The Story of Mandala
I didn’t know what a mandala was until my sister Beatriz taught me. She had tried to explain what they were before we visited The Rubin Museum in New York soon after it opened, but I just didn’t understand. I have to confess, after seeing dozens of exquisite examples on that beautiful fall afternoon at the museum, I still had no idea.
Every winter Beatriz would create a mandala at my parent’s vacation home near Key West. My mother would donate the surplus from her sand collection, each from a different beach or desert around the world, gifted by friends on their travels or collected by her.
It was amazing to see how my sister would weave their colors to construct a new mandala every year. Upon completion, it lasted only a few hours or days, as the sand would slowly disperse with the breeze.
I'm really proud of this design, I think my sister would have loved it too.
Chakra Mandala
It wasn’t until I read about mandalas that I could begin to understand their meaning. To me, a mandala is a representation, a representation of the universe in its totality, a universe that can include the world around us (the cosmos), or just be our self (the person).
My Chakra Mandala rings are “inner” mandalas that represent the person. Each ring includes the seven colors of chakra, an ancient framework for recognizing the energies in a woman’s body, extending radially and allowing the wearer to progress through each chakra as prayers to a rosary.
My Favorite Parts of this Ring
I think I didn’t really understand what a mandala was until I designed this ring. As I designed it, I continuously tried to make it more and more complex, I wanted to include more, and to not be simple. I kept adding layer upon layer to it, until I saw it not as a set of layers, but as a whole.
That is why this ring is a mandala. With all of the complexity of the universe, with its myriad paths and energies, it is a whole, and that is where its beauty is found. Without every layer, it would not be complete.