Artist, researcher, and writer Jonathan Bailey is out with a new book: "Rock Art: A Vision of a Vanishing Cultural Landscape"
He says that to those who once walked these fins of sandstone, the landscape was alive with meaning and metaphor in a fourth-dimension, a collective vision of a landscape deeply connected to their culture, senses, and their landscape. In “Rock Art” Bailey brings back layers of dimension to archaeological sites in Utah and Arizona's canyon country by highlighting the significance of seeing beyond the second dimension, that which is carved on the rock face itself, to the value of place, landscape, and the fundamental experience of our prehistory.
Bailey says these visions of the past are quickly being destroyed by development, vandalism, illegal trail pioneering, and encroaching tourism. This anthology brings together essays by noted archaeologists, writers, and artists (including Lawrence Baca, Greg Child, Andrew Gulliford, James Keyser, William Lipe, Lawrence Loendorf, Lorran Meares, Scott Thybony, and Paul Tosa) to illustrate what we have, what we have lost, and what we may lose, tied together by Bailey's essays and more than one-hundred-and-fifty color photographs from his explorations into some of the most remote wild landscapes in North America.
Jonathan Bailey is an artist devoted to protecting cultural resources and the wild landscapes they inhabit. He has covered thirty thousand miles of Utah's backcountry on foot, exploring the art and minds of the people that lived there hundreds to thousands of years ago. He preserves the largest collection of photographs of San Rafael Swell rock art in the world and one of the largest collections of Utah rock art photographs internationally. His award-winning work, in both art and conservation, has been featured throughout the world in well-known journals, books, newsletters, magazines, and television shows.