News

Local artist creates wildlife petroglyphs

By Scott Wagar

09/23/2014

Bottineau native Leland Severson has discovered a new art medium with creating petroglyphs up in the Turtle Mountains.

“This rock work is a new project for me,” Severson said. “But it fit in well in my past projects of taking natural local materials and finding and bringing out some beauty and intrigue in them.”

Petroglyphs are rock carvings where the artist utilizes carving tools to incising, carving, picking and abrading images into rock surfaces. The art form is close to 40,000 years old and can be seen throughout the world which tells stories, grant histories and gives art pieces for the world to enjoy.

Severson became interested in rock carving while working on some property he owns in the Turtle Mountains.

“I have 80 acres of woods and brush near Pelican Lake, which is a half mile west of the bible camp. I have a small 12 by 16 foot deer shack that I spend a fair amount of time at,” Severson said.  

“While gathering some rocks for a fire-pit a couple years ago I noticed nearby these large rocks. I picked the rocks out early this summer and knew I wanted to do a project of some sort on them; so, I cleared the area around them.

“I didn’t get inspired as to what to carve until late August,” Severson added. “While staring at the huge rock I picked, I finally envisioned the left upper area as the snout of a coyote.  That left some area to work and enhance the rock with two additional images.”  

Severson decided to place an image of a coyote howling in the additional space. He then framed the coyote with a moon encircling the animal.

The second petroglyph is an image of deer head with a 12-point rack.   

The coyote image was carved into a granite stone, while the deer head icon was carved into a sandstone rock.

Severson stated that it was a challenging learning experience.

“I did some trials with normal chisels and quickly found that granite is a bit too tough and quickly dulls the tools, but it did show me it was possible,” he said. “So, I researched it a bit and bought some high end stone carving tools that would work on granite and maintain an edge.”  

The tools that Severson discovered are carbide tipped chisels, which last longer than steel carving tools and holds a higher granite solidity on the Mohs scale than steel does.Severson also watched a number of training videos on rock craving, which he said assisted him with his petroglyph project.

After self-educating himself in the art-medium of rock carving, Severson started to chisel out his images, which with his finished projects shows his talents and skills as a petroglyph artist.

“My intention was to stay in the idea of petroglyphs that could be around for 100 plus years,” Severson said. “It is nice to look at so no doubt there will be some additional pieces appearing out of the woods in the future.”