When I go out in the woods to find a basket tree, i'm looking for a brown ash tree.
Sometimes in the summer months I might cut the tree and if it's not too big, I'll
put it on my shoulder and carried it out.
I've been making baskets about 35 years.
When we pull we put our foot on the root, that way the root will stay in
the ground and we just pull the grass out itself. It's both on my mom's side and my dad's
side that does the sweetgrass basket weaving.
I never took lessons or had any experience at basket making and just kind
of came on it on my own. I started making a little circle, one better than the other,
and then one of the circles turned into a coil, quite by accident. That's what
gave me the idea to use a coil. It's still the same pattern that I use today.
Cultured willow has been selected through the centuries because of its quality of
growing long and lean, being limber, being a strong material. So now I pretty much
use all the cultured willlow. I can plant the willow. I can do all the processing myself.
I'm looking for a tree that's about a foot in diameter with the long straight
trunk without a lot of knots or branches. That way I get a nice clean run of bark
way up into the top of the tree. We will spend the rest of the day peeling the
outer bark from the inner bark.
It makes me work for it.
The trees around us and smell of the woods and that beautiful forest - it's just a
deep part of what it's all about. You find a nice stand of white oaks where they're
growing thickly together so that they're fighting each other for sunlight.
They go up quickly and they have very few branches or knots.
When I pound a log,
it comes apart in layers, year-by-year, layer-by-layer. It's almost like going
back in time through the tree. You get to really see and understand the
structure of the wood, how the tree grew. It's fascinating to take something
like that and to make
material that you can weave a basket with. I usually don't count hours, it's days and
weeks in working and making a basket.
I don't know if I'm ever satisfied with the work that I do. I'm always
striving for a certain line, a certain construction of the basket. There's
always something I'm trying for. This is art that was passed down from
generation to generation. My great-grandmother actually taught me
this art when I was a little girl.
They went over to Sierra Leone with their ships, captured and slaved. When
they got back to Charleston, they sold my ancestors to the Masters at the Boone
Hall Plantation. They didn't have a choice, but to make their own working
baskets. To me this is something that pulled the family together, because this is one
of the ways I spent a lot of time with my mom and my great grandma. I put a lot of
love into it. If I make a piece and I don't feel that it's right, I'll
take it out. I'll take it out 10-15 times until I'm satisfied. For the younger
generation to continue the art, that's my hope.
This is the second little basket I made. I was so proud of that little basket
remember just looking at it, and looking at it. That's the same coil I use in my basket
still. I make the coil ahead of time and when it's all complete, and then I just take a
separate strand and start to center the bottom and bind it together. I shaping them as they
go along. I have some baskets that have like sculptural vine-type parts
on them. That definitely is from me. When you are in the woods you see all
these neat twists and curves of vines. I think it's great. When you make a basket
your thoughts go into the basket. I've seen that in mine,
I mean I didn't even realizes it. Just recently actually I'm looking at my basket and saying oh my
goodness that's how I feel inside, what I've created.
I like a basket that will stand the test of time, that in a hundred years after
the basket maker is gone, I want that basket to be just as nice, if it's been
taken care of, as the day it was finished. I think strength of character is what
I look for in baskets. I love the weaving. There is that part of the challenge of
design, and setting that structure up, and getting the ribs just right. Once you
get that done, then I always think of it as the meditation process, because the
weaving, what I do is just over under back and forth. When i'm in a good space,
when life's on an even keel,
I can see that in my baskets. I do some more sculptural, not so much functional
baskets. That definitely comes from my surroundings. What I think of in my
baskets, that's that connection to people in the past and those people that sat on
the river bank or were making treks across the country and needed a basket.
I take a razor knife and cut it into my strips. I know what I'm going to weave, I've already
got that in mind. To get a good form that holds up the spokes need to be
right next to each other and so do the weavers. I'm always pulling those and
pulling tension and then with my twining to get a good tight twine i'm always
kind of putting tension on that. The finer I went the more of the
character and the spirit of willow was released. It was revealing itself to me
and once I caught on to that, it was like, "oh, well, this is what this willow will do." Let me
go in that direction, let it show me kind of what it's capable of.
It's like they're alive, like they're breathing. They have a living essence to them.
It's a halving process. Split the log in half and then the half in half. Then
to a quarter, til you get a small wedge shaped piece. Your moving from using
the axes and wedges to using a fro. Then eventually you get to the point
where you can use your pocketknife. When you get down to the finishing
splitting and you're literally pulling apart rings of the tree.
It's not a matter of developing a new curve, or a new shape, or something. It's to take the
traditional shape and do it as best as you possibly can. When it comes
together it takes on a life of its own. I can set that basket up and look
at it, and it just brings the mountain back in my heart. I feel the
dedication of all the makers before me. I feel like I've given that tree tribute.
I've learned many things through years of working, but I don't think it
really gets any easier. To keep up quality it really takes a lot of commitment,
concentration, and hard work.
As long as I'm alive, I will weave, if the Lord permits.
I'll always make them.
You can easily go inward, and you feel like you're in the right place.
You just can't get in hurry, there's no need to rush through life. That's
the way it is with making a white oak basket. It takes a long time.
Baskets have held everything from eggs to newborn babies. How could there be
anything better than that? I could feel proud to be a craft artist. Yeah, I'm a craft artists.
That's good, and that's a life.
That's a good life.