I know next to nothing about basketmaking, although I have always loved the artistry of traditional basketmakers, from those working in the great African American sweetgrass tradition on the East Coast to the magnificent Native American basketmakers on the West Coast. A long time ago I was fortunate to meet Lillian Elliott at the Split Rock Arts Program and see how a contemporary artist of skill and imagination could take basketmaking in a whole new direction. That encounter helped prepare me to appreciate Tressa Sularz’s achievement: the relatively straightforward baskets that emphasize a single color, the more sculptural works with their twisting forms and handsome complement of beads, and the unusual creations that contain a gold or rust-colored bounty, egg-like objects that suggest an archaic hoard or futuristic artifacts retrieved from a galaxy far, far away.

The works that most fascinate me, however, are from the Solitude series, created as a response to the death of Tressa’s first husband, John Sularz. Perhaps the reliance on mainly uncolored, natural materials appeals to my Midwestern plainness. The forms have the elegance of true simplicity, the kind often identified with the Shakers: functionality raised to the highest level. I like that as well. But what makes several works from this series so intriguing to me are two other aspects: the use of red, and the buttons.

Tressa Sularz, Closures. Photo by Peter Lee.

The appeal of the red is perhaps more easily explained. A little red can go a long way, figuratively speaking, but in two of the Solitude works the red goes a long way, literally—in strips of fabric that run from one end to the other along the edges of the top opening. Perhaps that indicates an unhealed wound or scar. In any case, the red is an attention getter, yet not overdone; it wards off blandness while adding boldness. I can’t say I love red the way Lorca loved green: “Verde, que te quiero verde.” But I love Tressa’s use of red, as in another work in the same series, where two small rings of red encircle the ends, administering precise little jolts that enliven the whole.

Still, it’s the buttons I can’t stop thinking about. The buttons provide, in Tressa’s words, “a vision of closure.” In the Solitude series that means going from the physical to the psychological, with Tressa giving buttons metaphorical, even metaphysical, significance in relation to the overarching theme of death and grief.

Tressa Sularz, Confluence. Photo by Peter Lee.

It’s usually only when one is lost, or maybe discovered unbuttoned when it shouldn’t be, that buttons get my attention. But Tressa’s use of buttons got me thinking, and now I’ve got buttons on the brain: the lost and the found, the unbuttoned and the buttoned . . . buttons, buttons, everywhere. In Tressa’s work, the buttons stand out because they are used in such an unusual, suggestive fashion. They are surprising and beautiful because they are so not cute, so not either purely functional or merely decorative. The buttons, in their modest, carefully ordered patterns on the sides of some of the works, hint at the enormous problem of containment. It is easy to imagine grief as a powerful expansive force that radiates out like a shock wave. In Tressa’s work all that uncontrollable grief is encapsulated as the implied content of a small hand-held carrier, somewhere between a doctor’s bag and a firewood tote, accompanied by those icons of closure in neat array. But the red thread used to attach the buttons means the burden is clear. Even in this undemonstrative, unflashy form, the elegance is always being tested by those buttons, the plainness by that red, the simplicity by the disruptive power of grief. In a world of such order, the smallest variation reverberates like clashing cymbals. An extra bit of red added to the thread on just one button reveals the intensity that is there, under control. Amid all the ranks of buttons the introduction of extra spacing and asymmetry, though with overall geometry preserved, suggests something less static, more dynamic, like a game of Go in progress or at least positions laid out and ready for the opening move. The emphasis on order and control hints at darker forces, disorder, a lack of control. I should note that some works in the Solitude series have on their sides not buttons but small images of street signs in compressed montages, a much more intense if still metaphorical expression of the underlying powerful emotions.

Tressa made me pay extra attention to the buttons. The works as wholes matter more, yet the buttons remain essential. They signal the need for psychological, not just physical, closure. They also express the free play of the creative spirit, as elements whose artistic role goes far beyond simple utility. I am grateful to Tressa and her buttons for the reminder of what art and artists do: make us look, make us think, make us live with a keener awareness of things as great as grief or as small as a button. ◼︎

Robert Silberman is a professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota and a widely published art critic. This essay was written for A SOUL WEAVER’S JOURNEY, a retrospective look at 40 years of work made by basket-maker and fiber artist Tressa Sularz. The accompanying book, funded by a Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Support grant, includes several essays and responses, including this one, which has been reprinted with the author's permission.

The exhibition is on display at Homewood Studios Gallery through April 30 with a closing reception Sunday, April 30, 12 – 2pm.

To see more of the artist's work, visit tressasularz.com. All images courtesy of the artist and author.

Robert Silberman

Articles by Robert Silberman

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