Arts Life
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Detroit Free Press
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Woven Treasures
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LAKE SUPERIOR WHITEFISH
Flash fried in Japanese bread crumbs with lemon butter sauce. $13.95
U-M Dearborn gallery exhibits both traditional
and contemporary baskets from regional collectors.
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uring years of apartheid in South
Africa, Zulu men, working as
watchmen at construction sites,
would pass the time by collecting found
objects and weaving them into imbenge
(lids for clay vessels often containing
beer, traditionally woven of natural
fibers).
though, have found permanent homes in
the Detroit area with local collectors,
including Dorothy and Byron Gerson,
Deborah Silver and Rob Yedinak, Hope
Palmer and Dirk Bakker, and Ann and
Burt Shifman.
"The exhibition is not intended as a
social commentary or a history of basket-
making," says Kenneth R. Gross, director
of the Alfred Berkowitz Gallery and cura-
tor of the show.
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Among the refuse transformed into
striking yet functional works of art was
brightly colored telephone wire. Since
that time, the craft has grown into a cot-
tage industry for Zulu women in
KwaZulu, Natal, South Africa.
Through Dec. 3, visitors can view a
collection of the brilliandy graphic crafts
alongside many other traditional and
contemporary pieces on loan from more
than 30 regional collectors in "Baskets,"
an exhibition on display at the Alfred
Berkowitz Gallery at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn.
"Work carries the men of African vil-
lages so far away, and the villages have
been hard-hit by AIDS, so women have
started trying to support themselves by
weaving these wire baskets to earn
money for food, education and medical
supplies. For most of the artisans, weav-
ing is their sole source of income,"
explains Grand Blanc resident Loren
Burton, who, along with her husband,
Stephen, has loaned pieces to the exhibit
from their 75-plus-piece collection of
telephone-wire baskets.
"The story is fascinating, but I was ini-
tially drawn in by their colors," adds
Burton. "I saw some in a shop window
in Atlanta and just fell in love with
them."
Displayed alongside the Burtons' con-
temporary folk-art pieces are baskets
from around the globe, some hundreds
of years old, some brand new All,
"We are always thinking about how to
tie in our exhibits with the university,
which is engineering- and teckpology-
based," he explains. "This ties together
materials and technology. These pieces 211
take something, make something out of
it, and give it a presence.
"We want our students and the public
just to come in, to look at the baskets
and experience a sense of wonder, cre-
ativity and impulse," Gross says. "There
are pieces made out of horsehair by a
Tohono O'Odharn tribe in Arizona that
are smaller than a green pea next to an
English utility basket used in the textile
industry that could fit four people inside
it."
He adds that not all of the owners of
the pieces are collectors: "Some people
inherited pieces.
Some pieces are functional — there's
farming equipment, a laundry basket.
And some people have bought a single
piece just because they came across
something that spoke to them."
Because of this, the exhibit displays
garage-sale finds alongside the rarest bas-
kets by contemporary Japanese masters
worth tens of thousands of dollars —
which is precisely how Gross intended it
to be.
And some fall somewhere in the mid-
dle. Among the baskets that former
Birmingham gallery owner Janis
Wetsman loaned to "Baskets" is a find
she calls serendipitous.