An Opal Valentine to a Volcano

I spent a great amount of time last week traipsing around land that was rich with wonder and beauty, built on the backs of the Cascade mountains, renowned and cursed with beauty that is born of strife:

Volcanic Beauty.

Hillsides and piles of trees like matchsticks tossed about by a child with wildflowers peeking out, the growth of thirty years' time at Mount St. Helens.

57 people perished when the North side of the mountain blew first outward and then upward in a spectacular show of the earth's might.

Nothing I can write about this mountain could ever express the way I feel... she is forever carried in my heart, along with the pictures and stories of terror and rebirth, a living Durga for the Pacific Northwest.

So smitten was I that as soon as my feet landed in the studio I got to work, diligently working out a design:

my requirements:

an organic representation of a cone in brass, with elements of both flat and round

Sterling granules to represent lava and pyroclastic flows

And on the inside, a Mexican fire opal of such wondrous red with a rainbow of moving light inside,

the earth itself.

This piece will be in the Metal shop this evening, along with the four custom orders.

It is a size 7.75 and can not be resized.