by Kathryn Retzler

Bluff, Utah [Summer 2001]

Phone her studio and she will answer, “Rock Speaks.” It is, and they do.The rocks of southeastern Utah speak to Margaret LaBounty, and she listens with her heart as well as her ears and eyes. The geology and archeology of the Four Corners are her inspiration. The textures, shapes and colors of the canyons she loves and lives in are a source of her unique perspective and technique, both rich in symbology and generations of cultural history. Her signature “totems,” variously displayed in Margaret’s delightful Rock Speak Studio, especially reflect her love affair with the land she calls home.

She and her husband John live in a wonderful old house, resurrected from the edge of ruin and turned into a gallery/studio and cozy living quarters. It is an adobe oasis, an artistic adventure filled with wonderful things, collected, resurrected and made right there in the studio. Margaret’s art is very much a part of their home. Above the mantle is a model of the “Hohokam Dog” that started the present phase of her career. An archeologist looking at a ceramic “deer dog” she had created commissioned three sets of Hohokam Dogs, copies of historic pieces found on a dig. “I was given the originals to touch and hold,” Margaret says reverently. “They were wonderful. I replicated them, complete with broken ears, repaired legs. The archaeologist kept one set, and the others were used for interactive teaching displays, since the originals had to be preserved.”

The Hohokam Dog led to other commissions for museums and archaeological digs. She has replicated censor pots (used by the ancients to burn ceremonial incense), dog canteens (found over by Ute Mountain), plates, Hohokam masks—tiny little things, only an inch or an inch and a half tall. “They found hundreds of them at Casa Grande near Phoenix,” Margaret adds.

While she was working on the replicas, which necessitated developing special clays to make them as authentic as possible, Margaret was also experimenting with color and materials. “I wanted to combine soils and oxides to achieve an end result that reminded me of the canyons, to get that desert varnish look.” (Desert varnish, a reddish brown stain, is caused when iron oxides wash over the naturally buff-colored sandstone.) “And I wanted to draw in the symbology from the pictographs and petroglyphs, the rock art so prevalent in the Four Corners area.”

A few years before, Margaret had been working with test tiles, mounting them on copper. “I was living in San Diego at the time,” she explains. “And I missed the red rock canyons, so I started making the tiles. I placed them on copper, a warm, living metal.”

Her totem sculptures were a natural extension of the tiles on metal. Margaret calls them “sculptural paintings.” “The totems tell a story, combining petroglyph symbology with the forces of nature. They can be a specific design, representational of a certain tribal culture, but I prefer a blend of the ancient peoples,” Margaret explains. The wavy line most have on the bottom represents water and the beginning. The upward structure of the totem repeats the water theme. Every totem has four sides, representing the four directions. Most also carry a Ying/Yang or Negative/Positive symbology. Every totem also combines male and female components. All are different, however, with variations of color, theme and size. Made in pieces, carved and colorized (before firing) to represent the land whose stories they tell, Margaret’s totems come in a variety of sizes from eight inches to seven foot. (The latter was made for display, the Shidoni Art Garden, Santa Fe, NM.)

Totems are only a part of Margaret’s art on display at Rock Speaks Gallery. Other work includes ceramic fountains, fetishes, Hohokam dogs, medicine balls, wall reliefs, ceramic pieces and paintings. The medicine balls are solid clay, pitfired—“but amazingly, they don’t explode when fired!”—and based on an ancient Native design. Margaret stone polishes them to a high sheen and places them in a rough stand. Her wall reliefs, clay tablets or tiles on copper also combine textures. The colorful tiles are carved and rough surfaced. The metal is smooth, polished, with hand-cut, burnished edges. Her sculptural ceramic pieces include “Woman Spirit,” a hollow figure of a Navajo woman. “The outside represents our outside image, the hollow our inside, how little we really see of the inner person.” Although she is primarily a ceramicist, Margaret also paints. Several of her paintings and charcoal sketches are also on display.

All of Margaret LaBounty’s work, be it three dimensional or two, is reflective of the gallery’s name, Rock Speaks, and Margaret’s love affair with the surrounding sandstone canyons. Her art, like the land it represents, is warm and inviting, textural and tonal. It compels the viewer to touch and explore. One visit to the gallery and the visitor is inspired to head out on a hike, ogle the miles of petroglyphs carved into the bluffs around Bluff—then come back to Rock Speaks to purchase a piece of Margaret’s unique work that encompasses it all.

Rock Speaks Studio. 6th West St. & Rabbit Brush Ave., PO Box 327, Bluff, UT 84512. 435-672-2337. www.labounty.com