Arts Life One bite and you'll be hooked "One of our region's better little dining secrets." — Danny Raskin *** Detroit Free Press Live Entertainment Thursday - Saturday Woven Treasures A Sampling of Our New Menu Items... 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. CEDAR PLANK SALMON Oven baked on a cedar plank and served with tarragon sauce. $15.95 r 15 °/o off LYNNE KONSTANTIN Special to the Jewish News Total Bill Lunch or Dinner (excluding tax, tip and alcoholic beverages) Expires on 01/09/05 L 39455 West Ten Mile Road in Novi • Southwest corner of Ten Mile & Haggerty Phone: 248.478.9742 www.moesonten.com 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. 911840 Is it time for a custom tailored shirt? Shirts reg. $98 NOW $78 Is your collar too tight? If you buy a larger collar the shirt fit too loose? Chen you try a tapered fit Yet that's not right either? Miniature Tohono ODdham horsehair baskets from the collection of Robert and Penelope Simpson 2 shirts with the purchase of a suit, on sale for $695 (reg. $850) Save $155 and receive 2 free shirts ($220 value) a custom tailored shirt jiff a perfect fit! i N t CUSTOM SHIRTS & SUITS 4087 W Maple Rd. (S.E. corner of Telegraph) Bloomfield Hills (248)642-6662 Offer good with this ad only. Minimum 4 shirts. Excludes previous orders. Expires 11.17/ Gift Certificates Available ow you stand tit our Jewish Homeland. Honor your loved ones with aJNE Tree for Israel. A memorable & meaningful gift for ny occasion. Available at the Jewish.com Store. wwwjewish.com ewish.corri" STORE 11/19 2004 54 - ",""- 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.