in a home landscape!!!
MLJ: It is very pretty. Ripe with texture and color variance. Just lovely. About once a summer, whilst RW is out on a fire, he picks some and writes me a love letter on it…it's even lovelier then.
NAC: Oh you wonderful woman, thank you SO MUCH for this compliment and kindness. Sometimes I feel like I'm simply bobbing about in a wide ocean with no land in sight (whatever that means). xx
…YOU need to wear this one…for a very, very long time… XOXO