Basketry Now 2025

This summer, Textile Center is pleased to present and host Basketry Now 2025, a biennial juried exhibition, in partnership with the National Basketry Organization (NBO), coinciding with a celebration of their 25th anniversary. The artworks that have been selected are a showcase of the best in basketry from across the country and include entries from as far away as the UK, Italy, and Australia.

Juror Gyöngy Laky selected 68 pieces from 64 artists, out of 215 entries from 97 artists. These benchmarks in excellence feature diverse approaches and demonstrate original concepts, innovative design, and superior technical skill to provide an exciting survey of artistic expression in contemporary basketry traditions.

Laky, selected by NBO to jury the exhibit, has an influential practice in fiber sculpture and education spanning over 50 years, from her studies at UC Berkeley in the 70’s with Ed Rossbach, to founding Fiberworks, an internationally recognized center for textile arts in Berkeley, to her teaching and leadership at UC Davis where she established the Department of Environmental Design. Her sculptural basketry works are featured in prominent collections including the Renwick Museum in Washington DC, San Francisco MOMA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and her personal papers are in the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art. Her most recent book is Screwing with Order, assembled art, actions and art practice (Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Germany, 2022). Laky is a founding member of NBO.

Of the work, Laky says, “After significant review, I was able to select 68 pieces… and it was difficult! Some pieces expressed an interest in the earliest traditions of making things, while others expressed such major capability of using the hand to create art, delving into the intelligent hand’s ability — these great tools — to make art.”

Basketry sculptures and the visual language of basketry have come through a long and storied past that has embraced a vocabulary of contrasts, contradictions, forms, and functions. In their similarities, they may hold or contain, but they may also filter, strain, or trap. They may be rigid or fluid and their function often requires adaptability, which regulates or constricts form. Calculation and experimentation are employed, as complexity and simplicity are explored.

“Using twining, weaving, coiling, looping, netting, tying, and interlacing, these artists integrate myriad interactions with materials that are foraged, recycled, and repurposed,” says Tracy Krumm, Textile Center’s Director for Artistic Advancement. “Locally harvested materials like willow, tree bark, and pine needles lend organic qualities, give a nod to the natural world, and require an approach that often addresses irregularity and fragility. Plastics, metals, and found objects offer other loaded vocabulary to the mix. For example, Esther Cho’s twined sculptural work, Baggage 1, incorporates specific materials, Korean Mulberry paper and repurposed thermofoil plastic from Chinese take-out, with specific techniques, twining and Jiseung (Korean paper weaving), to combine personal narrative with cultural history.

“Working with NBO has been a terrific opportunity to present fresh new works in basketry and hand construction here at Textile Center in Minneapolis,” Tracy adds. “From works based on complex mathematical and geometric plaiting structures, like Variation on a Theme 5, by Dorothy McGuinness and the embellished form, Spine Basket, by Bethany McGann-Strohm, to the subtle integration of color and material as seen in TRI-DYED, by pine needle basketmaker Clay Burnette, there is tremen­­dous variety to explore in the show.”

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 4 pm
Open until 7 pm on Thursday
Closed Sunday + Monday

Image: Variation on a Theme 5, Dorothy McGuinness