Stone Totem Pole

Back in April I began designing a totem pole for my sister's wedding at the beginning of May. The general theme she had decided on was a kind of bohemain styled festival at Talton Lodge just outside of Stratford upon Avon. The grounds had been developed as a venue space for functions and around the fields teepees, gypsy wagons and yurts with log burners had been dotted as part of the accomodation.

 My mum and sister had already began making and assembling decorations for the big twin teepees where the evening meal would be held after the ceremony. The look and feel of the day was a kind of rustic charm with hessian table cloths centered with chopped logs and pots of rosemary, dream catchers hung in chains high from the beams and hand made bars of soap and jars of family brewed honey as gifts among other things for the guests. On the table with the gifts I was going to make a totem pole to add to the theme and give a tribal, spiritual feel to the decorations, as well as a small table top teepee for wedding cards to be placed in.

 I started by collecting up a bunch of polystyrene bricks I had stored in the garage from years ago, one of those things you think will come in dead handy at some point even if you can't see yourself using them any time soon! They worked fantastically, pretty much like giant lego bricks that slotted together and locked in position but then also came apart easily for transportation. Looking back they hugely speeded up the whole process and let me focus on working the detailed into the surface.

I began by building them into a tower. Having researched a few different designs I considered how much space each creature would require and began very roughly marking out details on the blocks with a marker pen. My design remained pretty rough and mostly in my head. Rather than spend time going through the process of drawing up a detailed plan of what I was going to do I found it easier to get stuck into carving out the rough shape of the totem pole.

As I hadn't glued any of the blocks together yet it was easy to take out each section I was working on and focus on that rather than try to sculpt the whole piece at once. I tried to keep the design quite rough, giving the impression it had been roughly carved into rock. Providing just enough detail outline the features while giving the impression of a sculpture that had faded with time and exposure to the elements.

 

As I completed more of the detail on the surface I began smoothing the edges down to give a more weathered quality. This cleared up the surface and making the different blocks less distinguishable. Looking back it would of been an interesting idea to have made more of a point of the blocks forming the whole shape and smoothing off their edges to give a look of a totem pole formed from old stacked stones. However I decided to aim for a more solid shape as though it had been carved from a single standing stone. Adding a thick and very rough coat of jesmonite to the surface gave a much more weathered and earthy feel to the exterior of the shape. I left the design of the bricks in some sections as they were because some of the carved lines in them suited the looked I was going for, where on the sides of the totem pole the stone had been given less attention and simply chiseled roughly into the right shape.

After the jesmonite had dried off I began priming the totem pole with a dark grey base coat and adding white on each consecutive layer which I then dry brushed on to add definition and enhance the textured surface quality of the stone-look. At this stage the totem pole was really starting to take on the look of aged ruined stone, I decided to add blemishes and stains of natural hues like greens and browns to give the idea of where vegetation had encoached on the surface and eroded sections of the rock. After applying quite a strong hint, as you can see below, I worked back in a little of the lighter greys to obscure the stains a bit and just give the impression of colour on the surface.

After painting the totem pole I separated it into three sections which I glued together. These where then bubble wrapped making it easier to transport in the car rather than as one complete piece. Below are a couple of photos of the totem pole set up at the gift table in the entrance to the twin teepees at the wedding.