Artist's Statement

Vessels interest me because they are active objects. They interact with the space around them. Sometimes they keep things together and protect them, like apples. At other times they open up and reveal something as though making an offering. I imagine the first basket as two hands cupped together, a strong and universal human gesture.

My family has a long tradition of work in fiber arts and I grew up learning to knit, crochet, sew, quilt, hook rugs and weave; but I find it very hard to work “flat.” Making baskets lets me keep this family tradition going in three dimensions.

It is the engineering of baskets that I find most interesting. Each one is a little piece of architecture, a manipulation of material and technique to get a particular shape.

My baskets begin with what I see, and end with what I feel. I am always watching for colors, lines, forms, and textures that I find arresting or provocative. You never know where you will find something to feed your eyes.

It is difficult, and probably useless, to trace how the things we see come out in our art, but they do. Part of it for me is being open to the connections between the visual and the emotional. Does a color bother you? Does a line make you feel silly?

Creativity is the inexplicable process that transforms what goes in into what comes out.

With baskets, there seems to be an endless supply of traditions to provide techniques and inspiration. The combining of new materials and old techniques makes contemporary basketmaking one of the most vibrant art forms today. With baskets you can hop around the world, twining like a Haida, coiling like a Pima or plaiting like a Russian. And you can slide through time, making a willow laundry basket one week and a platter out of discarded telephone wire the next.

I can’t know what my work will be about for other people, but I hope it will provoke something, that it will be a starting place for an emotion or a thought. And, missionary that I am, I hope it will convert them to being artists in their own way, always looking for what is beautiful and interesting, perhaps where they least expect .