Join us for our Coiled Basket Workshop with Rosanna Strong from Yellowknife.
What: Coiled Basket Worskhop - See poster for details
When: June 2-3, 2012
Time: Saturday - 9am - 5pm and Sunday - 9am - 3pm
Where: Northern Life Museum & Cultural Centre
Artist Biography:
A Bush Yuppie's Basket Perspective
by Rosanna Strong
It all began in 1991, with a Yellowknife Guild of Crafts willow basketry course that took place in the basement of the old I.O.D.E. building on 51st Street. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light in that dusty venue, surrounded by shelves of pottery, clay and batik baths sat about 6 women with their own personal spring forest of willow. Seduced by the perfume of warm willow, the camaraderie and the results of a weekend's efforts, I was hooked or is that woven into being a basket maker? Since that time, with many workshops taken and some given, nothing flexible has been safe from my fingers or has been passed up without some plot for the next creation.
My baskets have incorporated such materials as caribou antlers, local willow (Salix sp.), dogwood (Cornus sp.), round reed, calendars, cereal boxes, birch bark (Betula sp.), speaker wire, copper foil, brown paper bags, wool, jute, horsetail (Equisetum sp.), snake skin, west coast cedar (Thuja sp.), cherry bark (Prunus sp.), bear grass (Xeraphyllum sp.), bulrush (Juncus sp.), brass wire, corn husks (Zea sp.) cattails (Typha latifolia), waxed linen thread, nylons, t-shirts, palm fronds, driftwood, various local grasses and tamarack (Larix laricina).
Basket making is about making connections… with the materials one uses and how they respond to your touch… with cultures worldwide… and, with Nature's own organic woven structures, like bird nests, tree roots and spider webs. To me, baskets have struck the ultimate balance between functionality and beauty.
-Rosanna Strong
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Diane Seals
Admin and Events Coordinator
