Paper Mache Totem Pole

"Lowest man on the totem pole" is a phrase that implies that the most important symbols are placed at the top of the totem pole, but this is not always the case. In fact, if you have a tall totem pole (which can be 30 feet tall) than the "lowest man" may get the most attention as it is at eye level and may be wider to support what's on top.

Nine of my high school students made an couple of equal opportunity totem poles out of paper mache a few weeks ago.

They had completed their ceramic totem poles using several  different animals the previous week, so they were familiar with the symbols. This assignment required them each to choose an animal to represent him or herself.








We started by building 6'-7' poles of cardboard, taping cereal boxes, pie tins and parts of bottles to form beaks, eyes, noses and fins.

Paper mache was added to the under structure. We dipped strips of newspaper into a bowl of fabric starch to layer onto the surface. I taught my students to pull the paper strips through two straight fingers to "squeegee" the excess liquid.

At least five layers (probably 6-7 large bottles of starch) later, we were ready to paint the surface with black latex.  Students used chalk to draw the designs on their animal on the dry underpainting. Then the poles came to life as colors were added. We stayed with the primary colors plus white and brown to keep it traditional and visually unified.
It was well worth the two weeks to turn reusable "trash" into large collaborate art pieces, which will last for years.

mini totem poles

 November became the month of the totem pole in my art room. Thanksgiving doesn't have much to do with the indigenous people of North-Western U.S., but it is a nice time to remember that there were people living in this country before Europeans settled here. Plus it's an important part of the 3rd grade school social studies curriculum.

We discussed the purposes and types of totem poles and the people who made/make them. Then each elementary school student made his or her own, by making small animals and shapes and poking a pencil through them.  Dick Blick has a lesson plan with air dry clay and dowels which I'm sure would have worked better, but we had a lot of regular clay and so that's what we used. The problem is to remember that clay shrinks and when the hole shrinks it will be nearly impossible to get it off your dowel or pencil before firing in the kiln. So we removed the pieces before they hardened (after having let a few dry and breaking them off), but then it was a matter of finding a small enough dowel to stack them on after the kiln firing.  It was a pain trying to get each student their own pieces (hundreds of tiny animals in the kiln), but it helped that there was a name on each one and that I took a picture of each finished pole before disassembling it for the drying and firing. Again, the air dry clay on dowels would have been much easier, but I think they still learned what I'd hoped they would learn, and the products turned out to be pretty cute.