August 4 to September 9, 2004
McPherson Library Gallery

WRITTEN ON STONE
An Exhibition of Black and White Photographs
By Wendy Ehlers

August 4–September 9, 2004
McPherson Library Gallery

Local photographer Wendy Ehlers presents rare black-and-white photographs of petroglyphs and rock formations from Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park and Archeological Preserve in southern Alberta.

The park, which has been nominated a National Historic Site of Canada, is the
largest concentration of First Nations rock art anywhere on the North American Plains, and was used by numerous different bands as a site for rock art and vision quests. It runs along both sides of the Milk River: one side is open to the public through guided tours, part of the other side is a Restricted Zone accessible only through written permission from the Alberta government, and then only for a few hours. Ehlers has been privileged to make this trip several times between 1997 and 2003, fording the Milk River and hiking among the sandstone hoodoos and examining the canyon walls of the coulees.

Ehlers’s focus is not only on the pictographs and petroglyphs of Writing-On-Stone, but on the stones themselves. In her own words, Ehlers has sought "to isolate and preserve in photographic form some of the dignity, the
elegance, and the mystery found within evocative stone structures . . .
initiating a quiet connection between the natural world and the private,
interior landscapes of imagination, spirituality, memory and desire."

This exhibition has been produced with the assistance of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

The McPherson Gallery is located in the main library of the University of
Victoria.

For further information, please contact the Maltwood Publicist at 721-6562,
maltpub@finearts.uvic.ca, or visit www.maltwood.uvic.ca.

Publicist
Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery
University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3025 STN CSC
Victoria, B.C.
V8W 3P2

Email: maltpub@maltwood.uvic.ca
Ph.: (250) 721-6562
Fax: (250) 721-8997