Baskets. When I think about them and the ways they’ve showed up in my life, they’ve always been around the sacred magical every day.
I think my first relationship with a basket started with the idea of picnic baskets. Packing food into a large wooden warm colored basket with a big thick handle, frolicking to a spot by the creek to eat sandwiches and fruit. I romanticized the fairy tale connection that baskets seem to have. Didn’t Little Red Riding Hood have a basket? I received fun woven baskets woven by African Women beginning in College as presents from family and friends. They started to house things around my house like pencils or magazines, or knickknacks that didn’t seem to fit anywhere except in a basket. Next I started to learn about collecting plants and fruits and more from the earth, and I knew I wanted to collect them in a basket. Now baskets hold some of my art supplies, I have a basket holding a bunch of pine needles ready to be woven into their own baskets, and I have a basket holding some space for the sacred in my life. Through a small basket on my altar, I hold little trinkets I’ve found that have meaning to me. I love these sacred prayer baskets. They simultaneously feel alive, sweet, safe, creative, magnetic and magical.
I love the way the I choose to weave. Whenever I am feeling a little off, strange, confused or unclear about my next moves, I find myself weaving. This weaving invites in work with my hands. I am holding the needles in my hands as I thread through the circular structure, spiraling around and out from the center. The center of the basket and the center of my being. Weaving reminds me of my center, that through my center I hold this stillness, this point of equanimity and every-thingness.
Recently I learn to fold paper cranes. After crafting my first one I wanted to place her somewhere special and wondered where she felt the best. She found herself on my Vision Quest altar, in a basket, of course! A basket named “The Center of the Earth is a Nest”. I suppose this basket was waiting for her crane all along. I love the symbology that a paper crane is nesting in the center of the earth, for it feels to me that peace is radiating a bit more in my life since placing this first crane in her nest. These symbolic acts have a lot of meaning and value in my life. The actions of creating art pieces that reflect my desired outcomes helps me to feel empowered and it feels as if the wish begins to dance itself towards me. The act of creating art around what I am dreaming up feels like a gentle way of being, a natural way of being.
Embracing myself as an artist over the last several years, I find art welcomes into my life a sense of magic, of presence, of effortlessness of brining my dreams to life. The act of creating isn’t often effortless but the outcome of brining my wishes to life a little bit more has a sense of ease to them. It sets into motion my call for my wish to come to me. Maybe that’s why they say art saves life, because it connects one to their truest essence and then one crafts something from this place. Always reminding them of their center. “The Center of the Earth is a Nest”. Maybe my center is a nest, holding the bird of my soul. She gets to dance with the wind, explore and soar overhead, overserving and watching. She sings her songs in the early morning and throughout the day, and then comes back to this Nest to Rest, to eat, to Be.
