I was sipping Lord Bergamont and writing my morning pages today when I realized something:
Yesterday, while at the hospital having my regular blood draw for my thyroid tests, I realized why butterflies have been such a central theme in some of my pieces lately (continuing now with the cocoon series and the lycanidae series).  Never mind the obvious connotations we attach to butterflies regarding rebirth, transformation, transitions, seasons and the freedom of flight.  I think when I create these butterfly pieces, I feel they’re directly connected to the broken butterfly in my throat — my thyroid.  

Particularly, in the month of October, when I lay in bed unable to sleep, I could feel that butterfly shaped gland at the base of my throat flapping its wings, fighting for its life (funny enough, more of my thyroid died that month and my spirits were low…very low…).  I felt an otherwise quiet gland at the base of my throat, a gland so vital to the stable functioning of my entire body at cellular level, come alive and beat its wings.  Perhaps I have an active imagination, but one of my best friends who also suffers from a thyroid disease promises me that she too can sometimes feel her thyroid flapping its wings.

Either thyroids really do flap their wings — they are butterfly shaped — or we have attributed this movement to our thyroids in order to give motion and feeling to a part of our body that is ailing us and is otherwise silent.  It’s interesting, isn’t it?

At any rate, I think the butterflies I’m turning out are prayers and hopes for a healthy thyroid, for a healed thyroid, for balance in my body, my mind and my life.  For the time being, my thyroid is behaving like a ridiculous, handkerchiefed bandit, stealing tiny portions of my well being from me, piece by piece.  Perhaps, I’m not solely creating these pieces for the health of my body. Perhaps these pieces can be considered talismans,  protection and hope for the health of your body and a steady and suitable metabolic rate at a cellular level.  Always.
In keeping with this topic of butterflies, last week, my painted butterfly larvae arrived.  I’ll be hatching and raising butterflies!  I’ve never tried such an experiment before so hopefully I’ll be a relatively natural keeper of these critters.  I’m keen to hatch them and watch them unfold their delicate wings when they exit their carefully spun, silky chrysalis homes.  I hope the details of their life cycles will fuel my cocoon and lycanidae series.  I reckon, if I can keep a butterfly alive, surely there’s hope for my thyroid (though this hope is void of logic since there is hardly any rhyme or reason behind thyroid diseases).  

Periodically, my hands feel bound by the betrayals of my body.  I tend it so carefully and yet it continues to break.  Creating pieces of jewelry containing butterfly forms and raising authentic butterflies feels so symbolic to me in this moment.  I crave equilibrium, with regard to my thyroid.  It feels proactive to have butterflies in my life right now and central to some of my design series, as if these things encourage health in the small piece of me that is broken and continuing to break.

Fairly frequently, I find I cannot convey why I choose the forms in my design series.  There’s a rightness in my heart, mind and hands while I work, but my lips fall dumb and heavy when I try to give that rightness words.  Some say an artist should be able to mount a defense for the work of their hands, but I say, what if those audible reasons are locked up in the flesh and bones of our bodies.  What if the words I am able to give are a mere fraction, a dash of surface, a squint of reason behind some of the work I’m doing here.  What if I must keep those words locked up in heart chambers and bone marrow because releasing them leaves me too vulnerable, like a white tailed deer on open prairie with a coyote pack speckling a wind swept horizon.  These objects I’m turning out are tiny reflections, tiny slivers of glass that make up the mirror whole…it’s the living behind the work that holds the real meaning…if not being able to verbally convey the whys behind it all is part of that living (the silence of alabaster and the beating of heart) then I opine I’m doing just fine.

I hope this Tuesday holds only the best for you.
I hope you look down and say, “The work of my hands is good.”
I hope you get to keep some of your words just for yourself.
And most of all, I hope you are all whole and well.
x

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/04/12/962/

Catch You Up

Let me catch you up on some of the ditties I’ve been working on out in the studio.  I finished both neck pieces last week.  I didn’t have plans for them when I sat down at my work bench but I had some life details that needed expressing, an urge in my metacarpals to push and pull metal and there was a voice rising up in my throat like steam from a winter river.
Born Unlucky Neck Piece
[sterling, rough apatite, pink coral, red coral, 14 carat gold, sari silk, silk]

I just wanted to work, to flow, to not adhere myself to the notion of a project, the lines of a design or any materials selected and carefully laid out on a table top.  I detached my mind from my work while making this piece.  I thought about everything but a design plan.  I suppose this is stream of consciousness work, on my part.  I expect this neck piece was destined to flow out of me on the day I sat down to form it.  The general form of the metal work here suggests a horseshoe.
Luck.
I don’t really believe in luck.
I suppose that means I was born unlucky.
How about you?
Cocoon Neck Piece No.2
[sterling, copper, enamel, pink coral, silk, sari silk]

This is the second installment in the Cocoon Series.  I’ve been spending hours on these neck pieces, humming and hawing over where to connect tear panels, where to hang other components from, how I want the tear cages to sit on the breast bone…I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time.  I don’t rush myself.  I slowly work through a piece, not finishing quickly, not quitting before the design feels finished…sometimes I simply sit and turn components over and over in my hands.  I wanted this cocoon to hang from brambles, as the first did, but this time,  I wanted a three dimensional bramble form.  I made the three tear panels you see here, forged and formed them into curves and then connected them into the quasi-sphere that hangs the cocoon.  The actual tear panels suggest, to me, wing bones — if butterflies actually had a bone structure to their wings instead of overlapping layers of chitin.  

It rides high and light on the chest,
like a good secret,
like a second set of lungs in tune with all the rising and falling of the body that wears it.
There is only absence of the hatched butterfly in this piece, the hole in the cocoon where one might imagine the butterfly crawled out, the suggestion of existence reflected in the airy structure the cocoon hangs from.  
Suggestions.  
Suggestions.  
Suggestions of freedom, flight and a second life stage.

It’s currently displayed on one of the walls in the house.  It makes gorgeous small sculpture wall art.

I also made these for you:
Glitz Ring
[imperial jasper & sterling]
Glitz Ring
[Queensland agate & sterling]

 I never tire of this design….not ever.
I mentioned on Flickr, the other day, that I’ve been making Glitz Rings since February 16, 2010
and I still love this design and feel like these rings are such apt reflections of my life lived and my life loved.
I’m going to keep making them until the sun permanently sets.
They’ll be in the shop at 12 noon today, MST time.

Good Tuesday (woah, I had to research what day it is) to you all!
Strong wings today, my sisters and brothers.  
Catch the updrafts.
Let the wind do the work.
x