Shaman Staff-Part 17-The Human Figures- Probably NSFW

The models had trouble with the poses.

Not Safe For Work is probably too strong a designation.  The human figures are basically silhouettes, but in the manner of a lot of prehistoric art, the silhouettes are obviously nude and (more or less) anatomically correct.  However, I felt it was better to warn people and let them make their own decision about when and where to view this than to have them open it in an inappropriate venue and have the pictures cause a problem. 

The newest generation

(Once again the formatting is giving me a problem. Sorry things are so choppy.  It will let me type text into this blank section, but it will not allow me move the next paragraph up to this section.)

Warrior pose.

Goddess Pose.

A good deal of the petroglyphic art I saw during my research for this project displayed genitalia, even when the body shapes were no more than rectangular or triangular shapes.  It seemed important to those long ago artists to portray that this is what they looked like as much what the figures were doing.  Over the years, I have read about cave paintings and what archeologists think they represent.  There is a lot of emphasis on the religious aspects of the drawings and a contingent that suggests the cave drawings are indicating the use of  magic to influence the hunt.   Without being able to ask the artist or the artist's peers what his or her meanings for those drawings were, it is really all supposition for prehistoric art.   What we can really say is that someone took the time to put on a wall, "this is what we looked like, these are the things we did, these are the creatures and plants that had importance for us."  Perhaps it only indicates an awareness that one day they would no longer be here and wanted someone in the future to know of their existence.  A message to the future carved in stone.

Male fertility aspect.

After many hours of sketching, I finally realized that the stylized figures I thought I wanted really weren't right in relation to the art that was already on the stick.  I also realized that the small size of the figures did not lend itself to a lot of detail.  So after much effort, I got back on track with the silhouette style of drawing that was already on the stick.  Then I had to decide what I might want to say about humans.  What did they look  What did they do? 

Female fertility aspect.

The latest generation of humans is the youngest generation, so I began with an infant to symbolize that the bearer of the walking stick is the newest of the generations of the race of humans.  Only the infant has a face, because it represents the generation that is in the world of form.  The ancestors are in the world of spirit, and do not have a face, only an echo of form.  (That is my story and I'm stick to it.  Other than that, the drawings are so small that it was too difficult to do anything other than the most cartoonish of faces.)  The infant immediately follows the last line of the poem.  That line is, And now we are manifest in you, indicating that this is referring to the current bearer of the walking stick, the newest adult generation.

 I decided that one of the male figures would be in a warrior pose with a spear, to represent they considered themselves strong and having an ability to make weapons and protect themselves.  One woman is in a stance called Goddess Pose, to represent that humans had developed religious beliefs and rituals.  The other male and female represent the fertility aspect: they are the progenitors of the race of humans.  Anyway, that is my take on what I put on the stick.  It would be interesting to be able to look into the future and see what someone else says about it.  (I saw something humorously relevant on the graph-jam section of the cheeseburger.com website several weeks ago. I am sorry that I don't have time to go back and create a link to it, but it was so long ago that it might take a couple of hours to find it.  Anyway, it was a Vin Diagram that had over lapping circles.  One circle was labeled "What the author said the poem was about."  The other circle was labeled, "What the critic said the poem was about."  A third circle way off to the side said, "What I thought the poem was about."  And that is about the size of it when it comes to interpreting art.)

I wish I was better able to draw.  The figures are not as well drawn and burned on as I would have liked.  One thing about burning deeply into wood or carving in stone, once it is on there, it is not very easy to remove it without leaving some sort of permanent divot.  There are a couple of places that I would correct, but it really is too much trouble.  Since the figures are representative of drawings from prehistoric petroglyphs, I guess I'll leave them in their less than perfect state.

The next phase of the walking stick will be to add pictures of food plants and medicinal plants.  They will be shown on the next blog post.