Totems

What is a totem?  

An object that is respected by a group of people, especially for religious reasons (Cambridge Dictionary)

A natural object or animal that is believed by a particular society to have spiritual significance and that is adopted by it as an emblem. (Oxford Dictionary)

The Aborigine people of Australia may refer to a yam tree as being the incarnation of a long lost relative, a wooden carving on a house could be a Maori god's blessing on a house in New Zealand, a carved stone figurine could be a Mayan fertility symbol, or a cross could be an expression of Christianity.  Each of these objects represent an aspect of a belief system for each of its peoples.  Evidently totems are varied in their imagery as in their material or their represented context.

I chose to explore the making of totems in glass and how the colours can be used to represent an aspect of their origins.  I chose these three from the many styles of totems I had researched.  They are Egyptian, Polynesian and Maori.

 

I simplified their designs for the purposes of making glass maquettes.

I then created clay models of each of the totems and then created the plaster moulds.

I then selected glass colours that represented my interpretation of the beliefs of those societies:

Blue and clear for the source of the river Nile and the life it gave the Egyptians,

Orange and Yellow for the fiery volcanos that created the pacific islands  and sacrificial practices of the Polynesians,

Green and amber to reflect the rich vegetation and earthiness of New Zealand. 

I cut the glass into small strips and mixed the colours prior to placing them in the moulds so that I had a variegated effect in the casts. 

Once the totems had been cast and annealed, they were broken out from the mould and cleaned up, removing all of the bits of trapped plaster and any excess and sharp edges of the glass casting process. 

The finished totems picked up most of the model's details and I was very pleased with the colour combinations and variegations of each of them, I feel this process captured my intention very well.