Bushels Of Therapy Basketweaving Eases Stress And Helps Create A Sense Of Accomplishment
FOR THE RECORD: Saturday, April 15, 1995 CORRECTION: The cost of a one-time class at Woven Reed Basketry is $15 and that includes materials. The price was wrong in an IN Life story on Thursday.
The Shaker Cat-Head basket is so named because that’s what it looks like upside down. Right-side up, it’s a utility vehicle designed to hold a quart of strawberries, blueberries and other foods early Americans gathered. And in these modern times, something else.
You’ll glimpse it on Joanne Mullen Sours’ dining room table, past the bent heads of women at work over small talk and the occasional curse.
For while they’re weaving reeds into elbow baskets, market baskets and fruit and flower baskets perfect for Easter, they’re getting something more.
“Therapy,” says Kathleen Kellen, an occupational therapist.
“Something started, something finished, something to show for it,” says Joan Reuthinger, a psychiatric nurse.
The women laugh. But they’re not kidding. Gathered at Sours’ table for her Wednesday night class, they join a federal attorney and a mother with her 10 year-old son.
The women dip long reeds in water, weave and twine them into shape. They “upset the basket,” “bury the spokes” and “lash” away.
“I work with people all day,” says one student. “It’s nice to work with an inanimate object I can control.”
Heavy stuff for a craft that relies on slender reeds, careful hands and old concepts. Native Americans wove grasses, bark and wood splints into functional containers. Early Americans wove practical gathering baskets, including the distinct twinbottomed egg basket and the elegantly simple Appalachian and Shaker baskets.
Two things happen when students begin: One, they never walk through an import store in quite the same way. No machine makes baskets. And two: Students surprise themselves. By the end of a single class, they are holding a completed work.
“People are amazed that they can make a whole basket in three hours. Their families are always impressed,” says Dian Zahner, who teaches basketmaking at Corbin Art Center.
Nationally, basketmaking is enjoying an almost inexplicable upsurge, says Debbie Richards, president of the Association of Michigan Basketmakers. In her state, the annual basketmaking convention draws 1,000 people.
“Even people who don’t have a lot of imagination or dexterity can still do this,” says Judiee Howard, a Sacred Heart Medical Center surgical nurse who began making baskets with Sours.
After the classes, Howard made several baskets to fill with soaps and dried flowers for Christmas gifts. The only person disappointed was her sister, who didn’t get one.
“We like to think of it as creating heirlooms,” Richards says.
In her South Hill home, Sours helps beginners create like craftsmen. A former forester and elementary teacher, she learned basketmaking near the Jocko River in Montana and pursued her artistry in Missoula and Tucson, Ariz. She finds women and men are drawn to it for the same reason she was as a stayat-home mother of two.
“In everyday life, we don’t often see our accomplishments, but as soon as I started to weave I thought, “Wow, look at what I did.”’
Throughout her home, on mantels, shelves and corners, are baskets. Garlic baskets, Hopi decorative baskets, baskets made by her children, 10 and 6. A colorful covered Ethiopian basket holds hats and mittens for the Northwest winters. A large woven backpack holds flowers. It doubles as carry-on luggage on flights to California when Sours carries bread and Washington wines to relatives.
Sours is currently weaving a basket birdhouse for an upcoming auction at the Spokane Art School, using red and yellow willow she gathered along a Montana roadside.
For classes, she hand-dyes the flat and round reeds, actually rattan core imported from China and Southeast Asia. Working outside in the open air, she’ll also stain completed baskets to give them a rich antique look. Students have experimented with such natural stains as coffee, tea, even soy sauce.
“It smelled like takeout,” said Sours with a laugh.
The reed is often complemented by splints of ash, maple or walnut, woven into the design, or handpainted touches.
Zahner also teaches a popular class each summer at Finch Arboretum in which students gather and use natural materials such as iris leaves and Virginia creeper.
Students are often surprised at how affordable and low-tech the craft is.
“You don’t need a fancy sewing machine, and most of the equipment you can bring from home,” said Howard. “Clothespins, you do need those.”
Sours offers a one-time class in which students complete a basket ($30 for materials and $10 a class). Those who want to continue can enroll in a series of four classes to make three baskets.
Many continue. The groups of six to eight students often develop a bond even stronger than the containers they complete.
One group started exchanging cookies and sipping hot buttered rums, which Sours laughingly delayed until the baskets were almost completed.
There are always underwater basket-weaving jokes and the occasional outburst: “Is my bottom round enough?”
And almost always, there is the calming effect of working with your hands, in a craft women have shared for centuries.
When Lynne Sanders’ son Jon was killed in June 1993, Sours came to her home every few weeks. The two women sat on the deck, weaving baskets.
“When you’re feeling like the world is spinning out of control, it helped to know I could still produce and create,” Sanders says.
Since then, she’s made picnic baskets, fruit baskets, wine baskets. She figures basketmaking into her annual household budget and now other friends join her on the deck.
“For me, it’s a creative outlet that goes on and on,” she said. “And it’s cheaper than therapy.”
“I think the camaraderie goes hand in hand with the gratification and sense of accomplishment,” Richards said. “The sharing is almost as important as the other.”
For more information on basketmaking classes, call Sours’ Woven Reed Basketry at 838-7681 or the Corbin Art Center at 625-6677.
ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo