Petroglyph Rubbings as Primitive Art

Also on this page:
• Section on Shipping (Wrinkles, Ironing), and How to Mount/Stretch
• Publications
• More Art for Sale
• Modern Petroglyph Replicas

“Primitive” means “first”, and these images are the largest body of prehistoric imagery from the Pacific Northwest, dating back a few thousand years at the least. Elsewhere [A Gallery of NW Petroglyphs] I have begun work on a more scholarly text regarding the meaning of the various designs, here excerpted in part. They are a unique window into the worldview of the first peoples to come to this part of North America. I am hoping to help finance the eventual publication of a book on Northwest Coast rock art through the sale of some of the rubbings I have made over a number of years of fieldwork, and also donate a portion of the proceeds to a local Indian cultural center. I have a few more rubbings from different rock art sites, and may offer them for sale as well if this website experiment works out. Making a rubbing is a recording technique which results in an image that can be used for scientific illustrations. Although there are sites where making rubbings should not be done, the rubbings shown here are from sites with very durable metamorphics, granites and basalts, and have not harmed the original petroglyphs. Colored wax is rubbed onto the surface of cotton cloth, and later set into the cloth by ironing the back. I have used a variety of colors, mostly earth tones and some blues and greens. These are difficult to photograph; here I have taken more than one photo of many of these rubbings, and also include a photograph of stretched rubbings to show how the wrinkles on the unstretched rubbings will mostly disappear when stretched on stretcher frames.

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HUNTING SCENE (Interior Salish)

The two dogs and the spears or arrows protruding from the back and neck of the mountain sheep indicate that this petroglyph may be an example of hunting magic. The schematic “stick figure” style of these carvings are dramatically different from the larger, more curvilinear petroglyphs found on the coast.

Cloth: muslin, 25” x 19”/65 cm x 50 cm, color dark blue
$100.00

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MOUNTAIN SHEEP (Sahaptin)

A common design in the intermontain west, this mountain sheep is a good example of a naturalistic style petroglyph from the Columbia Plateau. Sheep petroglyphs are believed in many cases to have been made as part of ritual preparations intented to ensure a successful hunt. This image is from a site on the banks of the Columbia River east of The Dalles which is now inundated. A number of the petroglyphs were removed to a location above the reservoir formed by the dam but many more are under water.

Cloth: muslin, 20” x 20”/52cm x 50cm, color oxblood/burgundy
$80.00

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FACES AND SPEAKING IMAGE (Lushootseed Salish)

This site features the largest group of petroglyphs in Puget Sound. The central composition appears to represent a face and shoulders, possibly with something emerging from its mouth, with arms extending down to two lower face designs. Is this a chief giving a speech, or merely a "family portrait"? Other designs on the panel, faces, eyes, and circles, seem to have been added later, with less attention to placement and design integration. What appears to be an unfinished design located in the upper left part of the panel might possibly represent a salmon, but if so, one that will forever remain just a tantalizing hint of what was in the mind of the artist. Although faces are by far the most common motif at sites in the Puget Sound Basin, it is interesting to note the similarity of a face petroglyph located at a site near Waglisla (Bella Bella). Similar face designs are found as far north as Kodiak Island. Perhaps the most significant feature of this impressive site however, is its overall structure; the central portion of the panel as described above is clearly not a hodge-podge, randomly created group of faces, but a well organized design indicating a greater artistic or conceptual complexity than found at other sites in Puget Sound. The massive scale of the carvings at this site and the similarity of designs with the most common and widely distributed design to be found on the Northwest Coast would seem to support the possibility that this site may have been originally begun quite a few thousand years ago. The area along the base of the panel has been polished by wave action moving beach gravel.

Cloth: approximately 6 oz., 96” x 58”/244 cm x 148 cm, color dark brown
$500.00

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FACES (Hartstene Island, Lushootseed Salish)

The large boulder with these face designs was located on the foreshore on the west side of Hartstene Island near a large shell midden until 1964 when it was moved to Tumwater Falls Park in Tumwater. Besides these non-outlined faces, the boulder also has some Plateau style animal images, an outlined face, and what appear to be footprints or tracks.

Cloth: approximately 6 oz., 37” x 35”/94 cm x 89 cm, color dark blue
$100.00

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FACE (xalelos, halelos, or haleets, probably Suquamish)

This site features a group of faces typical of Lushootseed (Puget) Salish rock art, although non-outlined faces are even more common in the southern Puget Sound sub-style area. The face image on the far right appears to have some kind of headgear, possibly representing headbands or hats of cedarbark. The name “haleets” (xalelos) means “marked face” according to Snyder (1968).

Cloth: muslin, 24” x 20”/61cm x 51cm, color dark brown
$80.00

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LIGHTNING SNAKE (Makah/Ozette)

The "lightning snake" or hahektoak of Makah myth is closely associated with the thunderbird. When the thunderbird would become hungry, he would throw the lightning snake at a whale, and then carry the harpooned prey off into the mountains to be eaten. There is a thunderbird petroglyph at the same site, and at Ozette’s “wedding rocks” site there is a whale with a small lightning snake inside it. According to McClure (1979) the lightning snake may represent the power of the whaler harpooning whales.

Cloth: muslin, 49” x 41”/124cm x 104cm, color dark blue
$200.00

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STARRY FLOUNDER (Halkomelem Salish)

This design is a good example of the curvilinear style of many Northwest Coast petroglyphs, and probably represents a starry flounder because of the distinctive banding patterns on the edges of the design. It may have been carved in an attempt to increase the catch of some prehistoric fisherman. One rather unusual image at this site appears to be comprised of a face above a body which also represents a starry flounder. Found at a site where numerous spirit helper images occur, perhaps these designs are an artist's depiction of a spirit helpers which brought success in fishing for bottom fish.

Cloth: approximately 6 oz., 31” x 24”/79cm x 61cm, color dark green
$100.00

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SKAMICHANS (Halkomelem Salish)

Based on their similarity to carved designs of mythical fishers (skamichan) on some Coast Salish spindle whorls, I believe these petroglyphs represent skamichan. A member of the mustelid family, the skamichan was a spirit helper of a shaman which was used for ritual purification.

Cloth: approximately 6 oz., 68” x 51”/174cm x 131cm, color light and dark brown 2-tone
$800.00

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SKLALIKUM (Halkomelem Salish)

A sklalikum is a spirit helper. There are numerous carvings of such mythical and fantastically shaped beings at a number of sites on southern Vancouver Island. This being’s turned up nose is a characteristic shared with a number of other animal profile designs in the area.

Cloth: the green rubbing is about 6 oz., 49” x 39 ½”/ 125 cm x 100cm

The blue rubbing is a bit lighter but a tighter weave, and with a little extra cloth horizontally, 54 ½” x 39 ½” / 139 cm x 100 cm, price for either rubbing
$200.00

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MYTHICAL BEING/ ANTHROPOMORPH (Kitkiata Tsimshian)

This petroglyph is one of many that are located near a winter village site on a boulder strewn beach. The intertidal beach commanded a good view of any canoes that might approach the village. One explanation of why these petroglyphs were made is that some are the product of “doodling” by guards posted there to watch for raiding war parties. I like to think that even if so, this “mermaid” design may represent some character in a tribal myth. I spent about two weeks mapping and documenting the designs at this site, working the tides much the same as a clam digger. There are over 200 boulders with petroglyphs scattered along approximately 750 meters of shoreline, all illustrated in Leen (1985b).

Cloth: 10 ½ oz. double fill, 24” x 33”/61cm x 85cm, color oxblood/burgundy
$200.00

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ORCA (Kitimaat)

This whale image is found on a fin shaped rock, which has small cupules (pits) pecked into the “fin” end of the rock. There is some sort of significance of dots on the fins of killer whale designs according to Holm (1983) who states that this design motif “is said to be a characteristic of certain supernatural whales.” Another hypothesis proposed regarding this site involves the association of orcas with salmon runs, thus involving the concept of seasonality. This petroglyph boulder, like many others, is under water during high tides.

Cloth: 10 ½ oz. double fill, 19” x 16”/50cm x 42cm, color oxblood/burgundy
$150.00

(for more information on some of these petroglyph designs, click here)

SECTION ON SHIPPING (WRINKLES, IRONING), HOW TO MOUNT/STRETCH

N.B. As indicated in the photos, these rubbings have some wrinkles. I took the photos with glancing light to give the best representation of the cloth surface and color. I notice that at certain magnifications there seems to be a moire pattern; this can be mostly negated on your computer screen by changing the size of the image. They can be ironed (on the back) in any event, and stretching on artist’s stretcher frames will remove all but the most intractable creases. One should expect some creasing in shipment, needless to say. These are all rubbings that I made in the course of various rock art documentation projects, mostly before 1985.

Publications

The Rock Art of Western Washington (& New Discoveries)
by Daniel Leen

Description and illustration of all Coast Salish rock art in Washington State. Data and illustrations of previously undocumented Makah sites are also included, as well as a discussion of site distribution, style boundaries, and chronology. If you are not a scholar of rock art, and don’t live in western Washington, you might find this rather dry reading. It is however, the only complete source on southern Coast Salish rock art. About 60 pp., Stapled binding, Xeroxed, $15.00.

More Art for Sale

These are a few other things that I occasionally make and sell. None of them are limited editions, but most of them are a bit of a hassle and as a consequence there won’t be many of them made. The (modern) petroglyphs can be considered as original works of art. Some of these can take a bit of time to make, so again, I encourage you to send me an email regarding time of delivery. For the heavier items I may have to add on a bit for shipping as well. For the cast boxes and frog bowls I can do custom color combinations.

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Cast Bronze Box

6 ¾” x 6 ¾” x 3 3/8”
Sand cast bronze with a hardwood top and bottom, the corners are bent (and rebrazed where they do not survive the bending) with the fourth corner also brazed. These are heavy but I expect they will last a long time.
$600.00

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Cast Acrylic Box

7 1/4" x 7 1/4" x 4"
The same material as the jewelry; much harder to cast in bigger sections. The corners are chamfered and glued, the top and bottoms are whatever wood I can reasonably acquire, rubbed with linseed oil.
$500.00

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Cast Acrylic Frog Bowl

5" x 2 5/8” x 1”
These are cast from the yew wood carving I did a few years back. These are available in the same range of color combinations as the jewelry.
$100.00

Rain cycle

This piece was carved in walnut, approximately 18” x 22”, and was inspired by a carved door by Bill Reid featuring waves and fishes that I greatly admire.
$1000.00

Modern Petroglyph Replicas

While teaching a rock art field school in eastern Oregon, I had some of my students do petroglyph replication projects. We learned what kind of hammerstones worked best, the approximate time to execute various groove depths and designs, how the structure of the parent rock affected the results, and other aspects of how prehistoric stone art was probably made. Some of the conclusions reached by my students are that the coastal sandstones and greywackes are easiest to work, that the basalt and hematite beach cobbles make the best hammerstones, and that the basalt columns of the Columbia Plateau are a very difficult rock "canvas" to execute petroglyphs on.

Interestingly, granite boulders, while seeming hard and durable, are much easier to execute petroglyphs in than basalt. While such replication studies are an important tool for understanding prehistoric rock art, please don't make modern rock art at or near any prehistoric site. I have found that one can make quite passable modern petroglyphs in one's back yard on portable boulders. These will weather into a respectably ancient appearance in a few years of rainy northwest weather. Casting replicas in fiberglass resin is a much more complex process, but can yield a result which looks like a real rock and yet be displayed on an interior wall as fine art.

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Modern Petroglyph

Longest dimension 27”, from sandstone from western Oregon, this is about 15 years old at present and weathered nicely to fit into a landscaped yard or garden. In the style of northwest coast petroglyphs.
$4000.00

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Cast Petroglyph

Longest dimension 26”, actually hand laid in a fiberglass mold, this is then retouched with an enamel wash to simulate the lack of repatination as seen east of the mountains. The design is based on a Shoshone petroglyph from eastern Oregon. These have hangers laid into the back so they can be hung on an interior wall.
$600.00

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Steel Fish 1

Length approx. 48”, this is cut from ¼” steel based on the pattern of a Tsimshian salmon amulet from northern British Columbia. These look nice in the garden or yard.
$1000.00

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Steel Fish 2

This is cut from ½” steel, length approx. 48”. I usually add a gill slit, but this one I did not. It is similar to one in a local golf course; I like to think of the sound of golf balls hitting it.
$1200.00