PERMANENT EXHIBITION

THE MARTIN PETROGLYPH

Somewhere amid the dense forests of rural Colbert County there is an intimate bluff shelter carved by nature in ages past from a rocky hillside. Standing beneath the massive roof of the shelter, one experiences a feeling of reverence as well as a sense of curiosity about the people who stood there centuries ago. We know they were there because they left evidence of their presence in the form of petroglyphs, elegant images skillfully carved into the surfaces of the huge sandstone boulders resting beneath the shelter. Unfortunately, some people felt little reverence for the site and their crude efforts to remove the carvings from the stones threatened to destroy them.

In 1990, Robert B. Martin, Jr. and Donnie Martin, owners of the property, became aware of the damage being done to the bluff shelter site and agreed to donate the endangered artifacts to the University of Alabama Museums to prevent their imminent destruction. Four stones were removed from the shelter by the Alabama State Department of Conservation and stored at Joe Wheeler State Park until a permanent home could be found.

It was the wish of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Martin that this important cultural artifact, created by the Native Americans who inhabited northwest Alabama centuries ago, be treated with dignity and in such a way as to honor the culture of the people who produced it. Mr. Martin felt that the petroglyph should find a permanent home at the Tennessee Valley Art Center. After his untimely death, Mrs. Martin enthusiastically and generously supported her husband’s wishes, endorsing a proposal by the Colbert County Historical Landmarks Foundation to house the petroglyph at the Tennessee Valley Art Center in Tuscumbia. The Martin Petroglyph is an ancient and invaluable art form and an irreplaceable part of Alabama’s heritage.

What do these images mean?

Many centuries ago an artist knelt beneath a bluff shelter, took tools in hand and began to carve images into the rocks. The artist decided to carve images of a snake slithering amid a trail of footprints. The meaning of these meticulous carvings may forever be a mystery. Still they may tell us much about the artist, his experience and ourselves.

Were these petroglyphs intended to represent some method of communication among the prehistoric people living in the area? Were they intended to record a particular event or to give warning to others of the dangers of the forest? Was their significance spiritual in nature or merely “art for art’s sake”? Whatever the intent, this work was created by the hand of one with whom we have much in common. The artist lived, worked and worshipped here in what we now call Colbert County, Alabama.

All artists create in order to express some aspect of their experience and to share their experience of the culture in which they create. Though the exact meaning of these images may be lost in time, the artist has left us a precious link between his work and ours.