Basket

Denise Reed created a large outdoor basket sculpture, honoring Northwest Native weaving traditions while bringing them into a large-scale public artwork. The basket is woven from a mixture of natural materials gathered throughout the seasons.

The gathering and preparation of these materials is deeply connected to cultural responsibility, ancestral knowledge, and the teachings of the artist’s family. Each element has its own meaning, history, and purpose, and weaving them together on a large scale celebrates the strength, resilience, and beauty of Coast Salish traditions.

The basket will incorporate a variety of natural materials, including:

• Driftwood
• Cedar bark
• Cedar root
• Hemp
• Raffia
• Sweetgrass
• Cattail

Each material has been gathered, processed, dyed, and woven by hand using cultural practices passed down to the artist by her mother and aunt.

About the artist:

I began weaving raffia baskets when I was seven years old. Whenever my mother sat down to weave, I would sit beside her and learn by watching and weaving with her. I was blessed to learn from both my mother, Sharron Nelson, and my aunt, Karen Reed, who are Master basket weavers and teachers. They taught me not only weaving techniques but also how to respectfully gather and prepare natural materials such as raffia, cedar, wool, bear grass, sweetgrass, cherry bark, maple bark, cattail, sinew, and tule.

These early teachings shaped who I am as an artist, and today it is my honor and responsibility to ensure these ancestral teachings remain strong and are passed down to future generations.

For more than twenty years, I have been a member of the Native American Basket Weaving Association, where I have learned from many skilled weavers across the Northwest. My lifelong goal is to learn as many weaving styles, patterns, forms, and materials as possible. Having mastered many traditional methods, I now dedicate my work to teaching, demonstrating, and creating pieces that preserve and share our cultural knowledge.