Columbia River Petroglyph: The Swallowing

In 1956 artist Sari Dienes draped burlap of over a boulder and, using a brayer, produced a stone “rubbing” with red and black paint —  an image of petroglyphs.

Dienes produced another rubbing of this boulder on paper with black ink now archived at the Burke Museum in Seattle along with several hundred other petroglyph rubbings completed under a contract. 

This distinctive figure is described as a “monster” and its design elaborated in 1956 notations by Mark Hedden. A reductive -- and misleading -- labeling seems to me.  Several versions of cautionary stories of indigenous river peoples do tell of a swallowing monster in the depths of the river.  A leap from those often terrifying stories to conjuring this spirited figure carved in stone as monster.   

A real swallowing concrete monster in 1956 was under construction:  The Dalles Dam on the mid-Columbia River which the following year devoured miles of canyon, traditional fishing places, ancient villages, untold graves — and hundreds of the petroglyphs of the mid-Columbia River. 

Above, the boulder face:  64” wide, 40” high. The primary figure (top) is 32” in height. Below, another detail.

NOTES

— The stone rubbing: red and black in on burlap, 64” wide, 40” high. The primary figure is 32” in height. A gift to us from the family of David Cole, an archaeologist who worked on contract with the Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1950s.

— Curiously, without explanation, a Burke Archaeology article was titled:

“Sea Monsters and Mountain Sheep: Preserving Images of Columbia River Rock Art.” We are left to imagine what the writers imagined… as the river ripples on...

— Sari Dienes, a prolific, daring and eclectic artist had done manhole covers in New York City and in 1956 recently completed street rubbings in Oakland CA. Her petroglyph rubbings from the Columbia River were exhibited that year in San Francisco at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Next, she traveled to Kyoto Japan and produced other petroglyph rubbings.

http://saridienes.org/life/1940-1959.html

https://www.moma.org/artists/8085

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sari_Dienes#Sidewalk_Rubbings

https://vimeo.com/859777002

— Notably, in the1920s, surrealist artist Max Ernst explored frottage (rubbing on textured surfaces) as the basis for an multitude of drawings and paintings. Dienes, born in 1898 in Hungary, would have known of Ernst's work.

https://www.moma.org/collection/terms/frottage

Sari Dienes at work on the Columbia River, 1956.