Sacred Images: A Vision of Native American Rock Art

“Sacred Images: A Vision of Native American Rock Art—Artists/Scholars-in-Residence” is a month-long, story-telling and arts-education program that uses a writer/storyteller; a visual artist; and a traditional spiritual leader to introduce high school students to Utah’s petroglyphs and pictographs (the work of its first artists), then guides them to shape residency experiences into a public mural.

The “Sacred Images” residency aims to enlarge students’ writing, story-telling, art-learning, and art-making experiences while enhancing their understanding of Utah’s indigenous people. The writer/storyteller and a visual artist co-lead the program. The writer utilizes a combination of poetry, fiction, myth, and autobiographical content to introduce storytelling while also exploring linkages between rock art, traditional American Indian narratives, and students’ lives and aspirations. The visual artist works with students to gather and assemble students’ written and spoken narratives and translate them into visual art and mural production.

The initial story-immersion process is one-week long and culminates with a field-trip to Nine Mile Canyon. The residency’s mural-production takes the final three weeks. At the conclusion of the residency, the student-created mural is unveiled at a ceremony that involves the school and the larger community. The completed mural becomes a physical part of the school.

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