To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes
That Elizabethan story seems somehow apropos for recent days… Here is our mountain, Tahoma, several mornings ago in one of those hats which she sometimes wears as Our Lady of the Sunrise…
Chapeaux & scarves, necklaces of mist & halos of linticular clouds, lifting in vertical series above her, all can be parts of her drag in our daily views of her from Soundcliff… when she isn’t hiding altogether for weeks behind her foggy dressing screen. Is she having bad hair days? Or is she off visiting her sister Shasta for tea? I do suspect she travels in some manner, being volcanic at root. But what a cosmic white horse that mount might be!
All those nursery rhyme bells & rings suit my version of this story to accessorize her further. I love playing jeweler in a mythology of her court! I am working on both ring designs & bells at present… One is the original wax study of the ROCKING HORSE BELL which is currently already in production as a smaller version. This older, too large wax has been sitting on my desk for several years beckoning with a certain elan which the production version lacks.
Its original deep purple color has faded to a faint translucent blue in the sunlight… It was beginning to crack. It has often wished to be saved into metal, if for no other than archival reasons, like a drawing. Even for that degree of preservation it needed some repair & further resolution, so I’ve enjoyed following the impulse to pick it up again this week.
Each year as I begin the design process I go into a box of waxes, put away during the clean-up for Open Studio, which did not reach completion during the last season. These come out again on the desk to stimulate new consideration. Often designs have joined this lineup for several years before finding enough fullness of attention & maturity to become part of the production line. Some, like this horse, are studies or preliminary stages. This wax seems to have retained some deeper values, even as it has another version already in production.
This original carving was always a bit too big for wearability, but it has a wonderful aspect of “toy-ness” to it… rocking quite nicely! I recall an era when I was working with a play therapist who turned me on to the notion of archetypes which is so important to my thinking ever since. I discovered Jungian validation for an old habit of playing, well into high school, in the sandpile on the farm, making architectural models when some of my uncles believed I ought to be working in the fields. I discovered my own version of farming as I made arrangements in sand trays with toys & objects from the therapist’s collection about which he would later make lively analysis.
I love playing in the real with objects which have aspects of importance for holding deeper idea. Sacred play. Important toys. This bell wax seems to have taken on some of those values, so I find energy to bring it along with more attention toward casting.
I have fallen in love with this wax all over again, as I must in order to do such intimate work.
Perhaps this view of the translucency in the faded wax, contrasting to the new dark wax additions will defend my emotion. I am reminded of the term the Chinese use to describe one color range in jade carvings… muttonfat. All this light filled quality will shift after casting into the weight & surface reflection of silver… literally lost in translation.
Enjoying this moment seems indeed to be its own sort of aesthetically important sacred play…
