birds

And also from the seed series,

a bird seed!

[100% sterling construction, 14 karat gold, enameled seed constructed by me and fired by me in my kiln:::i love being able to say that something is 100% handcrafted by me]

This little enameled seed managed to grow a delicate vine and then a patchwork bird with a golden wingtip.

Today I set out to continue work on the seed series and a magnificent whim or two carried me in beautiful new directions. One result is this necklace. The other results are half finished on my studio workbench.

One of the best things about my job is for the most part, I always feel free to follow those whims. They can be trusted in and they nearly always lead me into delightful new territory where the sun shines just so and the dapples on the forest floor light up the shadowed spaces with a kind of persuasion that falls outside the wavy boundaries of my naturalist vocabulary. Of course, I add the knew knowledge to the fecund foundations of my right lobe, I sketch a quick mental picture in my bulging hippocampus and if I’m especially moved, I translate the experience into metal.

I suppose that’s the point of all of this.

Translating.

I want to break those experiences down and share the vocabulary I’ve collected.

If I do the job well, there will be an organic verve to the finished product. You’ll be able to tell I gleaned the concept from the cheat grasses, the underside of rocks, the sound of birds on the wing. And then, if the translation pricks something in your heart and mind and soul, you’ll claim it as your own and carry that translation around on your body. You’ll interact with me in this way. You’ll take something that is mine and adopt it as your own. And some day when you give that piece of us to a daughter or niece or sister or friend, she’ll carry us both and the translation and definition of a design inspired by the natural world.

Piece of me.

You.

The world around us.

Emotions, lessons, frail beauty, strong winds: tethered tight to constructions of metal and stone.

Art is tremendously interesting, in this way.

In fact, I’m fascinated by the thought of how connected I am to you because of what parts of me you carry with you. Do you ever think of that? I do. When I’m swinging a hammer I can’t help but wonder who will carry the newest piece of me and how the experience will translate when carried by someone new.

This is a seed.

These are all seeds.

I’m glad to watch them grow.

The Littlest Birds Sing The Prettiest Songs

Sunday was a day of discovery at The Gables.

I found myself working for hours and hours in my studio, completing old ideas, satin finishing projects I dug up from the depths of my workbench and when my work was finally through I tied shoes on my feet and flew up to the hills.

A steady stride carried me up through the sage, past hillsides of hip-tall Midas grasses, past the Russian olive grove, through the cool damp of the maples and the white limbs of the aspen, over one spring creek and then the next and then high enough that it was only the junipers and I aloft on down valley drafts and the heady scent of scaled leaves in the spring sunlight amidst stubborn patches of snow. I tried to watch the ground as I ran but my eyes were drawn up, time and time again, to the tree tips laced with Idaho blue, which is exactly where I was looking when I found this.

It took an easy climb and the quick snap of a branch to retrieve it. It fit in my palm so well, it was as though it was slip cast from my hand. Inside, the detritus of last year. Small, disintegrating grey turds and a pair of matched leaves; weathered and crisp. It was otherwise empty. A small grey abandoned house, slightly aslant in the wind, timbers hanging on by mere threads. (And in the corner of the bedroom a sun bleached nightgown fluttering on a hook.)

Who, in this world, takes the time to build a home of sticks, grasses and spit anymore, but for the birds? They keep our hope buoyant on their matchstick legs. Bright eyed. Beak clacking. Wings folded in prayer. Complex songs and offerings on their tongues, weaving melodies and warbles like women at looms. Balancing the world on their flight feathers, diving in the breeze and stalling in the gales. And at night, heads under wings and a soft coo to anyone who will hear.

And then in the garden, nestled between two tulips, memento mori, free of the stench of death, cobwebbed and crusted with dirt. The smallest skull with a perfect beak but a throat song long evaporated into the living landscapes of Idaho.

Translucent in the sun.

Creatively designed.

Placed there by the tides of time and the provident hands of God for me to discover and thoughtfully turn over and over again in my fingertips.

Birds of the past,

I wonder what wings my way in the future.

Bird Seed

The Littlest Birds Sing The Prettiest Songs