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Silent Messengers: Writing on Stone III
December 21, 2009
Click on image to view a larger version.
archival inkjet and collagraph on paper
76.2 x 50.6 cm. (20″ x 30″)
Ancient writings on stone may be silent but still send powerful messages spanning great passages of time.
To see the rest of the Silent Messengers series, please visit Marja-Leena’s online gallery.
Marja-Leena Rathje (blog, gallery) is a Finnish-Canadian artist specializing in printmaking and photography. She is crazy about weathered rocks, prehistoric art and the archaeology of past, present and future. She lives and works near the sea and the mountains of Vancouver and has exhibited widely, both internationally and in her local region.
Categories: Words of Power
Marja-Leena Rathje
qarrtsiluni 
Ah, shucks, thanks for quoting me. And by the way, you both got my name right — Dave’s pronunciation is the one my family has used since we got to America; Beth’s is the “correct” one. I answer to either :-)
Wonderful meditation on Marja-Leena’s art! I love the boat-thing, it’s so clearly a child’s picture of a boat, and of course it can’t be a boat, in that dry country — we’re loading our own meaning into it, as we do everywhere at every turn.
Oh, wow, a great discussion, Beth and Dave! Pictographs are such a mystery and so open to interpretation. About the boat, I thought of it as a big fish but really it could be either for there is a river next to this place. And the hand prints as prayer is a revelation for me, and I love Dale’s poem too, for I too am fascinated by hands.
As a clarification, you may be interested to know that the image of the rock with pictographs is a manipulated and inkjet printed photograph. The collagraph was made from impressions of my own hands and inked and printed over the inkjet print. I hope this isn’t too much information for I like to preserve the mystery, yet I do like viewers to get a sense of the process. Thanks for showing this, somehow so timely at the winter solstice too!
Loved this discussion. I’ve seen a lot of Marj-Leena’s work on her blog over the past few years, so it was interesting to hear your observations and insights – including Dale’s poem and Marja-Leena’s clarification here. All the interaction is a great thing about qarrtsiluni blog.
I heard those messages as soon as I saw them. Good to see them here on this theme.