TO
MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF THE ROCK ART FOUNDATION
The scheduled Board of Directors/Executive Committee meeting
of the Rock Art Foundation convened at 10AM, March 11, 2006,
at the offices of the RAF in San Antonio. As an agenda item,
the committee discussed the need for any immediate changes in
the structure of the Foundation and the unanimous decision was
that no changes were required. The Executive Committee, working
under the guidelines set by the Board of Directors, has operated
and will continue to operate the day to day business of the Foundation.
Your Executive Committee
is:
Ken Law – President.
Greg Williams – immediate past President handling web mail,
office telephone and RAF communications.
Linda Williams – accounts payable, office manager, membership
chairman.
Greg Pasztor – Education outreach and Pictograph.
Linda Hoch – Secretary.
Pat McCaffrey – Finance/Treasurer.
Lacy Jemmott – Member Development.
Gary Kendrick – Guide Program/tour development.
Michael White - Advertising.
Tom Talcott -Advisor
Bob Holt – Advisor
Executive Committee members can be reached at admin@rockart.org
or by calling the RAF offices at 210.525.9907. The office
will continue to be open on Tuesdays.
Rock
Art Foundation founder remembered
By Bill Sontag
Del Rio News-Herald
Published March 8, 2006
James W. Zintgraff Jr., co-founder and director emeritus
of the San Antonio-based Rock Art Foundation died Sunday
afternoon, taking thousands of memories with him. But
Zintgraff left behind innumerable lessons and stories
in the hearts and minds of friends, colleagues and
even those with whom he disagreed.
Though the Rock Art Foundation office is in San
Antonio, its corpus is carved and painted into
the limestone
canyons and cliff overhangs lining the Pecos River,
Devils River and Rio Grande.
And the heart of this unique, non-profit organization
is the White Shaman Preserve, forty miles northwest
of Del Rio and less than a mile east of the U.S.
Highway 90 West high bridge, where it soars above
the chasm
carved by the Pecos River.
There, the Rock Art Foundation mission is a simple
triad: public education, research and resource preservation.
The membership, now nearly 1,000 strong, is a convivial
family reunion each fall to share new information
about ancient rock art, archeology of the Lower Pecos
region,
and ethnographic theories regarding the peoples who
occupied the cliff shelters and rude huts more than
4,000 years ago.
The Rock Art Rendezvous also includes travels to
several of the thousands of rock art panels in the
region,
usually hand-picked by Zintgraff for members’ exploration
or re-acquaintance with ancient, mute “friends.” For
many, however, the images speak of prehistoric belief
systems and inseparable, spiritual connections between
humans, shamans and the natural world of which they
were a part.
Zintgraff and his longtime friend, Jimmy Smith, 85,
co-founded the foundation in 1991, and rekindled
their old camaraderie at the 13th Rendezvous, October
2005,
sadly their last reunion. Zintgraff’s health
declined after the Rendezvous, and his passing came
quietly last weekend.
He was born into the Great Depression in 1926, and
Zintgraff later joined his father’s business,
Zintgraff Photographers, a profession he pursued for
56 years before he “retired” in 1994. His
biography points out that “his commercial photographs
include presidents, cowboys, debutantes, the historic
Alamo, Fiesta, and Hemisfair.”
Much of that early collection is in the archives
of the Institute of Texan Cultures at Hemisfair Plaza.
Zintgraff is credited with decorating the covers
of
a decade of San Antonio phonebooks, and starting
the first color photography processing laboratory
in San
Antonio.
When he retired to direct the fledgling Rock Art
Foundation, Zintgraff turned his photographic skills
toward development
of what is now the most extensive photographic documentation
of Lower Pecos rock art.
He got his first glimpse of this world-class archeological
record more than 50 years ago on a hunting trip to
the region. Zintgraff eventually put aside his rifle,
and picked up a series of cameras.
The digital age of photography put a powerful tool
in Zintgraff’s hands, just when he needed it most – the
ability to modify images to give current paintings
the brilliance he believed they had four millennia ago.
Sometimes accused of “over sweetening” the images,
Zintgraff plowed ahead, producing in 2002 the Rock Art Foundation’s
first CD-ROM program, “Rock Art of the Lower Pecos.”
The work introduced thousands of viewers to the range
and complexity of Lower Pecos rock art in 250 images laboriously
selected and prepared by Zintgraff, introduced and narrated
by renowned archeologist Dr. Solveig Turpin.
National Park Service Education Specialist Lisa Evans,
Amistad National Recreation Area, said Tuesday, “What
I well remember about Jim is that he had a welcoming smile and
a big hug, and they were given anywhere – at Seminole
Canyon, at the White Shaman, at Rendezvous, everywhere.
“
He was always willing to share his knowledge of the
prehistory of southwest Texas, very committed to developing
appreciation of the rock art. Then, after that, stewardship
and protection came into play among those he ‘brought
along,’” said Evans.
As a pioneer in the public “discovery” of the Lower
Pecos region rock art, Zintgraff worked with investigating
archeologists, writers, photographers from National Geographic
Magazine, and
periodicals around the world. But his personal discovery
stories fired the imagination of all who heard them.
In 2003, Zintgraff described to this writer his first
views of the now-famous Panther Cave, a huge panel under a limestone
overhang with ownership shared by Seminole Canyon State Historical
Park and Amistad National Recreation Area. The area now is accessed
only by a lengthy boat trip on Lake Amistad.
The panel’s steel observation catwalk, reached by a steep
ladder from a boat dock on the lake, leads to adequate
views of the long panel behind an unfortunately necessary wire
fence
barrier.
But when Zintgraff first saw Panther Cave and its hundreds
of colorful drawings and paintings, there was no Lake
Amistad, no ladder, no fence, nothing of human manufacture except
the
rope Zintgraff used to rappel from above through a
hole in the limestone “roof,” disclosing to his
widening, astonished eyes one of the premier rock art sites
in the region.
Zintgraff had his detractors among a few archeologists,
critical of his folksy, carefully nurtured explanations
of the secrets of the paintings on the rocks. Recognizing the
enmity
that sometimes flourishes among practitioners of this
discipline, Zintgraff often chuckled, “The only time two archeologists
agree on anything is when they’re trashing the reputation
of a third.”
Dr. Carolyn Boyd, founder and director of the Shumla
School and one of the Lower Pecos Region’s leading archeologists,
holds profound admiration for Zintgraff’s accomplishments,
chiefly that of bringing world attention to the rich
archeological record painted on the walls of caves, overlooks
and rock shelters.
“Jim’s contributions are going to last another lifetime,
because they were the sparks that set interest on fire
over rock art in Texas. And it’s become a wildfire of enthusiasm
that countless people now have for rock art in the
Lower Pecos,” Boyd
said Tuesday.
This writer had the privilege of joining Boyd and Zintgraff
on their first shared visit to the White Shaman panel, cherished
by both for the stories imbedded in the panel narrative.
But their versions of the stories were quite different.
Zintgraff’s theology of the site was grounded in his admiration
for famed mythologist, Joseph Campbell. Boyd is a scientist
who had only recently completed her doctoral dissertation, based,
in part, on her discovery of a cultural parallel to the symbolism
on White Shaman walls. There, the amicable pair “agreed
to disagree.”
On a similar excursion at another site, Zintgraff chided
his new friend, “Well, Sweetheart, I’m the romantic,
and you’re the scientist.”
“No, I’m a romantic scientist,” retorted Boyd,
eliciting Zintgraff’s familiar, but restrained grin.
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