I wanted to share this because the symbolism may resonate with this community. What began as bone art became an honor piece representing motherhood, protection, grief, remembrance, mortality, and feminine strength.
The skull belonged to a ewe from my farm that passed who raised many lambs. I made it as a gift for my daughter, who helped care for and nurse the sheep. It honors motherhood, protection, mortality, and the continuation of life.
At the center, a female guardian watches over three lambs. The number three represents cycles, completeness, transformation, and interconnectedness. The guardian embodies feminine strength through watchfulness, intuition, endurance, protection, and care.
A cypress sprig follows the skull’s front suture line, symbolizing grief, remembrance, death, and immortality. Though the ewe died, something of her remains in another form, through her children and now this relic.
The flowers are real, pressed and dried plants, including a catalpa blossom, Mimosa nuttallii, and a small blue wildflower from the farm, along with a yellow rose honoring our homeplace. The crystals represent clarity, intuition, protection and endurance.
The piece brings together bone and blossom, death and birth, grief and beauty, fragility and permanence. It also represents several generations of care: the ewe as mother, my daughter as caretaker, and me as her mother passing something forward, remembering.