New Ways of Seeing with the help of Traditional of Totem Poles.
One of the most striking and impressive indigenous art forms of North America is the Totem Pole. Its shear height with intriguing variety of colorful animals, people, and shapes has defined much of the cultural landscape of the Pacific North West from Oregon to Alaska.
What exactly are totem poles? It varies with every linguistic group and in fact from village to village. If you were to paddle up a river or the coastline before European contact you would have seen, different styles and animals represented at almost every stop. To the European eye, the Haida are the most naturalistic, the Kwakiutl the most flamboyant while the Bella Coola poles make great use of a heavenly blue dye. To the early explorers and later missionaries these were either representations of pagan gods or stories. While the meaning and function of totem poles varied, most totem poles were similar in function to European family crests. They told the story of a particular family. Most poles depict the rich Northwest coast legends in a condensed form. For example, if you saw a little blond girl in a house with three bears you would instantly know that this was the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You would recall the entire story because you heard the story as a child. If you were a Native person living on the Northwest coast three hundred years ago and saw a raven with a red disc in his mouth on top a totem pole, you would see the raven who stole the sun. You would know the story of how the raven stole the sun from the sky giant and brought light to the world.
How can any of this help you as an artist? All artists work with the images, myths, and stories of their culture. Many artists use symbols whether it’s a white dog to symbolize fidelity or a Campbell’s soup can to stand in for the everyday commercial products of our life.
Children love totem poles and intuitively understand their meaning. They enjoy making their own with cardboard boxes. Totem poles inspired the great Canadian artist Emily Carr to paint not only totem poles but also to show the strong spirituality of the west coast landscape. Many artists since have borrowed native North American artistic ideas.
Adult artists regardless of cultural background can use symbols to show their stories and heritage. Think about the symbols around you. Look at every day items. Is a blank computer screen a symbol of progress, possibilities, communication, or daily drudgery of life, or unfulfilled dreams? Take tall skinny woman fashionably dressed, she could symbolize – high fashion, progress, beauty or our societies obsession with the material world or the ravages of eating disorders. Everyone would have a different idea. An artist can show people the mundane in a new way.
As an exercise – take the every day objects and symbols of the world around you draw or take photographs or use found images and create a collage. You can pile them one on top of each other as a totem pole, if you like. This is a good starting point for other art creations. Your final creation might turn out to be an abstract or hyperrealism. However, whatever you come up with it will be in a way your own totem pole a reflection of your culture, heritage, and you.
