I made a pronghorn ring yesterday.  You probably don’t remember but I worked with a similar motif 3 or 4 years ago.  I don’t know what made me suddenly return to it.  I simply sat down in my studio and said to myself, it’s an antelope kind of day, I think!

I’ve been slowly turning over my personal jewelry collection, selling bits and pieces, giving things to friends and family.  It makes me really happy to give my work away, to see an old piece I never wore much gain a new life with someone who cherishes it fully.  More than anything, I like to see the ladies of my life wearing my work.  It gives me a sense of closeness to them, to see something my hands made on their fingers, ears or around their neck.  I don’t know if they have a similar sense when they wear my work, maybe they don’t feel anything at all when they wear it, but it really does mean the world to me to be kept so close to them, to literally have echoes of my own pulse worn closely against their own.

I kept one of my original pronghorn skull rings until perhaps 6 months ago when I parted with it and sent it to a friend.  I reckon, if I miss a piece of jewelry enough, I can always make myself a new one…but I rarely do.  Once these things have left my hands, I generally feel the design has moved past me and out into the ethers.  However, I might make myself a new pronghorn ring.  For me, they are one of the ultimate and unmistakable symbols of the interior West.  When I see the pronghorn in the sage, all the scattered parts of me feel a sense of home.

To see the antelope is to be home.