Indian Rock Writings

Glen Earl Alps

This early (1946) abstraction, a lithograph was done while Alps was working on his MFA at the University of Washington in Seattle. Alps drew his image to the edges of the stone, creating the uneven border. The interior composition depicts Native American cave pictographs that he may have seen while growing up in Loveland, Colorado. The lithograph was printed in proofs only and anticipates the free forms and experimental curiosity his work continued to express throughout his career.

In 1947 Glen Alps studied with Mauricio Lasansky in Iowa, where he learned all the intaglio techniques that were being taught there in the 1940s. His early interest in experimental imagery led Alps to the method he coined the word for, "collagraph", which involved collaging elements to the intaglio plate, inking and printing them from both the intaglio and the surface, creating a print with a third dimension.