THE STORY BEHIND MY CARVED TOTEMS

I don't think I've blogged about why I began carving totems but when Kim Schoenberger bravely shared her story a few weeks ago I realized that hearing her story added another dimension to her art.

For years I have been intrigued by the Kenyan vigango or funerary posts which are carved by the Mijikenda to house the spirits of the deceased.

Vigango Commemorative Sculpture of the Mijikenda of Kenya by Ernie Wolfe

When we lost our 16 year old daughter to cancer I looked at these vigango with new interest and thought it would be therapeutic for me to carve one in my own style .... one day. They say that to lose a child or any loved one can have all sorts of repercussions besides the obvious and when my husband also contracted cancer I had a strong feeling that the shock of our daughter's death had been the catalyst. To cut a long story short it took another two years of illness, diagnosis and treatment as well as the death of my mother before some semblance of normalcy began to return to our lives and that was when I decided to fall apart. Subsequently there came a time when I knew I would have to pull myself together or it would be a long climb back.

It was the right time to begin carving my totems.... my vigango. I tentatively began and before even completing the first one I could feel a cloud lifting and I raced on to the next and the next, carving day after day, working through the sadness within me until my "studio" walls were lined with totems. They loomed over my work space like guardians.... messengers .... beacons of hope.


I'm sure that carving these totems kept me sane and I'm still carving them because they symbolize so much for me. I am reminded often that creating art heals and though sometimes it is difficult to actually start something midst the trials of life, when one finally gets moving the joy of the creative process takes over and begins working it's magic.

I found this poem by Lucian Blaga on Tumblr last week ....

In my chest,
a strange voice awakens
and a song plays inside me
a longing that is not mine.

They say that ancestors, dead before their time,

with young blood still in their veins,

with great passion in their blood,

with the sun still burning in their blood

come,

come to continue to live

within us

their unfinished lives.

Such a deep silence surrounds me, that I think I hear

moonbeams striking on the windows......

—Lucian Blaga, translated by MariGoes