A Painting Day

Please check out the new blog by Ruth Andre, A Painting Day.

If you are a basketmaker, you may remember Ruth's coiled gourd weavings. Having mastered fiber, Ruth has moved to 2d art, and has been building her career as a successful painter for several years now.

Ruth's incredible sense of color and design is of course beautifully manifested in her paintings. She creates wonderful images of animals and nature. I particularly love her horse paintings!

In this first post of her new blog, she shares her painting of the neighbor's spring apple tree, laden with blossoms. What will she paint next? I can't wait to see!

To see even more of her work, visit her website at www.RuthAndre.com .

Don'tcha Love Spring?

Spring at my house. Just enjoying it.

Wisteria Hysteria

I just love this wonderful Cuff by Waterrose. It shows, to me, the best part of SPRING! Wisteria Hysteria!

Spring has sprung and pollen coats the world. Here in Carolina, there is sneezing...our cars are dusted yellow-green. The pollen dims our windows, colors our streets and makes chalky puddles.

Each day i walk my dogs through in the woods, and each day is magical... but today the lacey layer of dogwood trees is a veil, blossoming under the oak and sweetgum and pine. Yellow spirals garnish the trees, and bouquet from the ground where the Carolina Jasmine and forsythia flower. There is a feeling of approaching festivity as we stroll, crushing white and yellow blossoms underfoot. Little pink winged maple seeds scatter the forest floor, tiny shed fairy wings. The wind is high, and gradually, lavender flowers sprinkle among the yellow and white and pink, as we go farther into the trees to find the crowning glory: the great violet temple of drooping wisteria!

It has climbed into the highest parts of the trees, and drapes them from top to bottom in glorious shades of lavender, purple, white, brilliant chartreuse and tender greens; a living waterfall of blossoms, on all sides of the paths. The heavy scent overwhelming, even with the wind gusseting. It is a setting for a fairy wedding... and all i can thinks is: Oh what baskets it will make! Spring has come again to North Carolina!

Wisteria is one of my favorite weaving materials. It is flexible and sends out long runners. It can be used at any time of year (more on that later.) But, best of all, it is considered an invasive pest and many people want it GONE. See how it chokes these trees? No wonder.

But that is partly what makes it so great for weaving...Here it is in a sculptural basket


This is one of the most flexible of vines, even larger pieces can be used in rib baskets as weavers (bend around your finger without cracking!) One strand can render 4 or more weavers - split and then peeled. This also gives you two colors - white and bark - for variation. Here is a cornucopia made with split wisteria



The bark is strong and can be peeled in long pieces. It can be bundled and coiled











(Or used as a binder,) and makes a great lasher for a rim!





Use the half-round split wisteria for the rim itself! The bark is great for twining in fibrous baskets, and the inner white bark can be used as thread for stitching, or spun into lovely cordage.

Now is the time to find your wisteria for weaving.



Grab your camera and a notebook and go for a drive. Wisteria is so easy to find now because of the showy purple blossoms.

Some wisteria is white (rare) and often you will see it growing in people's yards, like here in my friend Alan's yard.


When you see a meticulously coiffed bush such as this, it is certainly worth admiring. But there is no point in attempting collection from a plant like this. Since the new growth is trimmed so often, any runners, even if they grow long, will not be mature enough to weave with.


Easier to spot is the purple variety. See if you can see the wisteria growing in the trees on this ride with me.

(it's on that big tree ahead on the left, click the photo to make it bigger...same for below)

When you see it somewhere, take note of where and how it grows. There is often a tree that it has climbed up into, and you will see it hanging. But then, off to the side, you see it peeking out of a bush, or growing on a fence. Take a photo to help you remember where it is. Then you can find out whose property it is and get permission to collect. Overgrown homesteads like this often offer an abundance.

It is not a good idea to pull this stuff down from the trees...you might pull down a tree with it, on your head! This time of year, with the flowers, there will be bees buzzing, and birds nesting in it's shelter. There will be snakes waking up and looking for food. Although, for baskets, it is possible to collect in the spring, it is not optimal. If you HAVE to have wisteria now, look for the runners on the ground BETWEEEN two places where the wisteria has climbed. If you have to disturb the duff to find these, again, you might want to wait until cold times when ground nesting bees will not be so easily disturbed.

Summertime is not a good time for collecting either, unless you are sure you are getting the mature runners. You don't want freshly running green pieces, they are not strong. Wait until the pieces you want have a slightly rough bark (not a skim of smooth bark) on them for the best weavers.

The time to collect vines is Autumn and winter. But by then,it is hard to find, unless you took photos and made notes when the flowers were up. In the Fall and Winter, the insects are becoming (or have become) dormant. Foliage has dropped and snakes are sleeping. This is the time to DIG DOWN into the dirt and really find great runners. If you have permission to clip out of trees, you can do that, too, but be very careful when pulling down not to bring a tree down on your head!

Please check back to Waterrose's etsy shop, she hopes to soon have more wisteria items! I want a little card with embroidered wisteria to put in my studio...to remember my favorite part of spring!


Looking for a great little notebook to keep your basket journal in? Check out WeeBindery for journals worth keeping!

Beautiful Baskets by Lynda Esto

More beautiful coiled baskets!

These are by Lynda Esto, who lives in Florida. Lovely baskets, Lynda.

Lynda used pottery starts from my MakeABasket.etsy.com shop to begin these baskets...but she obviously went on to give them her personal flair. Great job!

I love seeing baskets made with my pottery bases. If you have baskets to share made with pottery bases you got from me, and would like to share your photos, please email them to me!

pamela

Happy Easter Basket

Welcome Easter, the most basket-y holiday!



I dug out my Easter baskets this morning, did you? Or are baskets still a part of your everyday life?

Might as well use them, I have so many!

There are baskets i have woven and baskets other people i know wove. Baskets that came from Wal-Mart, or were given to me with gifts in them.

There was a time when every home was filled with baskets, because they were so necessary and so used.

I want to know: does the average home still brim with baskets?
Does yours?

I think at Easter time they do! This beautiful hand-painted (and hand woven of course) Easter basket was given to my second child at his birth by a local basketmaker known for her lovely painted inserted strips. What a beautiful little heritage basket!

We need more than one fancy colored basket to put on the table with all the kids' goodies. This one i just wove at the last NCBA Convention. It was empty this year...next year, the Easter Bunny will be instructed to FILL THIS ONE UP! It is big.

We need the large baskets to hold all the eggs that are to be hidden in the yard.


We need the handled deep baskets used for gathering the eggs.
So why, with all these lovely baskets around, do my children end up prefering plastic grocery bags for their egg hunts?
So they can move faster!
geesh. And climb higher without spilling! We do have some hunts requiring a little atheticism!I guess we are as guilty as the next person...dependence on plastics is not a good thing.


You can't blame me for giving the dog a plastic bucket for her basket, tho...


Have a great Easter!
pamela

Fantastic Fibers Exhibition Photos

A few days ago, The Fantastic Fibers Exhibition at the Yeiser Art Center was featured here. I am very pleased to announce the Fantastic Fibers Exhibition at the Yeiser Art Center is now online through Flickr.

In a special email to artists, director Michael Crouse wrote:

Hello Artists,

It is a beautiful day in Paducah with sunny skies and warm temperatures, a perfect day for the Opening Reception for Fantastic Fibers 2010.

The 3 jurors chose the following award winners:

Best of Show: “Kathryn, Kathy, Katie, Kate” by Lora Rocke of Lincoln, Nebraska

Second Place: “Poema a La Flor” by Maximo Laura of Lima, Peru

Third Place: “Live Water” by Susan Leslie Lumsden of Thayer, Missouri

The jurors chose 3 additional works for Juror’s Choice Recognition (no monetary award).

“Volcanic Flower” by David Fraser of Yardley, Pennsylvania
“So Between 2” by Kathe Todd-Hooker of Albany, Oregon
“Earth Form 7” by Cameron Anne Mason of Seattle, Washington

We have posted the exhibition via a Flickr photo website. There you may view sets for the individual accepted works, the award winners, and installation views. To view Fantastic Fibers 2010, please go to: www.flickr.com/photos/fantastic-fibers/

Enjoy,

Michael

Congratulations to the winners! I am so pleased to be able to see this wonderful exhibition! I am so honored to be a part of it!

pamela

Fiber: Twenty Ten

Fiber: Twenty Ten
Opens today! April 2, 2010, runs through Friday, May 14, 2010 at 5:00pm

Artist Reception
Friday, April 16, 2010 at 6:00pm

The Foundry Art Centre
520 North Main Center
St. Charles, MO

This is a juried exhibition in collaboration with Missouri Fiber Artists (MoFA.)

My piece "Catching the Moon" pieces will be exhibited, the one subtitled "Unfocused." Photo is by Ronald L. Sowers Photography.
Sorry, I will not be able to attend.

additional details see the Foundry Website

More Beautiful Baskets by Ruth Anne Danger

Wow, congrats on your blue ribbon from the Florida State Fair, Ruth Anne! This is a stunning basket! I really love the serpentine coil on the outside of the basket, and of course the perfect stitching! So inspiring, don't you think?


We have shared the wonderful baskets of Ruth Anne Danger before...and she just keeps making them. Those of you who have "friended" Ruth Anne on Facebook may have seen these before...but we just had to share them again! This one features not only serpentine coils couched on the out side of the basket, but a twisted handle in the "hurricane" tradition as well! Let's peek inside and see another surprise!

These all feature pottery basket bases from my MakeABasket.etsy.com shop. This one has flamingos on it. The next one is of my "Forest Floor" series, that has all different types of vegetation pressed into the clay. I have ferns and leaves and grasses in many shades of green and brown.

Doesn't Ruth Anne do a fabulous job? I just love seeing people's baskets! If you have made a basket with my pottery bases and would like to share it, please send a photo to me in an email.

pamela