This ring is Ready to Ship and will leave the studio in 3 - 5 business days. It is a size 9 and can not be resized before leaving our studio. These photos are of the exact ring/stone you will be receiving.

If you purchase this item with any other jewel, please be aware that our jewelry is handmade to order and takes approximately 6-8 weeks to create before shipping, meaning your Ready to Ship jewel will ship with the rest of your order. This cuts down on multiple shipping costs for you, and unnecessary waste for the environment.

Framed in lichen composed of delicate cast bat bones, an faceted oval onyx represents the hollow of a tree. When going on walks in the woods, or even around the city, I like to think of the hollows of trees as liminal places, caverns of rest or repositories of memory: memory of the tree, of the land, of the animals and other creatures that use them as hides or storage. As a talismanic vessel, this ring represents a hollow you can carry, a place of rest, a hiding place for thoughts, feelings, ideas, or for times when you need to tuck yourself away.

The smooth surface of the center stone can behave as needed as a ‘worry stone’, in contrast to the highly tactile setting.

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the painting ‘Dryad’ by Andrew Wyeth after coming across it at a recent visit to the Brandywine museum. A giant tree painted in muted shades of egg tempura fills up the composition ~ a winter tree, leafless. What dominates the eye and drew me to it from across the room like an eerie magnet was a large dark hollow. It felt alive in the way that certain paintings can be to me, & perhaps to you too. As I read the title card, I discovered how Wyeth had originally painted a figure in the hollow and then decided against it, painting over it in dark washes, that when looking closer, I could faintly see. There was something about this ghostly figure & this painting that feels tethered to every hollow feeling I’ve had lately, of every feeling of wanting to be inside this hollow, or the hollow of the oak tree near the lake where I leave roses for my grandmother & watch the bats weave through its branches at dusk, or the hollows of the trees on walks in MN that are truly only small enough for the birds.

This collection is for that feeling, a heavy heart in search of a place to rest amongst the lichen and churning earth, the trees that open up to make room. The “bat lichen” made in honor of the dusk bats near where I lost a loved one and a part of myself I’ll never see again, & where grief has taken root so firmly within me I often feel as if I’m speaking another language, and sometimes unable to speak at all, just quietly dreaming in the hollow.

Bats:

Bats and their cast wing and leg bones have long been a component I’ve used in my visual library as a way of creating a personal visual language. As nocturnal creatures, I feel a kinship with their natural predilection for the night time hours, but I’m also interested in how they use sonar to ‘see’, how as a metaphor bats as liminal creatures also remind us to look closer with our other senses, a way of ‘seeing the unseen.’ It’s my hope and intention that pairing them with other chthonic imagery and myth further adds to the visual meaning I’m aiming for, creating a collage of personal ideas while also tethering these physical jeweled objects to the spirit of the bat ( and other natural objects in the case of other jewels in my collection ) and to the spirit of the myths I’m invoking.