Dimensions of Basketry Elissa Auther

Dimensions of Basketry Opposite detail, page 112 211 Elissa Auther In the late 1960s, the artist, educator, and writer Charles Edmund "Ed" Rossbach turned his creative attention to the ancient medium of basketry, a three-dimen­ sional cognate of weaving. He defined the basket objects he and others began weaving in this period as "new basketry," and ruminated over their complex rela­ tionship to basketry traditions and the history of modernist abstraction. Rossbach was a leader in the nascent field of fiber art, a sphere of practice that consisted of artists who, like him, had reoriented their skills as weavers away from the loom and designing for industry. They took new approaches to thread, exploiting in unprecedented ways the medium's structural capacity and its multi­ tude of aesthetic, historical, and social references. The wildly inventive, abstract, and conceptually oriented fiber-based works that resulted tacitly assaulted the prejudices and prohibitions surrounding the hierarchy of media and the boundaries separating "art" from "craft." For Rossbach and others in his cohort, to take up basketry was a further provocation. In the contemporary art world of the time, baskets had no profile as an art form, were barely respected as a craft form, and within museums were still presented as ethnographic artifacts, the material record of civilizations represented as long vanished. Also relevant to this context was the circulation of the pejorative phrase "underwater basket weaving." As a reaction to the growth of the counter­ culture on college campuses, the term was used to describe courses perceived as absurd and demonstrating the decline of academic standards. This would have included topics in the humanities perceived as esoteric or "soft," including the very fiber arts courses Rossbach offered at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught in the Department of Decorative Arts and subsequently the Department of Design.' Save Rossbach's experiments with students, basketmaking was nonexis­ tent in college curricula of the time, and the phrase drew its rhetorical power from the status of basketry as premodern, useless, and obscure.2 Rossbach's research and writing about basketry markedly countered this picture. In addition to essays in journals and exhibition catalogs, he published the books Baskets as Textile Art in 1973, The New Basketry in 1976, and The Nature of Basketry in 1986.3 His insistence in these publications that the basket could func­ tion as an investigative tool regarding process, structure, and tactility, and connect us to history, the natural world, and our relationship to self and others, was wholly original for its time.4 Although appreciated by readers in their day, his publications have yet to be comprehensively assessed in a scholarly context.5 With its contextu­ alization of basketry in relation to broader avant-garde explorations of textiles and abstraction, the present volume provides a unique opportunity to initiate such an assessment, and in what follows I address some of.the diverse intentions motivat­ ing Rossbach, his peers, and others working in the genre of new basketry. 6 Rossbach's observations about baskets were wide-ranging and often­ times provisional, and he eschewed the academic, thesis-driven conventions of anthropology and art history that were oriented toward contextual, historical, or 212 theoretical interpretations of objects. Instead, his approach to the basket and bas­ ketry was anchored by the perspective of the artist-researcher, providing descrip­ tions of materials and techniques as well as rich, formal observations concerning structure, abstraction, volume, and shape-all based on his self-directed study of basketry history and construction. His publications were complemented by a pro­ fusion of images of baskets from around the world, including his own and that of his peers and students. In addition, he refused cultural distinctions among authen­ tic, hybrid, useful, unique, or ceremonial baskets, writing about and illustrating bas­ kets as diverse as a commercial Easter basket imported from Japan and found at a local grocery store in California, to the virtuosic baskets of Indigenous artists exhib­ ited at Berkeley's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.7 Baskets created by ancient and living makers in Denmark, Ecuador, Ethiopia, the Federated States of Micronesia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Samoa, and Spain are included. In addition, throughout his publications, Rossbach dedicated significant space to baskets of the Indigenous peoples of North America, including the Aleut, Haudenosaunee, Hopi, Karuk, Mi'kmaq, Paiute, Pima, Pomo, Tlingit, Yuki, and Yurok. Rossbach contextualized the reappearance of the basket among fiber art­ ists as a result of the "focus of handweaving shift[ing] in the fifties from what the machine could do to what the machine could not do."8 Unlike weaving, basketry was never mechanized, and thus to this day baskets remain handmade objects. In the hands of the modern artist, this quality of distinction from other woven objects ideally positioned the basket as a vehicle for artistic experimentation, and Ross­ bach documented the exploration of line, repetition, structure, shape, and process through the direct manipulation of basketry materials, resulting in a new genre of coiled, knotted, twined, and plaited abstract fiber objects that were exhibited as contemporary art. 9 To the list of traditional basketry materials-rattan, raffia, palm, reeds, bamboo, and bark-were added yarn, twine, paper, rags, film and plastic tubing, tape, and ribbon. The techniques traditional to basketry used to manipu­ late these short, long, or even continuous elements included coiling, plaiting, and twining. Related nonwoven techniques such as netting, knotting, and continuous looping as well as sewing, stapling, and binding also became the basis for formal exploration by artists exploring basketry as a fine art medium. The hand manipu­ lation of materials as well as the investigation of shape, line, interior volume, and gravitational pull are all hallmarks of process-oriented abstraction from the late 1960s forward. This artistic sensibility toward exploring the physical properties of material and demonstrating the act of making as the meaning of the work of art was also central to basketry as it was reinterpreted by Rossbach and his peers. Line and linearity compose one major area of focus for contemporary basket artists, as seen in Rossbach's Raffia Lace Basket (1973; page 109) and Lillian Elliott's Swirl (1983; page 112). For both, taking line off the page and into real space allowed for a partial dematerialization of the basket form that drew new attention 213 Dimensions of Basketry Elissa Auther Katherine Westphal, On'h.i?de, 1974 214 to shape,surface tactility,and the relationship between interior and exterior vol­ ume.With regard to her "black linear baskets," Elliott explained,"I mark off space, but the air and the space itself move freely in and out....Working with basketry materials in three-dimensions,the line ... actually marks out 'real' space and makes the viewer see or sense an enclosed form as well as 'outside' space."10 Regarding the basket as a simultaneously open and closed structure, Rossbach wrote: A primary delight of basketry is in the way the vegetal fibers are made to adhere and assume configurations supporting each other without friction, in a thin,light textile membrane defining and moving like a skin over an airy volume which the basket itself has created.The elements retain their separate identities while interrelating to form something new with new form and new properties.11 Elliott and Rossbach also approached the basket as a surface for painting. Through the monochrome application of a reflective red lacquer in Red Hunk (1985; page 110), Rossbach threw into relief the abstract patterning intrinsic to the bas­ ket's self-supporting plaiting. In other plaited baskets,including Rag Basket (1973; page 108),Lettuce Basket (1982; page 109),and Purple Box (1985; page 110),color and pattern appear through combinations of elements integral to the weave of the basket and as applied incident in the form of printed papers and silk-screened fabric.In addition, Elliott created many baskets out of organic planar elements to which she applied acrylic paint.In some cases,such as Leaf Basket (1984; page 112) (a collaboration with artist Pat Hickman),an overall use of black pigment enhances shape. There is an elegance to Leaf Basket that dramatically contrasts with other works such as Wind Form (1989; page 114),a basket made of sheets of stitched­ together bark with areas of painting accentuating the piece's irregular geometry and construction. Elliott's Mummy Bundle (1986; page 113) takes even further her interest in ad hoc forms of construction that are expressively held together.The title of the piece refers to a funerary practice of the Andes in which the body of the deceased was wrapped in multiple layers of fabric and bound by woven sashes and braided cords. Here the dozens of wrappings and windings of the funerary bundle are translated as a patchwork of planar elements,such as bamboo chair caning bound together with rattan splints and linen thread,to create a vessel form. Katherine Westphal's baskets Ortlinde (1974; page 214) and Martha (1975; page 111),crocheted out of silver- and gold-foiled ribbon and polyester tubing, respectively,highlight another conspicuous characteristic of new basketry-the creation of asymmetrical,floppy,or irregular shapes out of single,continuous linear elements. Baskets tend to be circular or bilaterally symmetrical in shape. Depend­ ing on where and why they were made,the basket's shape may play a utilitarian or symbolic role (or both at the same time),but it is also related to techniques of coil­ ing,plaiting,and twining,which in the hands of a skilled artist will result in circular 215 Dimensions of Basketry Elissa Auther 1-- Ed Rossbach, Ca/m, 1973 Ed Rossbach, Christmas Bo-sket, 1968 216 or symmetrical forms. Rossbach explains the appearance of asymmetry as an out­ come of the reinvention of baskets by fiber artists, especially vis-a-vis the creation of basketry-adjacent objects such as sculptural nets, which emerged in this period, and experimentation with non-basketry knotting techniques.' In addition, the use of flexible and continuous threads and yarns "impart[ed] an irregular tipping, an uneasy balance, an uncertainty.... Not quite baskets and not quite bags," he wrote, "[the relaxed forms] defy clear classification and are therefore uncomfortable in a time preoccupied with classifications." In medium-specific art worlds at this time, such as for textiles, asymmetry in basketry or weaving dismissed the field's long-standing values pertaining to an object's "rightness"-including balance, the adherence to function, and/or the demonstration of skill and virtuosic workman­ ship.'4 The deliberate creation of eccentric shapes for expressive purposes or as vehicles for the investigation of material and process, such as Rossbach's Raffia Lace Basket or Westphal's sagging crocheted baskets, was in clear violation of these principles. In addition to the nonuniform, improvisational look Elliott created with bark and oversize stitching, or that Rossbach highlighted in his knobbly, paper­ plaited Cairn (1973; page 216) or Lettuce Basket, asymmetry was also connected to the adoption of techniques associated with creative spheres that had barely begun to be broached in the art world in the 1960s and '70s. For instance, Rossbach's use of macrame in his Christmas Basket (1968; page 216) reaches out to the craft renais­ sance of the American counterculture, and Westphal's combination of crochet and decorative ribbon in the mid-197os resonates with feminist reappropriations of domestic craft and the decorative. For Rossbach, "the extraordinary resonances and evocations" of the basket also included "problems of commonness, foreignness, distance, nearness, persistence, [and] impermanence" and were as central to new basketry as the modernist exploration of process and form.'5 The new basketry artist's relation­ ship to other histories of basketry was part of this constellation of considerations. The "new basketmakers," he wrote, "are not attempting to revive traditional basketmaking.... Nor [were] new baskets made to replace those that are dis­ appearing."16 Yet, the new baskets unavoidably, in Rossbach's view, drew upon historical Indigenous examples. By studying such objects, Rossbach and his peers were introduced to fibers new to their practices, as well as catalyzed to explore the expressive capacity of fiber in its "raw state," that is, pre-spun, spun by hand, or otherwise materially unsuitable for industry, and thus outside the purview of their art school training as weavers."Weavers," he wrote, "discovered that in any study of historical fragments of textiles [baskets included] ...what comes through is an awareness of the fibrousness. Frayed and faded, textiles declare their existence primarily as fiber." Added to this range of fibrous materials used around the world in basketry were a set of construction methods shared through time and across cultures, further opening new aesthetic terrain for the contemporary artist who adopted them. 2 13 17 217 Dimensions of Basketry Elissa Auther Rossbach understood how ancient and, in some cases, living Indigenous basketry cultures were directly connected to the natural world and the lifeways it supported, and he distinguished the objectives of the new basketry artist from any sort of practice that continued a tradition. (Scattered throughout his writing, Ross­ bach recognized the settler-colonial violence to Indigenous people and their ways of life, which destroyed thriving basketry cultures among other impacts-though it would not meet today's standards of acknowledgment.) To Rossbach, all baskets reflected the cultures and life patterns established by people in particular times and places. Accordingly, he was as much a part of a basket culture using plastic and newspaper as any other basket maker in history, in any part of the world, using the materials at hand. As such, there was no such thing as a degraded tradition of basketry in his writing, and there is no evidence that he believed in a concept of authenticity-in basketry, or any other craft for that matter-rooted in traditional techniques or natural materials. The wide-ranging assembly of baskets in his pub­ lications reflects this unorthodox, holistic approach. He juxtaposed images of bas­ kets, both historical and contemporary, alongside his own and that of his peers and students, complementing them with comparative photographs of hunks of unpro­ cessed fiber; large, abstracted knots; hunting traps; nets; and basketlike shelters. This approach expressed Rossbach's view of himself and others as links in a vast historical network of antecedents, and of the basket as a form able to move across history, culture, and context without being compromised or robbed of meaning. Whereas Rossbach and his peers and students were coming from a place where, as he saw it, "basketmaking was no longer practiced and where no possibil­ ity existed of continuing a tradition," Woven Histories includes the work of artists who are, in fact, part of communities in which the practice of basketry has a long history, is emblematic of cultural identity, and/or in their hands functions as a tool of decolonization.18 In addition, the present volume features work by artists whose turn to basketry allowed them to acquire medium-specific skill sets and competen­ cies developed over long periods of time, thus creating a relationship between their baskets or basket-related forms and those of living basket makers and traditions. These artists straddle traditional and contemporary art worlds in ways that distin­ guish them from the basketry artists of Rossbach's generation, while also creating work that resonates with the formal and political priorities of new basketry, such as the creation of novel, expressive forms or the melding of basketry materials and techniques with abstract form to scramble the art/craft divide. Born in Ngarrindjeri Country in South Australia, Yvonne Koolmatrie grew up with few encounters with the basketry of her ancestors, the teaching of which had been suppressed in missionary schools.' 9 She learned basketry as an adult from Dorothy Kartinyeri, a community elder, during a one-day workshop in 1982. Kartinyeri, known to Koolmatrie as Aunty Dory, taught participants the coiled bun­ dle technique, as well as how to harvest and process spiny sedge grass-a material that was traditional to Ngarrindjeri basketry but had been severely depleted by 218 Shan Goshorn, Unrestraina,6/e, 2014 220 agricultural practices in the region. Today, Koolmatrie sustainably harvests her own sedge grass, and the material is one way in which her work indexes home and the reciprocity of her environment. "This type of sedge," she writes, "grows along the Coorong and Murray River in Ngarrindjeri country and so weaving is linked to the river and its health-when the river suffers, the sedge grass is harder to find; when it flourishes, so do the rushes. The river, the Coorong, the sea and the lake are the four waters of the Ngarrindjeri and are all connected. Weaving is vital to Ngarrindjeri culture, it sustains us." In addition to her basketry practice being directly connected to ancestral lands, Koolmatrie's work self-consciously refer­ ences historical basket forms of the Ngarrindjeri nation, a collection of which she studied at the South Australian Museum. Prominent among this group of objects are fish and eel traps as well as bags for harvesting cockles and holding weapons, and mats for burying the dead. Her works such as Eel Trap (2003; page 219) and Burial Basket (2017; page 119) can be described as modern replicas of utilitarian baskets, but as works of art they function as embodiments of a community, com­ municating ancestral power through objects integral to a way of life.21 A similar claim about ancestral presence can be observed in the work of Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band of Cherokee), whose signature basket works com­ bine unassuming shapes with complex patterning. Rather than learning at the side of an elder, Goshorn came to basketry through a commission to illustrate a set of historical Cherokee basket designs. Traditionally, these baskets would have been made of river cane, a native bamboo that once thrived in the southeastern United States and supported Cherokee lifeways.23 The assignment provided Goshorn with an understanding of the single- and double-weave structure of Cherokee bas­ ketry, as well as its complex patterning produced through the plaiting of differently colored splints. Shortly thereafter, she taught herself how to plait, creating baskets that replaced river cane with historical photographs and images drawn from popu­ lar visual culture countered against splints printed with text taken from legislation, treaties, speeches, songs, and talks delivered by Native Americans. In her work, the plaiting technique creates an indivisible whole, melding the most emblematic form of Cherokee art-the plaited basket-with surface imagery that documents Cherokee history and cultural resilience in the face of settler-colonial violence and its ongoing contemporary legacy (page 220). The bamboo baskets of Japanese artists Nagakura Ken'ichi and Tanabe Yota are also included .in Woven Histories, representing another overlapping cre­ ative sphere for the reinvigoration of basketry in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Japanese bamboo art is a rarefied practice, and with few exceptions these artists establish careers after long, arduous apprenticeships under senior teachers or male heads of households. In more recent years, students sometimes study first at one of Japan's two bamboo art training schools before entering the apprenticeship phase. The history of Japanese basketry is rooted in the fabrica­ tion of bamboo flower baskets and other items for the sencha and chanoyu tea 20 22 24 221 Dimensions of Basketry Elissa Auther Nagakura Ken'ichi, 8CYm.6oo Chster (MvrCYtCYke), 2001 Tanabe Yota, CvltlvCYtlon, 2000 222 ceremonies, ikebana, and temple offerings made of virtuosic combinations of plaiting and twining. T his is the backdrop for Nagakura and Tanabe, both of whom radically alter this culturally specific basket tradition. Irregular shapes, eccentric forms of plaiting, and the incorporation of rough bamboo splints, or even the roots of the plant, are hallmarks of their reinterpretations. In works like Nagakura's Bam­ boo Cluster (Muratake) (2001; page 222) or Hundred (Hyaku) (2000; page 116), the uneven plaiting and twining appears fossilized, emerging from the earth, inspired by the burrows, nests, and hives of animals. References to the natural world, ancient art, and broader histories of abstraction prevail over established basketry models or standards. Likewise, Tanabe's unusual shapes challenge the conventions of the Japanese basket in form and technique. In works such as A Man of Aoshima (197os-198os; page 117) or Cultivation (2000; page 222), his rough style of twining at once calls attention to the bamboo's resistance to manipulation, the topogra­ phy of Japan, and modern abstract sculpture. Like other new basketry artists, he explores form and process as an end in itself. T he inclusion of artists such as Ruth Asawa, Martin Puryear, and Dorothy Gill Barnes in Woven Histories adds another layer of complexity to the history of basketry and its relationship to modern abstraction. In very different ways, each artist engaged with living basket traditions and, significantly, a concept of craft as a refined set of specialized skills. In distinction to the artists of Rossbach's new basketry circle, Asawa, Puryear, and Barnes were catalyzed by the acquisition of medium-specific skills and the material wisdom that accompanied them, and they often prioritized the demonstration of their own competencies. In the cases of Puryear and Barnes especially, they produced unusual baskets and basketlike forms that are unique not only for their interpretations of a natural environment, a mate­ rial, or a vernacular form, but also for their stunning virtuosity. Looking across various spheres of creative practice in which the basket has been subject to reinvention, Rossbach observed an oddity about new basketry: the fact that these nonutilitarian objects retain functional elements, vestiges of their traditional form, such as handles, bases, necks, and rims. For Rossbach, it was a reminder that "a basket as a work of art is linked to all other baskets, even the most utilitarian, ordinary, and anonymous."25 It was also an expression, he observed, of "a deeply felt loss"-a reaction to the disappearance of baskets and the creation "of new conditions in which art basket makers work." 26 223 Dimensions of Basketry Elissa Auther