About 20 years ago, the trajectory of my work was completely changed when a basketry instructor asked me this question. We were in a class talking about forms and shapes and what made an object a “basket”. I had come from a very traditional basketry background and struggled with how shape, materials, and, most of all, function came together to make an object a “sculptural” basket. And I had objected to my own idea of what I wanted the piece to look like because it “wasn’t a basket.” But, as innocuous as it sounds, “Says who?” was powerful. It gave me the freedom to decide what is and isn’t a basket, or if that label even matters (it doesn’t). It gave me the power to use the years of accumulated knowledge that I had in making traditional, structurally sound baskets and turn them on their ears. It gave me permission to do what I wanted, not what was prescribed by millennia of tradition.
Since then, I have developed techniques to achieve shapes and forms that I wouldn’t have believed were possible, melding tradition and art with materials from nature (sticks, driftwood, seedpods, and dyestuffs for color). Each piece is evocative of the natural world, be they amoebas, sea anemones, pods, vines, or maybe things that don’t have names yet!
My goal for this workshop is to impart to you, my collaborators, a sense of “says who”. For each of you to walk away with the freedom to say that your imagination is your only limitation, not the arbitrary rules imposed by some nameless faceless other. We will take walks along the banks of the Gave L’Oloron, collecting materials that we may or may not use to incorporate into our pieces. Weather permitting, we will choose a place on the river path to create an impromptu sculpture, using materials that we find along the way and nearby, incorporating them into small (or large) weavings “hidden in plain sight” that will bring joy to the people who discover them. We will create fluid, organic forms in the studio, incorporating natural and found materials as desired. By the end of the week, I hope to give you the tools to create strong, solid, stand-alone structures with fluidity, movement, and light. Come with ideas and I will help to make them a reality.
