[Succession :: Kinnikinnick Ring :: sterling silver & chalcedony :: for the burned heart that is regenerating]

I like to visit the burned forests.
The trees stand on end
backcombed by righteous flame
twisted and crumpled by furious fists of lightning
rows upon rows of black poles issuing silent screams.

The quiet is stacked in every direction
like dominoes.
I step on a twig and the world around me flickers
waggles
and collapses under the strain of sound waves.
A robin sings and I am startled.
Echos run for miles in
thick
unobstructed pulses.
It is surreal.

I like the burned forests.
I like the unburned forests, too, but for different reasons.
Both are tremendously alive, even though a burned area can seem just the opposite.
A forest fire brings renewal, eliminates blights, frees conifers to grow the next generations of forests because with the heat, comes release and a flood of nutrients: As I walk, I think I hear the earth hum.

Renewal and regrowth come in successionary tiers,
building, quite literally, in new and greater heights as a forest establishes itself
again after ruin and plight.
The first thing to grow abundant and rich grows at ground level.
The sweet carpets of the forest floor that dig in, with relish, root tip by root tip, and bring the first stability to a wilderness area made fecund by fire: mosses, grasses, kinnikinnick, mushrooms, wildflowers, rose, alder, willow…and so on and so forth until the fir and pine tower once more.

Up from the ashes
come green on green on green.

When I look at a burned forest I see so much promise and hope and probably a metaphor for the human heart which is also such a delicately magnificent thing of strength and beauty. A thing capable of so much growth and regeneration, even after the fiercest burning flames. If a forest can do it, rise up from heartbreak and pain, I can too. And so I do.

Begin small, like the forest, and go from there.

[Succession :: In The Soil Unseen Necklace :: sterling silver & pearl]

Sterling silver & a super old stock cut of rugged Arizona turquoise:  for girls who like to leave a mark.

[Ruth Necklace & Rings :: sterling silver & 23 karat gold]

[Sketching Spring Necklace :: sterling silver, 23 karat gold, copper & enamel]

Have I told you about how much fun it is to make the flower skeleton elements for these pieces?  The vision behind the flower bones is that beautiful, loose, sketchy look of charcoal on heavy art paper.  Know what I mean?  Anyway, I keep the structure of them and the fabrication of them as loose and easy as possible so that they almost look like real charcoal drawings, at least, in my minds eye they do.  A few days ago, I made a flower skeleton that turned out a touch too perfect looking.  I took it all apart and loosened the lines up a little to give it that “raggedy-end-of-winter-bristled-by-breeze-backcombed-sun-bleached-and-trampled-by-deer” look I was going for.  This necklace was a whim and it turned out better than expected.  I am charmed.  Again, there’s the lovely contrast of warm and cool colors here paired with a sort of lightness of being in the elements that build it.  This piece is a tunnel for a warm breeze, a thin cluster of thicket that allows wind sail and storm careen, the bony dust of last summer clinging to the riffles of the rocks, moon glow and aspen groan.

I’m thinking about keeping it for myself.  I haven’t kept a necklace in a good long while.