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Petroglyphs and me.. a preface
[Warning! not for everyone, artistic license in use].

During the past 7 years[1997-2004], I  spent hours and miles in the lava fields of Hawaii, following old foot trails and documenting my own wonder and surprise at what is underfoot, hidden in the open, forgotten by most and often overgrown.  This study has spawned an extensive series of artworks in response to my perceptions and experiences of these ancient Rock Art sites.

A sampling of these images is included on this website. The culmination of this process has been the creation of a Digital Library of images accessible in DVD format.

Except where otherwise noted all photographs and mistakes by the author. 

No Commercial Reproduction allowed without written permission of the artist.

© Wes Bogner 2004

PROJECT DETAILS / HISTORY 

Part 1:

Early after arriving on the Big Island and visiting the Pu'u Loa site in Volcanoes National Park I got very excited, became obsessive and began consuming all available literature on Hawaiian petroglyphs, purchasing maps, and planning hike logistics, camera requirements, became a 40 pound backpack with 1 gallon of water, etc. My fascination with the Rock Art of Hawai'i began to infect my dreams and artwork.  Symbols of forgotten content, Images with lost meanings was a theme that attracted me as a metaphor of contemporary experience.

I was awed by the grandeur and mystery carved simply with linear elegance in stone and time.  As an artist I was further intrigued by the composite design built by individual glyphs overwriting one another over time until a large scale earth mural was created.  I also soon realized that one photograph could not capture the entirety of a site or even a single petroglyph.  Nuances of light and shadow color the lava, hiding or revealing details depending on the camera angle and direction of reflective surfaces.

Because of my experiences in the field I found my art changing as my perceptions and definitions of imagery and symbology became colored by the spectral surfaces upon which they were engraved.  The background behind the petroglyph image, the supporting surface was the earth beneath my feet. The volcanic bones of the planet were the source material, the primeval canvas where these ancient ideas were projected. Here they found their orientation by gravity where meaning was dependent on perspective.  This was landscape art without a conventional horizon line. There was an inside / outside duality visible between the symbols and their meanings. The line was a dimensional threshold drawing a window into another time.

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As in everything in life, questions take you farther than answers and this is what I discovered about Petroglyphs and these people who left their marks on our history.  Their footpaths worn into the memory of this land. Old Ones with forgotten names, those Lost Legends came before the ones we remember.  An oral history disappears with no one to voice it, and no way to write it down. 

No one's singing the songs of the bird-headed people we see depicted or telling the genealogy of families long since swallowed by time.  The rock art images we can still see are our only connection to the conceptual perceptions held by the first petroglyph-making immigrants who landed on these shores and carved out a home, apparently with difficulty and success.  We can look, touch, and imagine this culture with some accuracy by correlating artifacts and archeological evidence.  From Nihoa and Necker Islands to South Point, Hawai'i data has been recovered and analyzed providing proofs or at least insights into the migrations and arrivals of oceanic peoples to these islands which became known in historic times as the Hawaiian archipelago.

Every day we are employed in the manipulation and recognition of symbols. We take for granted a vast dictionary of wordless definitions of archetypal imagery like dream beads on the intimate necklace of self-awareness. This mirror of experience has been looked into by every person and expressed in every way possible. Language is supported by this vocabulary of images and experience, just as sound is supported by silence. The internationally known recording artist, Sting, was quoted [in Reader's Digest] as remarking that "Great music's as much about the space between the notes as it is about the notes themselves".

The invisible landscape which connects us lies hidden behind our eyes. We go out the back door,  play and sample this dream sandbox of collective consciousness all the time.  Dreamland is a concept  found in cultures around the earth from time immemorial and is no more a fossil or irrelevant antiquity, than you or I.

What does any of this have to do with Petroglyphs?  The Rock Art images of Hawai'i are Prehistoric Icons on the desktop of the largest volcano on earth. Visual vocabularies representing Prayers invoked for long life, procreation and fertility, prosperity and protection. I imagine our ancestors had many of the same thoughts and feelings we experience. The biggest difference between prehistory and our contemporary time is that was then and this is now.

Intelligence will never be transmitted by words alone.  Symbols stare back at us from our computer keyboards and traffic signs.

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Each of us is an artist, etching our lives onto the surface of time. We engrave thin trailings of design, recording our desires, like carving initials into the tree trunk of youthful promise. Emotional graffiti or archetypes of action? Petroglyphs of possibilities. Ideograms of innocence? Symbols of sin and salvation, or just the source of Names, Alphabets, & Numbers.. It is what you believe it is.

Meanwhile back in the 21st century these ancient symbolic constructions have consumer-market appeal, though only considered as high-water marks of primitive human potential and primoidal. Immortalized in advertising and appearing as tattoos and jewelry on logo worshippers, these prehistoric archetypes cannot be carbon dated but apparently have been with mankind from the beginning of time and will cling to the end.

Petroglyphs contain deeper unseen but lost meanings and messages.  Symbols both mask and mirror humanity's first thoughts and rock art was a signature of awareness. 

Throughout history stone has recorded man's expressions like fingerprints of consciousness all over the crime scene of intelligence.

Epilogue: "It's alright letting yourself go, as long as you can let yourself back"

-Mick Jagger

We can learn a lot more from the Petroglyphs of Hawaii, as long as they continue to exist in their intact state, the sites preserved and not in simulated resort-lobby dioramas.  Aside from my extraneous digression on pictographic origins and man's desire to communicate, I believe further exploration of our ancient past will help us interpret the present while we dream future possible paths.  What survivor tools can we take with us on such a journey?  A heart full of adventure with ukupila aloha. 

 Happy Trails,

 Wes Bogner © 2004