Art and Life

Today's post is about rock art. Not the "Cover Of The Rolling Stone" kind (see obscure geezer musical reference HERE) where former high school class geeks scramble around on stage trying to be invisible; I mean the other kind where the art is ON the rocks. Like THIS: 

Medicine Wheel @ Palatki Ruin, near Sedona AZ
(photo © me: I tweaked it to emhance the image)

Somebody painted that symbol there many hundreds of years ago, under an overhanging cliff (so it's probably never gotten rained on), next to a deep crack in the rockface out in the Arizona desert. Why did they bother - to mix pigment from the rocks or the white clay at the nearest river, to bring charcoal there, to smoke something or meditate or do whatever they did to get in touch with what gave them the creative impulse? Must've been feeling really creative to manifest this image out of their heads and onto the rock, right?

Probably not. People who study this stuff think the white painting was done a few thousand years ago, maybe as a prayer for enough crops to feed the village that year. It's likely the artist(s) put it next to this crack because they thought the deepest fissures in the rock face go directly to the heart of the earth - the Creator - and that by putting it there this prayer or whatever it is would be heard. The black marks were added centuries later, possibly by someone in another clan or tribe, maybe to reactivate the power of the original mark; after all, they probably lived out in the desert also.

Probably. Likely. Maybe. Possibly. My point is, we just don't know why, or when, or by whom; we're all just guessing about that stuff from carbon dating, location, ruin site, climate, chemical analysis of pigments, etc. We DON'T KNOW - and we probably never will - why people made this art.

It does look, though, like it was more a part of daily life than art is today; now we tend to marvel at it as this Creative Endeavor or self-expressive Act or some big friggin' connection to The Infinite. Chances are very good that somebody made this image (and the hundreds and thousands of images within a few miles of it, looking like they depict animals and crops and spirits and the very Creation of the Universe):

Birth Panel at Palatki Ruin, © me
(see squatting Mother Earth at top right
of figures, birthing all the animals below:
you can make out elk, snake, deer, bear and birds).

because they needed something to help them and their families LIVE a while longer. It was needed in daily life; like putting gas in your car or cleaning a gutter or buying groceries. Centuries ago, experts think (yes, they're just guessing) the village shaman/artist wasn't some big-deal priest figure who lived in a big house or wore cool robes or held court when (s)he met with people; he/she was someone you saw when you needed something done, or had a sick kid or some other daily problem - kind of like getting a flat tire fixed. In fact, if the shaman thought (s)he was important, bad things could happen to him/her.

So, if the "Creative Act" wasn't so esteemed back then (read this Bradshaw Foundation review of a book that treats the topic; the book itself - which I have not yet read - by Ekkehart Malotki, is available HERE), then why is it a big deal now? Why don't we do it as part of our daily lives any more? We can hypothesize (read that as "guess") all we want about how it's deep in the human genome or comes from the core of our knowingness or whatever. In the end, same answer as above: we just - don't - know. But I do know that I AM trying to make it part of my daily, ongoing life. Because right now, at this point in my life, I just need to do that. Ponder it all you want; I don't know why.
*****************


Today's creation is a set of photos I did of some recent paintings by a very good friend, Anatoliy Khmara. He doesn't yet have a formal web presence, so for now they can be viewed HERE. It was the first shoot I've done of a series this size (65 images so far, with probably more to come), and it was fun though tedious for me to process them all. We shot them in place (many are framed behind glass, and HUGE - like maybe 4' X 6') at the (really cool) Colby Gallery in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. The shoot itself was a blast - except for the part about lugging a packed-carful of lights and stands and clamps and crap in and out from/to the street. And don't ask me why I did it (it was commercial work, after all); maybe to express some deep Longing of my Soul, maybe to spend several hours laughing with a good friend (we laughed a LOT), maybe to learn new ways to use some Photoshop tools, maybe to hang out in an art gallery, ... . I'm just guessing; I don't really know.
**************
NOTE: LEAVING COMMENTS: it should work okay now. Thanks for letting me know (please keep doing so) when stuff on this blog doesn't work the way you expect it to work.