[sterling silver, 23 karat gold, lapis lazuli, quartz and vintage angel skin coral branch]
This one really fizzes. It is:
celebration
exploration
deep delving return to self
buoyancy
wild and leaping
serene cascades of light
moonlight through trees
illumination
imagination
the spirit of wild animals
the innocence of wild animals
the savage nature of wild animals
joy
folk art
folklore
a story
my story
scraping free of a hundred razor sharp heart moraines — piled high with the tailings of the violent shifts of dirty ices
gravity
momentum
sweetness
kindness
VOX
truth
the suddenness of knowing just what I am and where I am going
understanding who I have been
forgiveness (of self and others)
transformation
hope
belief
faith
grace
and always redemption
——————————————–
It’s a lot of other things too, but you’re a smart bunch and I don’t think I always need to spell everything out for you, plain as day. Part of the way you receive and comprehend the beauty of this world is rooted in creativity and imagination! That’s what makes pairing art with a human so special. Your bold interpretation welded to my personal experience and voice…your YOU melded with my ME…well…that’s magic and that’s what it is all about.
I had a good and thoughtful time making this piece. It’s been a while since I’ve created one of my large, narrative neckpieces. To return to an avenue of design that has always been a part of my work with metal felt like a little miracle these past few days. I can remember why I stepped away from it. I had my wings torn from my back, again and again. I’ll never forget why I have returned to it now. Never.
It’s all so true. Really.
Each day of my life is laced up tight with tiny failures and small victories. At the end of everything, when it all draws to a close, I hope the scale tips in the direction of victory and grace, for always.
I realize everything I have typed out here is wandering and perhaps even slightly cryptic. It’s not my goal to sound pretentiously mysterious in any way. Some things are so sensitive and delicate that they need sheltering and tenderness or they won’t make it through to the strength and power of full fruition.
Here’s the thing: In this work, there’s always time to start again. And again. I come around in wide arcs, I orbit that steady center, hear the still small voice and kneel down by the burning bush. I lose my way, ask for directions, struggle up hill, coast into valleys…and all the while I get a firmer grip on the very definition of humility.
I know you probably know just what I mean.
Thanks for being here today.
X
I wish I could think of something eloquent to say…but I just can’t right now.
So, Love. That’s all.
What you said is perfect enough.
X
it’s perfect <3
as is the musing for today~
WERE-CAT!
GUFFAWWWWW!!!!!
Miss you.
X
This is one of your most visually arresting pieces lately. It’s not just pretty, not exactly, although it is that; it draws and holds you. All the pieces are just so well placed.
And I love any reason for lapis lazuli. Any reason at all.
I agree on the topic of lapis lazuli.
Thanks for what you have to say about this one DRAWING and HOLDING you.
Music to my ears.
X
i love reading what you think aloud–
it all makes so much sense the way you process complex and often conflicting thoughts.
thanks for clearing a path today, for letting your creative fire burn the way through.
xx
J, Always a pleasure to have you near.
And gosh. Life is conflict. Isn’t it? Rising above it is elevation through comprehension…not an actual escape from the violent clash of things…know what I mean? I think you do.
X
So much beauty! So much going on. That necklace tells a story.
I know what you mean. You spell it out so clear.
Thank YOU.
xo
Oh man.
Love your love.
XX
insanely beautiful.
the moonlight-through-the-trees part hits me hard.
♥
Me too.
That part came together so nicely…almost like I planned it! HA HA!!!
XX
This is a piece to study, and to hang one’s thoughts onto. Love it. I know I have said it before but I will say it again that I love the math questions.
The necklace is adorable…I can just see people staring at the chest of the person wearing it trying to make the story. It has happened to me before with some of your necklaces. : )
xx
It’s full of small mysteries…isn’t it?
I actually REALLY like the math problems too! They activate a part of my brain I don’t use as frequently! It flips me out of my right brain…
It’s an attention getter. There will be staring, this is for certain.
XX
Stunning! Such an amazing piece. I notice something new each time I look at it. Well done you 😉 xx
I do too! And I made it!
🙂
Thanks, M.
XX
I have to keep coming back, to look, see, find another detail. Thank you for knowing how to render beauty from the elements. Thank you for saying, always, just the bit of wisdom I need to tilt the scale towards victory.
Ah yes.
That scale.
I’m glad you’re doing your best to push it towards victory.
Atta girl.
XX
Getting to start again is the beauty, isn’t it? I teach high school English, and while some may say I get to start anew each year, I believe that it is every day I get to begin again, and every day I see the reasons that I do what I do, despite the challenges and uphill battles that are such a part of it. And that’s just my professional life. My personal life? Well! (ha! 😉
Love, love, love your words and your art (and your words which are your art). I hope to some day soon own a piece to wear myself 🙂 xo
It surely is.
It’s not even the actual re-beginning that is exciting for me, it’s the realization that such a thing even exists! Woot, I say, WOOT!
Bless you for all your kindness.
XX
….and that is precisely why i have collected several of your large narrative pieces.
you have been part of my life for quite a while now, and so shall we continue….
[this piece is a lovely tribute to the summer winding down….to your moving onward into winter in pokey.]
xx
🙂
So we shall continue.
I think this is CERTAINLY one of the things this piece is…a tribute to the summer winding down. I’m glad you can see this in this necklace. Your eyes are wise.
XX
You gorgeous beast.
I love your honesty, your perseverance, your integrity.
Life is full of ups and downs. I have hit some of my lowest lows this past year, and felt so lifted up I thought I might never touch earth again. The struggle, coming up from those lows, is arduous and difficult. But those highs–they are the reward, that we must hold on to.
“Remember what it is to hold hands with May.” –Light Boxes by Shane Jones
Sending you love.
p.s. I was thinking of you last week and thinking, oh! It’s almost enamelling season! I wonder what she’ll make!
HA HA HA!!!!
Please, call me that from now on. The beast part is very apt.
I try. Friend. Boy howdy. I try to be those things. I know about some of your lowest lows. The thing about the lowest lows is that anything above the lowest low feels glorious and reaching. Doesn’t it? Any amount of light is brighter than pure darkness. That’s the truth.
I wonder what I’ll make too, once enameling season begins. I brought my kiln with me to the LCITW but haven’t used it once! I owe you a thousand emails, letters and packages. I’m working on it. Dutifully and with a full heart.
XX
Love your necklace, it’s an invitation to go on, to start again as you tell it so well. I wish i could better explain my feelings reading you and look at your beutifull work today. Sometimes and you don’t know why, little words came just on time. So thank you so much. We are all trying to find our way, each step count to create a life our life as cloose as our dreams, each choise count.” not only the goal is important, but the way we choose to reach it”.
Love AL
Beautiful words from you, AL.
Thanks for connecting with what I said in this post…sometimes things register in our hearts and minds and we can’t give words to the comprehension…but it’s there. Strong and full. I’m glad you felt that.
Have a beautiful day.
XX
oh, little org weaver, I love to see you do what you do best. tell those stories. from the mountaintops. woot!..xx
no math for me….learning disability!….he he!
You told me once that you thought my strongest work to be the large, narrative pieces that surface from time to time. I carry those words with me. They’ve been precious to me, since the first time I read them.
Thanks, friend, for always leading me on.
XX
Simply exquisite! I hope you’re keeping that for yourself, it’s YOU!
I’m not!
I’m parting with it!
I’m making myself an end of season piece though…before we move home.
XX
Stunning, gentle, whimsical, elegant, bold. It’s a contradiction and it works awesomely!! So beautiful – when I saw it I thought, that looks like ‘old school Jillian!’
I lost sleep recently over a design I’ve been mulling over, too. I finally saw my way through it on paper (after praying), and now I can’t wait to get to it!
What the heck keeps ripping off your wings?! You and your work are ALWAYS beyond fabulous!
Thank you E.
I’ve been doing a lot of design on paper work lately too…which is unusual for me. I rarely work directly off a sketch. But these past few weeks, I’ve been putting drawings straight into metal…it’s been a nice change.
A few things ripped my wings off repeatedly for a good long while. But now all of that is an old, worthless story in my life, but for the lessons learned…and I’m slowly becoming fully unfurled again. These wings are broad.
Love having you here.
X
ORB!…
how I dislike auto spellchecker~
HEE HEE HEE!
I knew what you meant!
Auto spellchecker is my nemesis.
X
I love the story going on this piece. It is mysterious, and your personal story, and allows those of us admiring your handy work and heart work to even make it a bit of our own story. The abundance and continuous birthing of Rabbit, leading us to the next cycle, a leaping, always forward. Lovely.
“…your personal story, and allows those of us admiring your handy work and heart work to even make it a bit of our own story.”
Well said! This is what I mean! I don’t want to tell you how to feel about something. I want the work to be strong enough on its own that it draws you in and creates, in your OWN mind, a story, a feeling, an interpretation, a meaningfulness that is unique to YOU. You should love a piece of art or a piece of jewelry because it means something to YOU, not because of what it means to ME.
Thank you so much for this comment!
And yes. The abundance of rabbit. 🙂
XX
Good Morning Beautiful!
I must say, I love reading your comment section. Your art in all of it’s forms seems to bring out the poets in your readers… Just beautiful.
I’ve been back to this post a few times this morning… just to look at this piece… lovely and stunning and at the same time somehow raw and open – in the very best sense of the words.
Have a fantastic day… I drove through the first snow of the season in my commute over the mountains. It was unexpected – for me and the wildlife. Range cattle stood in clumps in the roads staring around as if in a daze… looking for their cowboy to herd them down to lower elevations where winter has not yet touched. Although it is much too early for them to come down from the mountains… I suspect they will have a few weeks to wait.
J,
I know. I have the most exquisite, intelligent, soulful readership. A wild pack of poets. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to compile a collection of the most poetic and meaningful comments in my comment section over, say, just the past year? In a little chapbook? It would be a book of quotes…inspiring for certain…
I’ll have to think about that.
Sounds so beautiful where you are right now. This season is deeply meaningful for me. Is it for you too? I start to feel a bit crazy under the extreme magic of the transition into winter, it’s so sensory. I’m shot through with extreme moods, the woods smell like so much mingled life and death, autumn makes me feel terribly alive.
Love having you here,
little dreamer.
XX
Oh fall is my favoritest of favorite time of year. The smells! The colors! The temperatures! Summer’s grand farewell bidding us, pleading with us to remember her in her glory and to look forward to her return after her sojourn to the south.
quite beautiful, of course, as always, but the cobalt stalactites are particularly poignant somehow. like me, just a sliver of beauty dripping down from the highest ceiling, giving in to the pull of gravity in the most natural way. it’s the way of things. we’re pulled low, we hang from high places, we lose the things we never thought we could lose and we live through it. we gain color as we go. i know i don’t usually show up here, but i felt compelled to do so and thought i’d go ahead and follow that natural way of things. i’m drawn to you, you know. remember that night in my tiny apartment, the pizza and the chambord and the pineapple juice?
i do love you.
You’ll always be my favorite poet.
And you WILL make it.
I promise.
I love you back.
X
Thank you. Just thank you. So much.
(I’ll completely understand when that comment doesn’t make it to the book of eloquent comments.)
: )
Ha ha!!!
XX
because the hero in ourselves is always coming back. whenever, wherever we go, we can see that tower where lives everything we are, isn’t that true? it is our home.
forgot to say that it is a delicate and beautiful piece.
Thank you, darlin’. X
Woopsie…previous comment was meant for this piece. It just gave me a chance to devour the images of it over again…thank you! What a beautiful, mysterious, earthy & gorgeous creation! Definitely one of my faves! The coral dropping from the rabbit & the blue lazuli….llllllllovvvverrrrly!
One day, one day….I keep directing my sweet husband to your page. And my birthday is tomorrow! A girl can always dream, right. Your words & images make my days on many occasions. Many thanks for making my short time in front of the computer an exquisite experience on a regular basis.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
I hope you are spoiled and know that you are beloved.
Thank you for being here.
XX