Artist: Melinda Mayhall
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Very early in the 1980's I noticed that a Basketry workshop was being offered at Harbourfront, and, although I had been doing quite a bit of unsophisticated work in fibre previously, I had never had a workshop in anything. Curiosity about the construction of our collected baskets urged me into that life-changing workshop with Ankaret Dean. From that point on I was a convert. After a break of a few years my education continued with annual brief workshops with outstanding basketmakers from around the world.
While these encounters can open your mind to new directions and introduce you to new techniques, there is no learning experience superior to just sitting and doing it over and over and over. That is when the skills are perfected and the ideas flow. Even with the simplest of techniques there was scope for colour, pattern, curves and angles. The range of materials was astonishing: metal, wire, bark, canvas, paper, and the great range of ‘found materials' picked up from the streets or forests. Who could resist?
As a bonus, the work found a wide-spread audience allowing me to continue making. In the last few years the work has become smaller, more intimate, with the use of beading techniques being employed in most pieces and an overindulgence in embellishment making for a lush tactile appeal and a sense of frivolity and abundance.
There is every probability that the work will move off in a different direction soon. The cache of materials is not nearly depleted.