Pictographs

Re "Detective Work That Leaves No Footprints," Nov. 16: When the Getty Trust created the Getty Conservation Institute it made a wonderful transition in art conservation--from museum art to cultural heritage. Everything from the pictographs and houses of the Southwest Anasazi to structures along Asia's Silk Road have benefited. It has been a gift to the world. ELDEN E. HUGHES Whittier

The Chumash tribe has expressed interest in buying a 450-acre slice of a contaminated nuclear research facility in the hills between the Simi and San Fernando valleys, hoping to preserve a cave that its members consider sacred. The tribe's inquiries about acquiring part of the 2,849-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory have stirred concern among some residents who fear the purchase might be a back door to building a casino. "I very much respect their desire to protect sacred sites but I want to make sure any such action precludes the establishment of a casino," Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks said.

Like creatures of the ark, Saddlerock Ranch's animals are here in pairs: llamas, emus, macaws, peacocks, camels and zebras. But these California immigrants are commonplace compared to the pictographs tucked amid the ranch's towering rock formations and grapevine-studded hills. Archeologists say the drawings were made by Chumash Indians, the original settlers of the area, to depict a pivotal event in California history: Their encounter with Spanish explorers more than 200 years ago.

CARRIZO PLAIN NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. - In his obsession to see every back road in Southern California, my brother, John, recently said, "Let's go to Carrizo Plain. " "Where's that?" I asked. He waved his palm in the air. "Over there. " Meaning, I gathered, someplace between Bakersfield and Santa Barbara. The website for the Bureau of Land Management, which helps administer Carrizo Plain National Monument, offers more precise directions, though it begins by warning visitors not to use GPS mapping software to get there.

Your story "Gripping Drama: Movie Paint Job Upsets Stoney Point Climbers" (April 7) reports the outrage felt by rock climbers over the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department's authorizing the painting of sandstone boulders at Stoney Point Park to make them more photogenic for Hollywood movie filming. As a San Fernando Valley resident who takes my small children on hikes in this park, I was dismayed by this abuse of what, despite much trash and graffiti, is still a wonderful park.

Where three rivers come together, spirits must abound. I think this as I leave Big Bend National Park and head east toward los tres rios, the confluence of the Rio Grande, the Pecos and the Devils on the Texas-Mexico border. The cliffs and canyons above these rivers are alive with paintings of fantastic figures, part human, part animal, part bird. They are believed to be ceremonial images 4,000 to 5,000 years old.

As a beloved ex-President, Ronald Reagan almost always gets what he wants these days. But this week, one of Reagan's personal wishes was blocked by a federal convict with a typewriter. Last Friday, Reagan personally telephoned the National Park Service in Washington to add his support to proposed national historic landmark status for a mitten-shaped hill in the Santa Monica Mountains that includes prized Chumash Indian cave paintings. But on Monday, when the Park Service's advisory board met, it concluded that its hands were tied.

HORSESHOE CANYON, Utah - In a remote arm of Canyonlands National Park, deep inside a warren of rock and sand, is one of the greatest and most mysterious collections of ancient art in North America. Towering, enigmatic pictographs, some more than 6,000 years old, stare down from stone walls, their meaning unknown yet their allure universal. This is Horseshoe Canyon, one of the loneliest places you're likely to find in this country, nestled amid southeast Utah's labyrinth of slickrock, arches and desert.

Raymond Wood, a graphic designer best known for creating the pictographs used at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, has died. He was 64. Wood died at his home in Los Angeles on Jan. 1 of pancreatic cancer, according to his wife, Patricia Mace. Over the years, Wood created logos for such products as Kirin Beer, Ryder trucks, Thrifty drugstores, National Car Rental and Fox broadcasting. He also created logos for the California Tourist Board and TreePeople.

Adolph Gottlieb was among the original New York Abstract Expressionists. After his death in 1974, his reputation as a bulwark of this seminal school frayed despite a traveling retrospective that visited the County Museum of Art in 1982. Later works tended to be little more than slick reworkings of a formula that included planet-like orbs hovering portentously over a horizon line or a Zen-style paint explosion. A bit too controlled and mannered for an art based on spontaneity.

HORSESHOE CANYON, Utah - In a remote arm of Canyonlands National Park, deep inside a warren of rock and sand, is one of the greatest and most mysterious collections of ancient art in North America. Towering, enigmatic pictographs, some more than 6,000 years old, stare down from stone walls, their meaning unknown yet their allure universal. This is Horseshoe Canyon, one of the loneliest places you're likely to find in this country, nestled amid southeast Utah's labyrinth of slickrock, arches and desert.

Raymond Wood, a graphic designer best known for creating the pictographs used at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, has died. He was 64. Wood died at his home in Los Angeles on Jan. 1 of pancreatic cancer, according to his wife, Patricia Mace. Over the years, Wood created logos for such products as Kirin Beer, Ryder trucks, Thrifty drugstores, National Car Rental and Fox broadcasting. He also created logos for the California Tourist Board and TreePeople.

Like creatures of the ark, Saddlerock Ranch's animals are here in pairs: llamas, emus, macaws, peacocks, camels and zebras. But these California immigrants are commonplace compared to the pictographs tucked amid the ranch's towering rock formations and grapevine-studded hills. Archeologists say the drawings were made by Chumash Indians, the original settlers of the area, to depict a pivotal event in California history: Their encounter with Spanish explorers more than 200 years ago.

Standing inside the maze of mysterious lines and figures that put this arid region on the tourist map, state archeologist Alberto Urbano surveys a football field-sized spread of ankle-deep trash. "Farther down this road, there are illegal gold mines too," he said, noting that the path actually is the side of a giant trapezoid. "See how straight it is." But not just trash and small-time gold diggers threaten Peru's fragile Nazca Lines.

Morgan Garcia-Lamarca's bare back elicits gasps and wide eyes from those who glimpse the 14-inch-long Japanese proverb inscribed down his spine. The four black, broad-brushed characters called kanji, each four or five inches wide and filling the middle of his back, look like calligraphy that just tumbled off some ancient scroll under museum glass. They translate to "ogre with an iron club," a proverb Garcia-Lamarca says he embraced as his own while studying Japanese one summer. To him, it means a strong person who doesn't have to display his strength.

Where three rivers come together, spirits must abound. I think this as I leave Big Bend National Park and head east toward los tres rios, the confluence of the Rio Grande, the Pecos and the Devils on the Texas-Mexico border. The cliffs and canyons above these rivers are alive with paintings of fantastic figures, part human, part animal, part bird. They are believed to be ceremonial images 4,000 to 5,000 years old.

Pounding surf and buffeting winds slowly chip away the sandstone walls of a cave on San Nicolas Island, erasing the only rock art left by a tribe of mysterious ancient islanders. Many of the whales or fish icons chiseled into the stone are no longer visible. The black painted pictographs can barely be distinguished from the blue-green algae that cling to the crumbling surface. Archeologists want to protect the artwork from further deterioration at the remote site they call Cave of the Whales.

If traipsing through the mall with the gift-hungry mob has all the appeal of a green-cherry-packed fruitcake, think institutional: Ventura County's museums and libraries offer wonderfully offbeat solutions to your annual holiday gift problems. Consider this for the history buff on your list: The Ventura County Museum of History and Art sells a T-shirt displaying a Chumash Indian pictograph--four stick figures standing together on a board. Museum personnel call it "Chumash surfing."

If traipsing through the mall with the gift-hungry mob has all the appeal of a green-cherry-packed fruitcake, think institutional: Ventura County's museums and libraries offer wonderfully offbeat solutions to your annual holiday gift problems. Consider this for the history buff on your list: The Ventura County Museum of History and Art sells a T-shirt displaying a Chumash Indian pictograph--four stick figures standing together on a board. Museum personnel call it "Chumash surfing."