High Country Light

I have just paid fourteen dollars for a watermelon, and am trying to spin the expense as a personal victory. It's not going well, but I do feel that I have made a strong statement about the value I put on watermelon. 

There is no doubt it is an extraordinary sum to charge for a seedless, organic melon (can something be organic if it is genetically altered?) However it is far from the only extraordinary thing about this town. There is a poster I have just seen walking around the square in Jackson Hole, WY that punctuates the essence of the area. It is titled "Teton Light" and really gets to the heart of the matter. The light here is very special indeed.  It is nearly impossible not to notice the very distinctive shades of purple that creep into the shade of the evening hours as far different from the light yellows of the morning light on the mountains. I have always been very sensitive to the tenor of light in the places I travel to and how the subtlety can greatly effect ones perception of the place.

Jewelry also depends on light, and more specifically singular light to be great. A special piece of jewelry must look like no other, and that means creating a complicit relationship with light to express its beauty. There are some stones like Kashmir sapphires that capture light. The Kashmir stone has microscopic inclusions called rutile needles that diffuse entering light and make the stone look like it glows from within, as opposed to reflecting the sun. Yet, there are many other stones that do not have this special silk to change ones perception of a stones color and beauty. It is the jewelry designers' job to phrase stones in a way as to create a deeper appreciation of its beauty. There is a ring that has received quite a bit of attention this trip,. It is called the pool ring and from the day I made it has been a favorite of the jewelry freaks I call my friends. I will include an image of it above.  The ring is a green beryl stone that has been faceted in a very random manner and had the facet junctions polished off so that the edges of the facets are soft. What this does is take that hard angle and reflection out of the stone. What I wanted was blurry light that resembles the light on the bottom of the pool on a sunny day. Soft and blurry but with great movement. It worked. And as I grow with the ring I like it better all the time. It's not so austere, and a special kind of feminine, to me.

I often think of  the place I was when the ring was designed; in the pool, of course. I have spent time each of the last few days photographing an area called Swan Valley in the early morning as well as evening, endeavoring to document the nature of the light there. The Snake River flows slowly through the foot of the mountain range and creates an atmosphere I consider extraordinary. Somehow, somewhere I will find a stone or pearl that echoes something about this special light and place. Getting a permanent document of the tenor of the place in a piece of jewelry is the challenge for me, me real-life treasure hunt. Therefore, selling the piece is often bitter sweet.  The hope remains that the person who one day owns the piece thinks of the piece as extension of where they bought it, who they bought it with and the feelings they had buying it. Memories are the one thing they cannot take away.