Bison Eye

Bison Eye

by Allen V. Deibel, The StoneCat Collection, Canfield, Ohio

BISON EYE          

                I’ve selected this artifact as a means of showing how contours and features within the stone would be worked to convey images. The imagery is concise and uncomplicated; The Ancient Artisan was likely reproducing a Bison Eye. It is just about life-sized.  This striated conglomerate was ground from an irregular cobble. This effort covers one hundred percent of the surface.

                Please refer to the frontal and side photographs. An especially interesting feature is the fleck of Quartz near the center of the eye. An Artistic technique used by portrait painters to bring life to an eye by showing a reflection on a moist eyeball.  This would be the first layer ground to this fleck to affect this image.

                A dark brown striation is the next layer.  Not only has it been ground to the oval that is the Iris, but notice the slight grayed look.  The Quartz layer that formed the fleck was ALMOST ground away above the Iris. Ground to the interface between dark and light layers. This allowed the Ancient Artisan to chip a Pupil that was distinctly dark, to contrast with the Iris.

                 The thick Quartz layer that is the eye whites and the rest of the dark back of the cobble was ground to complete the image. The angle of the grind was adjusted to provide the appropriate amount of white and the dark side was ground so as to be occluded by the white. In hand this is uncannily realistic. The intent of the Artist realized.

Not obvious in these photographs is that the fleck in the eye is an abstract image of a feline visage.  The last sight of the hapless buffalo captured in its eye, forever. This artifact illustrates more than an image but a philosophy.  -Allen V. Deibel, The StoneCat Collection, Canfield, Ohio.

(Click this link for over 100 line drawings of figure stones in The StoneCat Collection, by Allen V. Deibel)  http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/kenbjohn/Diebel%20Cat%20Drawings/

Cartoon-like human head right profile

Human head facing right, with a grin and a dimple

Allen Deibel of Canfield, Ohio, U.S.A., identifies this worked pebble as "almost comical."  The artifact seems foretelling of the illustrations of early-mid 20th century humorist, illustrator and cartoonist James Thurber of The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.  It is known that prehistoric peoples used cartoon-like exaggeration to convey more meaning than otherwise possible in the often small and rounded medium of stone.  For cave art examples, please see figure 4.24 in Barbara Olins Alpert's book The Creative Ice Age Brain, including the Roc Saint Cirq caricature head and more.

If one moves viewing angle slightly and shifts visual attention from the cartoon face to translate the "dimple" and the "base of nose circle" as eyes, a feline-like visage emerges where the feline and the human are sharing the same mouth and chin, feline facing straight on toward viewer on a vertical pole orientation of 5 and 11 o'clock.  Allen has identified significant use of feline motifs, in particular, in the Mahoning River valley and surrounds and has amassed a collection of hundreds of pierre-figures from north-east Ohio.

Deibel has composed a fine collection of line drawings of his artifact interpretations.  These line drawings will be of great assistance to anyone new to the portable rock art subject. If you are looking at artifacts here and thinking "I don't see it," the drawings will illustrate how the visages are interpreted by Allen and others.  The images are often comprised of combinations of color and relief in the stone material and are sometimes difficult to capture and communicate in photos.

http://s813.photobucket.com/albums/zz56/kenbjohn/Diebel%20Cat%20Drawings/

He has also perfected the technique of figure stone presentation using chopsticks, a fine example of this innovation seen above.  Work of James Thurber below.

"What's Come Over You Since Friday, Miss Schemke?"

-kbj