"[Rock art] is the common heritage of humanity."
- Nelson Mandela (1918-2013),
President of South Africa,
Peace Activist, Apartheid Reformer
Rock Art: The Meanings and Myths Behind Ancient Ruins in the Southwest and Beyond (2018, Green) (p.36)
In my art and creative process, I have been markedly influenced by ancient rock wall art - paintings, carvings, and even imprints and scratchings - commonly called petroglyphs and petrographs, or pictorials and glyphs.
Ancient Symbolism and Mythology
Pictorials are profound examples of ancient symbology and art forms which have been uncovered on both hard and mud-caked cave walls, in towering desert canyons, and on seemingly innocuous stones in the middle of fields, for at least 200 millennia... All across the world, these signs feature candid primary shapes, and stark linear and circular markings. And often, figures, humans, and animals who seem to stand apart in austerity, or otherwise engage in a contest, or display some potent power.
These markings, at first glance, might appear to be only random scratches on a random canvas... Or, at some distinctive best, the first attempts of a primal people to create 'a likeness' of what has been seen or sensed in their world... At second glance, there appears to be something... more.
Perhaps, a language?
Or, old concepts linked with new ones?
Or, breath, a face, or a hand?
Perhaps, the creator was also a hunter, or a cook?
Or, a mother, sister, or grandson? Or, a neighbor?
Or a shaman, or a fire-keeper?
Or, a storyteller?
Or, an artist?
Anthropologists have deduced that pictorials mark the evolutionary step of human societies profoundly developing written language and the use of a symbolic framework, and also the practice of heritage mythology. Presumably, like us, our ancestors were inclined to use symbols and mythology to complement or even antagonize their more common cultural practices. Anthropologists have theorized how pictorials were used actively, even in more primitive societies, and most likely served many inherent purposes - such as, mapping, storytelling, calendar keeping, education, pedagogy, spirituality, profession, specialization, common governance, and of course, for written records.
Alas, we can only assume so much about the artists themselves. And only so much about these ancient societies or the many individuals responsible for passing on the descriptions and mythologies.
I often wonder how these societies first described these bare, primary shapes, and how that description grew or diminished over time... I find myself yearning to hear their stories, or to catch a glimpse of their surely meticulous intentions with these symbologies in their "sapient"(wise), courageous, and experienced daily living...
What I find indeed inspiring, instead of even greater certainty about our ancestors and their creative spark, is the repeated form. I am inspired by how the repetition of basic shapes can communicate and even convince the observer of an intention or an inherency, such as meaning and connection, or direction and bearing.
As I sit with these patterns, the repetitiveness relates some meaningfulness profoundly equal to the ancient description or 'interpretation' for the primary shapes themselves - just, in merit.
Fifteen circles, for example, describes some frequency of occurence, and eight crosses some frequency of another occurence, or six stars, or three mountain peaks, other frequencies... And, a single circle, cross, star, or mountain, a singular frequency...
The deeper interpretation may be lost, but the repetitiveness still speaks to the exigent languages of effectuality and potential.
Somehow, somewhere, maybe only in the dust and the wind, or in the shadows behind the trees, we might imagine the common language, written or oral, and the culture from which such profound communication originated.
Vision and the Imaginary
I have developed a three-fold creative approach with using the bare primary shapes to pattern my ceramic art. First, as they might be used suggestively as "realism", second as "abstraction", and third as a "mythology". This approach connects my creative process to the ancient history of the symbology it draws from, and imitates. This connection feels immense and powerful as it extends between my present day, and the days of my ancestors 40,000 years ago, or 18,000 years ago, or 8,000 years ago.
- Exempli gratia -
- the Realism -
The sun is round. The mountain is peaked. A path marks a line. The leaf, palm or jaw are rhomboid or squared. The stars, animal herds, and leaves on a tree, cluster. Sparks from a fire rise into the sky, and ashes fall. A creature's profile is marked by divisions of light and punctuated space. A birds-eye-view shrinks perspective and it also typifies forms by frequency and collection.
- the Abstraction -
A hashtag represents the crossing of paths. A cross abstracts the navigator's horizon. A star reflects the continuum of experience expressed as a passageway, hatch, door, or portal of the heavens. A series of expanding circles describes emanation. Segmentation relates division and continuum. A spiral narrates the inherent instrument of life's continuously creative composition and balance within the departure and return of time.
- the Mythic Framework -
As the green in the leaves and the white in the clouds peek and peer between the sun's long rays of light, morning turns to day, day turns to night, and night turns to morning. The seasons continue to cycle, the trees put forth their seeds, the sunlight warms the air, and the stars mark an eternal map across the horizon. The four-legged creatures on the ground make noise in their labors, and the winged creatures in the sky sing, cry, and take pause to the great silence. The whole world cycles in and out, and back and forth upon the great spiral of birth, renewal, death, and rebirth. As the Earth spins around, and around, all the world continues on, and on.
Creative Process
I am often "captured", in a sense, as I pattern my ceramic vessels with these designs, and afterward again while I look at them. I usually expect observers to be similarly "captured", in their senses.
What at first may present as complex patterning or intricate design work will, after only a little consideration, be revealed as bare, dedicated repetitiveness of primary shapes. As well as some base "arrangement" to accent the primary and secondary curves or angles of the vessel. I also compose "arrangements" of color similarly - but in addition to accent the patterns, or to calm and even offset this perceived complexity of the patterning.
Consider a landscape scene:
Twenty suns or celestial fires passing between twenty towering mountains. A lake reflecting the scenery. Fire at the peak of the hill. Figures, birds, or stars dis/appearing in the distance.
This scene easily sheds its grandest presentation and the observer encounters the descriptiveness of repeated bare primary shapes.
Triangles settled between circles. The repeating pattern is split by a horizontal line which divides and replicates the same pattern only in the reverse. Small dots are poised at the peripheries and accent the silhouettes of the primary shapes. Horizontally, each section segments the vessel, some in thirds, others in tenths, twelfths, or sixteenths.
But, perhaps there is something more? A story, or a legend?
As time departs and returns, and departs and returns again, the navigator ascends and descends twenty towering peaks, resting beneath twenty celestial fires. When night falls, the navigator lights a campfire which sends sparks soaring up above the twenty mountain peaks and sends ashes falling down into the twenty valleys below. As the twenty suns bow beneath the horizon, the twenty valleys' winged hunters soar around, and around, and over the dividing lake. The winged hunters maneuver the last reflected light and snatch up a fish for dinner.
I feel humbled by this particular interplay between realism and abstraction because it has not simply been imagined by me, but also by an exigency shared between the world.
In either sense, realist or abstract, and after a jaunt with a myth, I inevitably depart and return to the simplicity of the symbolism. I think of our ancestors, and, I picture their glyphs in my minds-eye. As the depths of the mystery percolate, I acknowledge the profound meaning and relevance in the unitary expression of the symbolism. I acknowledge how their use of such stark simplicity was intentional and conceived from and for interpretation and understanding.
I find profound value in how the simplicity presents as the extant expressions of what had been perceived, felt, and sensed in exigency, by these particular people and cultures, within their shared natural world...
I also avoid degrading mental exercises, which fail to look further than how the simplicity might instead represent some premature lifestyle, or the primitive consciousness living "apart-from-reality" or "apart-from-abstraction" - perhaps, as if we stood before nothing more than disfigured creations, or a unintelligent people's "superficial obedience" or "mere naivety"...
I like to consider instead, how these are the first examples of the birth of civilization. And how the earliest humans, our ancestors, lived extraordinary lives filled with bravery, vitality, awe, and achievement... And, how everything we are today, shares those same origins. And, even how biologically speaking our brain capacity is startlingly unchanged from our earlier relatives...
Moreover, surely these ancient cultures also perceived appreciable differences between the realism of the world around them, and the abstraction of the symbologies they created.
This discernment, as a matter of course, would have begged answers, or at least quandaries of some fundamental provinces of life, and of subjects as complex as animation, creation, resolution, and source.
Alas, separated by time and space from this distinguished era in human history, my vessels remain humbled only by their forms. Though, I like to think that my vessels might beg some exigent questions, in our time, too.
Texture and Form as Experience
As an artist, I derive a lot of inspiration from the tactile nature of many petroglyphs - the matter of etchings carved into stone. The observer can connect to, and interact with the markings using several senses. She can choose her light source, pressure, and distance. She can listen to the sound her fingertips make passing over the surfaces. She can feel moisture on the rock face brought in by the pressure system of that day's weather, and how her fingers tingle in the sunlight or in shade.
She can listen to the echoes in the chamber that formed the ancient canvas, or to the wind passing through the grass growing around the stones, which has been regenerating for thousands of years. From each and all these sensory impressions, she develops her thinking or feelings about the ancient depictions of primary shapes - lines, hashtags, circles, triangles, squares, spirals, nicks.
When I create a texture on a vessel, I imagine the various environments where it may be handled and observed. I imagine how the light source, distance or air around the vessel and the observer might influence or alter the experience. I imagine what the observer might find relatable between their vessel and their environment.
I also consider how the textured surface might affect the user's experience in carrying it between locations... Before human societies developed any technology to craft smooth wood floors, flat pavement, or soft woven rugs, our ancestors textured the outsides of vessels to assist in their being carried across locations.
When I carry a textured vessel, I usually find that some of the weight has been lifted from my shoulders, that the carvings take some of the charge from my duty to transport.
I wonder what any of our ancestors might feel, or think, or believe, were they transported with their vessel to our present location... And, what they might make of a decorated planter, or a blue and orange bowl for chocolate and ice-cream...
I am convinced that whatever wakened such primary and pedagogical ambition in our ancestors beside those rock walls, still wakens in our lives, today. It is in our homes, grounds, and professional work, in the words we use, in the smiles we give, in the love we share, in the food we prepare, in the water we filter, and in the art we create.
PICTORIALS & GLYPHS
EA STUDIO
Small Studio Ceramic Art & Design
01. HEMISPHERE SCULPTURE, PICTORIAL SERIES
PICTORIALS AND GLYPHS
BOOK