Great Basin Interview is a study of petroglyphs and pictographs that date back to the early inhabitants of the Great Basin - a basin and range landscape that extends from the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the west to the Rocky Mountains in the east, and from Idaho to Arizona in the north and south. Pictographs are painted onto rock surfaces, and petroglyphs are carved into rock surfaces, exposing the lighter-colored rock that lies beneath the outer, darker patina. My fascination with these rock drawings has led me into the California deserts, across Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and into Southern Mexico in a search of a better understanding of these varied forms of rock drawings. I find that the glyphs unveil their mysteries to me slowly and surely. When I look at the petroglyph panels new aspects of my consciousness awaken. They teach me about environment, craft, food, ritual storytelling and time itself.
01/2018
Oaxaca, Mexico
Monte Alban
I recently visited the two archeological sites outside of Oaxaca, Mexico. Mitla, the religious capital of the Zapotec civilization, and Monte Alban--the political capital. The ruins of these ancient cities are equally breathtaking, but for different reasons.
At Monte Alban, sitting high on the north platform that overlooks the entire Oaxaca basin I ducked out of a whipping wind and took shelter against a 1,500 year old rock wall. Feeling the warm sun on my face I sunk into the kind of reverie, kind of like the “Choose your own adventure books” I remember from childhood—My favorite was the one about the Mayan pyramids. I found myself comparing the two ancient cities which had once bustled like Oaxaca City does today. Monte Albone must have been full of the sounds, smells and colorful sights that Oaxaca holds today. All of the fruit and vegetable stands, meats, tacos, textiles, sculptures, tools and trinkets could easily be transported back in time to the Zapotec city. But s series of questions burned into my mind. These two ancient cities had fundamentally different characters, and their architectures embodied this.
My mind reached 3,000 miles away towards the Great Basin deserts of California, Nevada and Utah. How does traveling to these sites in Mexico inform my understanding of the Great Basin? My instinct tells me that there is a clear connection, but my mind is clouded by overlapping objectives. Looking out onto the cascading plazas below I understood why Michael Heizer felt the need to build City. Although I have never seen it, I imagine it to be structured like these ancient plazas, a kind of futuristic Monte Alban and a modern ruin.
What purpose does an already abandoned city serve? How does spirituality manifest in architecture differently than politics? How does a ruin inform us? It is as pregnant with information as it is with mystery. What is the use of such an abandoned place? What is an afterlife? What kind of existence beyond life does it contain?
I was here because I was following the course of Anni and Joseph Albers across Mexico. To put it simply, the Albers’ saw into the shapes and lines of these architectures and textiles. They understood negative spaces in new ways precisely from looking at these ancient pyramids, plazas, tombs, but also through the living craft and culture of Mexico. I knew that I too would find something here too and this is why I came.
Have North Americans been looking to Mexico for millennia? At Chaco there is a petroglyph of a macaw at one of the Southern posts. The Anasazi and the Zaoptecs had advanced systems for reading the stars. Surely they shared their knowledge and understanding of the heavens. Did the knowledge and skilled labor that built Chaco originate in Mesoamerica? If so, then who made the long voyages from North to South?
Driving by Yagul, a cave dwelling site near Mitla that dates back 80,000 years I gaze out at a giant petroglyph overlooking the highway. I long to get out of the van and trek over to the labyrinth of interconnected caves that span these hillsides, but am on a tour, and not feeling all that well. I remember the guide at the botanical garden telling us that there are seeds of corn, beans, potatoes and chili found in these caves date back to the first known agriculture in the Americas--and quite possibly the world.
Mitla
When we arrive at Mitla we pass through town, along the skinny cobblestone streets. It is Sunday and the whole town is watching at a basketball game played inside a pavilion. A few tattooed youngsters sit outside a tienda looking bored. They eye the tour bus as we pass through. You can see the new town that is built on the older pyramids.
Mitla has been occupied continuously since ancient times. Arriving at the archeological site, it is modest in scale, but the masonry is out of this world--literally. The cloud people who are buried there are said to enter the clouds from that portal. There are many friezes that overhang the high rectangular rock walled structures. Each one is different with geometric patterning that folds back in on itself in masterful positive and negative relief. There is no mortar between the stones. They are perfectly cut and placed, together like a perfect puzzle. I am transfixed on the friezes—and kept trying to quickly draw one after the other before we had to move on and let another group into the tight little rooms designed for people half our size.
At Monte Alban I thought about the differences between the two capital cities, one political and the other spiritual. Monte Alban has vistas and grandeur. Mitla has intimacy and a sense of infinity that came from the interlocking patterning of the cut and layered stones. At Mitla there is geometric art. At Monte Alban there are steals with carvings of the human form. There are no human renderings at Mitla. Monte Alban has giant plazas, width and height and vantage points. It has a great astronomical pyramid that was angled at a diagonal to all of the other buildings in the great plaza -- but no human life. Mitla, let’s call it the spiritual center, has continuity, organized abstraction. Each has virtue and a particular character. If only I could stay longer…
At Monte Alban I make sure to skip the tour. I sit and draw all day, missing the bus home at the end of the day. I have to hitchhike home. This is a pinnacle moment in my life, a momentous day where grandeur and intimacy coexist together, at least in my mind, neither cancels out the other but slowly reveals architectonic mysteries that connect me to the Great Basin petroglyphs in the North America desert so far away.