00:00.40 archpodnet You're alive here. 00:02.26 alan A Gang Welcome Back it's your host Dr Alan Garfinkel with Ellenie Moore talking about the great mural rock art on your rock art podcast elanie so we were ah reflecting and talking about. How to think about the mexican people and their ah sophistication and hard work ethics and now we're going to talk ah about your studies of rock art. Great mural rock art in the crava pin thought I would presume. 00:24.17 Elanie Moore Um, okay. 00:35.39 Elanie Moore Ah, okay I I want us to introduce myself in so that you understand where I'm coming from I am a hundred percent a working artist. 00:44.67 alan Sure. 00:51.92 Elanie Moore And I was highly trained at 1 of the best art schools in the world and I was taught how to read art and so I brought that with me to these cave paintings and. When I began working on them I came completely from the artist's point of view mostly that what you read in the literature about any rock art at all is usually done by archaeologists and they don't have the same sort of. Ah, training that we do now that's not so in Europe in Europe they're required to take art classes but in our country they're not so it was I didn't have ah anybody out there. That's already done what I'm doing and so I just began doing it the way I would approach. Paintings and stuff like that and what I do is I do do a lot of research looking for what archaeologists have said and so on but I tend to think more about the artists than the artist's view and i. Tend to see what look at what art means to us and then I discovered that I also have to stop thinking like a 20 now Twenty first century artist because they didn't do that and when you think about it. 02:29.94 Elanie Moore What we have is our background in the western culture of art goes clear back to the greeks and the egyptians and ah and art was considered. To be something of beauty. It had to be beautiful. That was the requirement to be successful until a trial came along in England between Whistler and versus ruskin held in 78 and this changed things at that point in time the settlement that the judge gave between these two who were arguing about art and what art was the judge wasn't going to make a choice based on art. What he did. He just wanted to get it settled so he paid something like 2 or three pennies to ruskin who lost and he filed filed it for Whistler and as a result of that trial. Ah, along came some other people they were artists and they so they said that what whistler had done was establish that you could do art for art's sake. So the present world of art that you see now. 04:00.42 Elanie Moore Is actually based in that do art for art sing and and now what's happened is that it has evolved to today and today now it has actually become anything as art. You just have to call it art. And then let it have the test of time and then you'll know whether it was art or not and that's pretty much if if you go to any of the contemporary galleries nowadays in the us. That's what you're seeing so what I did then. Ah, from the era of Socrates and playdoath clear through nietzsche and Whistler and ruskin it was beauty. So I'm taking my knowledge down there and trying to apply it to the paintings and that didn't work so I started studying. Peoples now I have a history of of working with the native americans because as the girl and the wilder part of Wyoming. Um, we interacted with the native americans a lot way before it was the thing to do. And um, and then when I went to teach I taught in a community college here in California and one of the pleasures of the community colleges here is that we have a very diverse community and so. 05:32.77 Elanie Moore There were a number of native americans from all over the country in my classes mostly because it was during the time period when we were establishing computer art and we were the first country to be working on that. So other countries were sending their kids to the community colleges to learn english and to learn the new computer apps and so got in on that that that just worked real. Well I tried to ah come from that direction and there was something missing. 05:50.98 alan Um, ah. 05:58.67 alan Okay. 06:09.62 Elanie Moore And I was telling my students about my work as as I taught they always got involved with it I've actually had students that wanted to go down there and did go down with me so it had this experience and I'm applying art and. 06:22.69 alan Um, ah. 06:29.32 Elanie Moore And I'm realizing that these people did not do art for art's sake. They would never have heard of it. In fact, these people would never have invented the word art because they didn't use the arts for their sake. They didn't use it for entertainment. They used it for the Shaman's drama for the for healing purposes and so everything had power. All the colors but not only that the whole environment has power everything in the environment has power and it can be bad power or it could be good Power So Music Drama Dance Visual arts. They did all those things but they would never have applied any of those words. Um, so course I'm going to focus on the art itself. The visual arts which they wouldn't call it D ah. 07:38.27 Elanie Moore Think about it with the music world. Um the dancing and singing and so on we we were're used to the idea of the hunter-gatherer societies doing those rituals for various reasons other than just enjoying art. Ah, well they did the same thing that the people at the Cave paintings probably did not have drums. Nobody has found any any proofs that they ever used any kind of drums. But. They had plenty of things to make music with they could clap their ends they could sing the head and they could clap sticks together and stepping hard on the boulders Here. We're talking about using the environment. Because it's a volcanic area. You can just walk across a lot of the boulders there and it resonates and I've had I've had dancers on trips who went over and started dancing out a tune on the on the boulders. Also um, there's echoes those canyons are loaded with echoes and as if you didn't happen to be born now but you were a hunter Gatherer. You wouldn't have a clue what that was but except that. 09:05.97 Elanie Moore You can hear it coming from the walls and you can hear it coming from the rocks so they thought there was somebody talking to them. They thought there was somebody in those rocks and you go into the. Pintata cave and I literally mapped out what the different kinds of sounds were that I heard when I made clapping sounds and it's it's amazing. You can sit up there. This cave is. 523 running feet of painted surface highest image is thirty five feet off the floor of the cave. It has close to 900 images and you can sit at different places in this cave it stretches a long ways along the side. And you hear people coming in tourists on the trail who aren't even in sight you can hear them talking and when you're down in the canyon bottom you can you can hear. 10:07.84 alan Wow. Um. 10:15.80 Elanie Moore Echoes coming from the rocks from above and and so I thought what I have to do is listen to the environment. That's what these people did. That's you know and they made up their stories and myths around that and so. 10:17.97 alan That's amazing. 10:24.50 alan Yeah. 10:32.50 Elanie Moore That's where it all comes from now I started with with the the art itself. But I also did some research on what little we have of their ethnography. And one of the things that we have is a ah lexicon of the kochemi language and one of the things that I had found out was that the the shaman. 11:04.50 Elanie Moore When they were the coach me shaman if if indeed it was a coach me culture that settled there. Um, when he was doing a healing Performance. He would grab the right hand of the nearest. Living female relative to the patient and chop off her little finger and the the bleeding was supposed to cure the patient and if it didn't do that then at least protected everybody else in the room so they wouldn't get whatever the patient had. Ah, So what was going on here. Blood was healing and then I found out in the lexicon that the word for blood and the word for red is the same thing. 12:01.74 Elanie Moore And that fascinated me and I was telling one of my students who was a who is he's out on his own now I was telling him about this and I said um, what's what let's see. He's um. Missouri I forgot the second word he's a Missouri indian from Missouri um, and and so I asked him I said ah, what what. 12:29.19 alan Ah, and what did he tell you. 12:35.48 Elanie Moore Do you use for the color red What what word? do you use in your language and he thought for a Ma says you know we don't have a word for the colors and I said you don't and and he said he actually had been.. He had been raised. Off of a reservation but as a teenager had decided to go back in the summers and live with his grandfather and learn their language and so and so he just he says well I'll ask my grandfather Well his grandfather said no there. There's no. 12:57.16 alan Um, ah have. 13:05.36 alan Ah. 13:12.77 Elanie Moore Word for red. So I'm thinking it's quite possible to coach me seeing how it's the same word. These red people are blood people and hope. 13:24.16 alan Yes. 13:31.18 Elanie Moore Hold I can't read think but the word was anyway lo and behold I counted the fingers on on the pregnant women in pintata all of whom are red figures. They have 4 13:49.76 alan Um, ah oh my word. 13:50.79 Elanie Moore Fingers and so I decided they were probably healing women and so this is how I work I Also checked that out later. There was a nice little book that was written recently. 13:55.10 alan Yeah, yeah. 14:07.22 Elanie Moore On the California Indians about the colors and paint and especially red which corroborated what I was thinking and then I talked to a friend of of Allen's who comes to a lot of his little get-togethers. And presents and she's a member of which tribe is it that's down in the bottom of the canyon that's little Allen do know and I'm in back in the us now with a friend of yours. 14:25.81 alan Ah. 14:33.92 alan You mean the coach you meet. 14:40.38 alan Oh the court. The come the comey I. 14:41.87 Elanie Moore Who is native american it but they're they're living in the bottom of The Grand Canyon it's yeah okay have a soup plan I talked to her and and she's not a course she's. 14:51.70 alan Oh the Grand get have a soup I Ah, ah. 15:01.59 Elanie Moore She's an elder in the tribe and she's not supposed to be telling people secrets right? and so so I I just brought out this little story I just said and I didn't really ask to be told anything and and I just said Ah, what do you think. 15:04.69 alan Right? right. 15:11.45 alan A a. 15:21.29 Elanie Moore And she just sat there and she looked at me. She stared she locked into my eyes. She reached down in her blouse pulled out her little medicine bag reached in and pulled out some iron oxide. What. 15:28.94 alan Um, ah ah oh my word. 15:40.23 alan There you go? Yeah the red oak of the hematite Wow Well, that's that's ah the second segment that's perfect, Perfect timing see yeah see on the flip flop gang. We're gonna. 15:41.50 Elanie Moore People Call red oak and and rubbed it on me and I thought okay I guess I'm right? Okay, good all right. 15:57.47 alan But hang hang on for dear life. We're going to try to finish this up in the third segment. Yes god bless. 16:00.66 Elanie Moore Same routine huh.