Original Wood Assemblage - 'Totems'

Laird Campbell works from his studio in the Cowichan Valley on the east coast of Vancouver Island, building abstract compositions from reclaimed and found wood. Campbell seeks, in his own words, “to conjure something retinal and cerebral to appear alongside the spiritual representation that is the art indigenous to this area.”

Totems rise. They mark a place, tell a story, hold a lineage. 'Totems' takes that vertical energy and translates it into the language of the wood assemblage: the composition stacks and layers, the pieces rising within the frame, the whole thing carrying a sense of accumulated meaning. This is not an imitation of the totem tradition but a conversation with it — a work made from the same materials and the same landscape, asking some of the same questions about what it means to mark a place with art.

This original work is a Wood Assemblage: a hand-built composition of reclaimed wood pieces, set in a two-inch wood frame.

Medium: Original Wood Assemblage (reclaimed and found wood)
Dimensions: 9.5 × 11" artwork; 13.5 × 15" overall with 2" wood frame
Authenticity: One-of-a-kind original; signed by the artist