This week’s color is called Music.

As I worked on these pieces, I kept thinking about the way certain songs attach themselves permanently to moments in our lives. A song comes on and suddenly you are somewhere else entirely, returned to a particular summer, a particular room, a particular version of yourself.

I think jewelry can carry memory that way too.

A necklace worn every day through a certain season. Earrings bought on a trip to Maine. A bracelet that catches your eye years later and brings an entire chapter of life rushing back. The Music collection grew out of that feeling, shifting through deep blue, violet, and silver like memory itself moving through changing light.

This past Friday it was all I could do to stay inside, so I didn’t. Rather than dutifully checking off the items on my ever-present to-do list, I puttered, moving from task to task as I was drawn to them. And it was the perfect day to put on the screen doors.

The first slam of a screen door every spring feels like a season announcing itself.

And somehow that sound carried me straight back to college, to cassette tapes, open windows, and the first time Bruce Springsteen entered my life. 

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Working on this week’s color sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole about the relationship between music and color. For centuries artists, composers, and scientists have experimented with assigning colors to musical notes and creating visual interpretations of sound. Some people even experience music as color naturally, a phenomenon called synesthesia.

The more I read about it, the more it felt surprisingly familiar. So much of the way I work already revolves around rhythm, layering, harmony, contrast, repetition, and emotional tone.

This week’s color, Music, grew from thinking about the way songs attach themselves to memory, but now I’ve found myself wondering what it might look like to build an actual garden inspired by a piece of music. Not symbolically, but structurally. Notes becoming colors. Rhythm becoming repetition and movement through plants and space. A chorus appearing as drifts of bloom. Seasonal changes unfolding like movements in a song.

Honestly, this idea may have just lodged itself permanently into my brain.

Island Notes

Spring is arriving in layers here now.

The island is turning greener every day. The peepers are loud enough to hear through the walls at night. The red-wing blackbirds are back, and my backyard is now home to a pair of Merlins. The gardens are beginning to wake up for real.

And in between cutting glass, photographing jewelry, and continuing the great kitchen adventure, I’ve been trying to spend as much time outside as possible because this season moves fast here. One day it feels like winter still has a grip on everything and the next the whole island seems to exhale at once.

I hope wherever you are, your own season is beginning to shift toward something lighter too.

As always, thank you for being here, for following along with these color stories, and for allowing this little island business to travel far beyond the shores of Vinalhaven.

→ Explore This Week’s Color Drop: Music

Peace,
Alison

WindHorse Arts store and studio are on stolen land of the Wabanaki people, a place currently recognized as Vinalhaven, Maine, nestled in the serene beauty of Penobscot’s Bay. I am grateful to steward this sacred land, honoring its deep roots and rich histories.

Handmade in Vinalhaven, Maine

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