{"id":353,"date":"2014-03-06T16:07:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T21:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/?p=353"},"modified":"2014-03-06T16:07:04","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T21:07:04","slug":"petroglyphs-ancient-language-sacred-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/?p=353","title":{"rendered":"Petroglyphs, Ancient Language \/ Sacred Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Throwback Thursday! <\/p>\n

Here’s a favorite piece from my past. I made this one while apprenticing at The Blue Door Clay Studio in 2000. I was completely influenced to copy the image from the book I’d been reading – a book called Petroglyphs, Ancient Language \/ Sacred Art, by Sabra Moore.<\/p>\n

Moore is an artist who decided to copy the petroglyphs and pictographs from the cave walls and rocks and make a book out it. These ancient works of art exist all over North America. She made this book as a way to preserve the art seeing as time, erosion and vandalism are threatening these ancient works.<\/p>\n

Moore says: “The creation of this monumental art were from the 500 Indian Nations inhabiting this continent for the past 30,000 years. Their descendants are here today.” <\/p>\n

As I myself was researching the book to make this post I noticed that all of the cave drawings that I copied onto pottery were from the back of the book in a section called Northwest Coast\/Arctic and Subarctic. I was very much attracted to the kind of art that has likely subliminally influenced me living here in Canada.<\/p>\n

Leafing through the book I see images that I copied, or thought about copying, and I count six images in total, so there are possibly four or five pieces in this style somewhere out there. I sold them to pottery lovers in Winnipeg. This one, pictured below, I decided to keep. I don’t know if I can ever make one like this again. It requires a dry shino glaze in a gas kiln and I have been firing electric since coming east in 2002.<\/p>\n

I recall making a large oval platter that was sold in a gallery in Osborne Village, and a few other pieces though I can’t recall what they were. Platters? Tall vessels? Perhaps. I only remember drawing on the leather hard clay with a dull pencil. And I recall not being able to fit all of the figures from the drawings in the book onto the pieces I was making in the studio. Drawing is not my strong suit. <\/p>\n

\"lizard<\/a><\/p>\n

That was the case with this piece. Only one serpent fit on the vessel. It’s from page 145 of the book, and the illustration shows two serpents.<\/p>\n

“The Kwakiutl Sisiutl is a double faced serpent with a snout like the sea snakes at Nanaimo Petroglyph Park. Sisutl can transform himself from sky into lightning, from fish into canoe. Like Quetzalcoatl, he can be both bird and reptile. A sailor on the Columbia witnessed a monstrous reptile emerging from the water near Clayoquot in 1791. ‘The Indians knew all about it and described it as a long creature with a huge mouth and teeth; in every other respect like a serpent. They called it Haietlik and said it was very scarce.'”<\/p>\n

And so like the serpent in Clayoquot, these cave drawing pieces of mine are just as scarce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Throwback Thursday! Here’s a favorite piece from my past. I made this one while apprenticing at The Blue Door Clay Studio in 2000. I was completely influenced to copy the image from the book I’d been reading – a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lmserafin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}