{"id":4355,"date":"2018-04-14T15:19:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T20:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=4355"},"modified":"2018-04-14T15:19:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-14T20:19:07","slug":"doreen-bayley-sculptural-basketry-dodeca-uruguay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/?p=4355","title":{"rendered":"Doreen Bayley, Sculptural Basketry, Dodeca, Uruguay."},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year I visited the exhibition of award winners in Uruguay’s Premio Nacional Artesania de 2017<\/em> \/ National Craft Award\u00a0 2017, at the Museo Blanes in Montevideo, about which I posted<\/a><\/span>\u00a0 at the time.\u00a0 It included these\u00a0two non-functional vessels, made from pine needles stitched and held in place by needle and thick thread, working up spirally into basket-like forms, each topped with objects gathered from nature – on one a limestone rock, and on the other a large seed.\u00a0 (I’m sorry the photo is a bit contaminated by reflections on the acrylic display case they were in)<\/p>\n

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Doreen Bayley, sculptural basketry ~ 10cm<20cm, Premio Nacional Artesania de 2017.<\/h5>\n

Doreen Bayley’s constructions’ emphasise the negative space between fibres (enclosed hidden volume) and suggestions of function, both from the heritage of ‘baskets’ as containers, connecting modern basketry with ancient woven or meshed vessels.\u00a0 Probably all ancient peoples had some kind of hand made fibre vessels we call baskets<\/span><\/a>\u00a0– this article will give broad perspectives through human history, though I skimmed without seeing any reference to the basketry skills of the Australian Aborigine which are well known and continue to this day through the art and efforts of such artist-teachers as Nalda Searles<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, and even a gardening program<\/a><\/span>\u00a0on my country’s national broadcaster, hardly surprising really, as much beautiful basketry today<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is made from gathered vegetative fibres.<\/p>\n

Though the Uruguayan 2017 national craft award show has finished, this award winning fibre artist, Doreen Bayley of Colonia, Uruguay, currently has some additional, mostly small, pieces of sculptural basketry on exhibition at the Dodeca Cultural Centre Carrasco<\/span>,<\/a>\u00a0showing until May 2nd 2018.\u00a0 In some ways the pieces are more interesting than those she had in the award show, though I can understand why a couple of them at least she may have decided were not appropriate for entry there.<\/p>\n

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For this largest piece in the exhibition,\u00a0<\/em>Doreen used\u00a0Salix Matsudana\u00a0<\/em>known variously as the corkscrew willow, the tortured willow, the curly willow … a popular subject for gardeners and raw material for interior decorators.\u00a0 Assembled from cuts of this tree’s weeping branches, the short pieces are held in place by plastic ties frequently used by gardeners and home handymen.\u00a0 Overall this piece is about 30cm x 25cm x 5cm\u00a0 approx – and that little space centre front in the section of the bare wood just suggests a vessel function.\u00a0 Actually to me, the whole thing suggests a facial tissue box tipped on its side.\u00a0 As my eye flips from the branches to the ties that hold them in place, so my mind flips from ‘beautiful to not-really-beautiful’….it’s an intriguing piece.\u00a0 In front of it on a low table are two very small pieces: now these two suggest<\/em> some practical purpose but are in fact totally ‘useless’.\u00a0 The blue of a fine blue fibre woven in with something firm but hidden, makes me think of a small sack of something, standing up on it’s base.\u00a0 The other piece makes me think of either an Aladdin’s lamp or a drinking vessel, the old fashioned kind of thick glass used to feed reclining infants or invalids in the days before sippy cups or bendy straws.\u00a0 Each piece made mind ponder on ‘the inside’.<\/p>\n

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Doreen Bayley, vessel, grasses, base approx 15cm diam,\u00a0 10cm h.<\/h5>\n

And finally, an elegant vessel that one could certainly plunk a pot of maidenhair fern into, but why would you? This lovely piece begs to be lifted up, weighed in the hand, turned over, sniffed, smoothed by the palm and fingers, looked at closely, peered into and set back down again with a satisfied smile.\u00a0 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. Doreen does pre-treat her materials to protect against the ravages of decay by insects, moulds and fungi.<\/p>\n

Doreen Bayley’s statement mentions the influence of Ed Rossbach, who spearheaded the 1970s resurgence of interest in the craft of basket making, elevating it to a sculptural art form – some would say architectural. Though he himself used a wide variety of natural and man made materials in his art, under the influence of hippy culture’s back to the earth movement many since that time have focused on gathering and using natural materials they found around them.\u00a0\u00a0This firmly grounds modern basketry in the heritage of an ancient craft that descends from the Stone Age.\u00a0 Materials, food and tradable goods had to be carried around at times, and most ancient peoples had some form of woven fibre technology to do this.\u00a0 Woven vessels have been found from Asia Minor and ancient Egypt from before 5000 BC, and similarly dry desert climates around the world favoured preservation of early natural fibre objects from plant materials and hides; but like all other textiles in humid conditions, basketry decays fairly rapidly from the effects of moulds and insects.\u00a0 (For a glimpse of the variety of materials and forms in basketry today, go to\u00a0https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/basketry\/\u00a0 and then consider the art of Lanny Bergner<\/a>\u00a0about whose work I posted March 26, 2016 – baskets\/vessels but stainless steel and blowtorched – they’ll last indefinitely!)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year I visited the exhibition of award winners in Uruguay’s Premio Nacional Artesania de 2017 \/ National Craft Award\u00a0 2017, at the Museo Blanes in Montevideo, about which I posted\u00a0 at the time.\u00a0 It included these\u00a0two non-functional vessels, made from pine needles stitched and held in place by needle and thick thread, working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[424,427,423,425,426,215,319,321],"class_list":["post-4355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-basketry","tag-dodeca-cultural-space","tag-doreen-bayley","tag-form","tag-function","tag-holes","tag-lanny-bergner","tag-vessels"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-18f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4355"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4365,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4355\/revisions\/4365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}