Second Pictograph

My second experiment features my host’s current rig, a Toyota Tacoma. I employed a few more painting tricks on this image, like highlights and reflections. To confound future archaeologists I used the most exotic colors in my palette, a mix of cadmium reds. Not local color by any means.

Pictographs

Most of the rimrock stone here in Ingomar is not suitable for the carving I like best. It is soft, and more conducive to pictographs. I saw Barrier Canyon pictographs in Utah that are 2000-3000 years old, so pictographs on sand rock *can* be archival. The Ancients though had the benefit of a hundred generations to figure out what are the good spots for painting. My study of the subject suggests that south facing overhangs, preferably very tall overhangs, are the best. The petroglyphs that I found near Musselshell were on south facing sandrock faces. The oldest faces seem to have a redish hue to them, the Montana version of desert varnish. I re-canvassed the rimrock where I am working and found a few south facing rocks with a slightly redish hue and set to making experiments.

Here is the first sand rock pictograph I’ve made. I asked my host what his favorite vehicle was of the many that he has owned. He said, “Oh, probably the 1982 Ford Courier.” It has 270,000 miles and had required almost no work over the years. His kids all drove it to school, and now his wife drives it to work everyday.

I carved with a sharp stone the outline and painted the body of the truck. Hard to say how it will last…

Story in the Telluride Watch Newspaper about Kevin Sudeith’s Petroglyphs

Marta Tarbull wrote a story about the two petroglyph panels I carved in July in Telluride, Co.

Sudeith’s fascination with petroglyphs began as a boy, canoeing in the Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, which soon led to his discovery of “pictographs of moose and canoes and Xs” painted into the rocks along the lakes, all carefully recorded in a journal.
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And while his petroglyphs today document relatively high-tech industries – oil frac’ing and agribusiness in North Dakota; sheep- and horse-ranching and elk-hunting in Colorado (and all the attendant vehicles) – his work ultimately suggests that more things change, the more they stay the same.