The Jewelry of Silence?

Picture standing in a redwood grove, looking up at the play of light across the leaves. Deepest shadow dotted with flitting patches of brightest emerald green. Soft browns deep enough to fall into, and silent stillness, reverential and poised.

Imagine standing on my grandparent’s back porch on the plains of eastern Colorado, feeling the sunwarmed stucco at your back, watching a thunderstorm roll in silently from 50 miles away. The wind, loaded with the scent of water, blowing from beyond the horizon, and the awesome sweep of the clouds across the mountains.

Now how do you put that into a piece of jewelry??!!

That’s something I’ve been struggling with for years. There are some things that jewelry just can’t talk about, or can address only with great difficulty. I could probably paint a picture that’d talk about that redwood grove, or my childhood memories of watching storms blow across the plains. I could probably write about it well enough to convey the emotions. I think I just did, in point of fact.

But I’m not a painter or (much of) a writer. I’m a metalsmith.
How do you capture the sense of stillness from that redwood grove and put it in something to be worn on the body? How do you make silver that smells like electric rain?

What do you do when that’s what you want to talk about, and your medium is small 3-D objects?

I’ve found ways to talk about anger, and to make ironic comments.

How do you make jewelry about silence?