Path of the Totem

Part I Path of the Totem:  Concept to Completion – The totem poles of The City of Duncan, a celebration of design and cultural significance. From the original model carvings to the final full size installations.Part II Follow the Line: Showcasing a selection of silkscreened First Nations prints and explaining the graphic origins of form-line design.

A “Maquette” is a small preliminary model of a sculpture (in this case a Totem Pole), which is produced to demonstrate to those commissioning the work how the final expanded piece will appear. They are intended to be miniature replicas of the final product, but are often considered as stand alone artistic pieces independent of their larger replication.

This collection of wonderful Maquettes are representative of the City of Duncan’s collection of Totem Poles that appear throughout the downtown core and have come to be a defining feature of the business and commercial community.

Historically; model Totem poles were created as easily transportable trade items in the latter part of the 19th century to exchange with Euro-Canadian and American visitors to the region. The traditional symbols on the model poles were derived from their existing monumental counterparts that stood in villages and dwellings up and down the coast, those poles gave material form to the mythological origins of the peoples, proclaiming their rights of crest ownership or territorial claims, or, in the case of memorial poles, paying respect to those who had passed before.

As model poles were made primarily for sale to outsiders, their appreciation has long suffered from their limiting perception as “tourist art”. The model Totem Pole today no longer is simply a copy of an existing pole but now carries its own representative story and can be a stand alone sculpture sold as an artistic object. Carvers moved freely between regional styles and began to develop full-time careers as artists.

It was only after the universal popularity of totem poles as monumental sculptural art took shape in the 80’s and 90’s, with public and private commissions to artists coming from across the world, that the requests for Maquette poles began to really flourish. It was a method of both demonstrating the actual carving skill of the selected artist/carver as well as a method of presenting a visual and tactile example of how the eventual completed sculpture would appear.

This collection of Maquette totems have their own artistic integrity and the City of Duncan is fortunate to have such a fine collection of them available for public viewing.

– Fraser Clark
Exhibition curator, Cowichan Public Art Gallery