Every Basket Begins with a walk in the woods: Matt Tommey's Artist Story

For every maker, it seems there’s some sort of visceral, even spiritual connection with their materials. They speak to you in ways others don’t always understand. They call to you, beckoning you to spend time with them and explore what could be. They fill your dreams and cause you to wonder what else you could create. They are woven into the fabric of your creative voice. For me, those materials have always been found in the forest. Things like vines and bark, driftwood and branches that live in a world so separate from my own and yet call to me to carry their aesthetic into mine. Materials others might see as invasive or useless have become my creative partners and I have been forever transformed in collaborating with them.

Unexpected Artist
I never intended to become a basketry artist. But the materials called to me early in life. First, as a young teen growing up in middle Georgia, running around the woods, exploring the forest, making forts, and spending the night enjoying campfires and starlight skies. Then, as a college student at the University of Georgia, where I found a book on basket weaving at the campus bookstore where I was working. Some would say it was by chance, but I’ve seen too much not to attribute the find to a “divine conspiracy,” drawing me into what I was created to do as an artist. Just weeks before at the summer camp where I worked, I had been experimenting with the invasive vine, kudzu, and making rudimentary baskets with a friend. Having returned to college in the fall, I noticed that same vine growing all around the apartments where I lived. Indeed, serendipity led me there and drew me into the forest again, with just a pocket knife and a pair of scissors, wondering what I could create.
 
Throughout that fall, I sat on the neatly manicured lawns of my college apartment complex next to the forest and wove baskets from kudzu. My friends thought I had lost my mind, but I had never been happier. As a therapeutic recreation major at UGA, my advisor and instructors encouraged me to keep going. Pretty soon, I was selling baskets to people at the bookstore where I worked and even started teaching what I was learning to others. I was hooked and I kept on weaving.
 
After graduating college and entering the working world, I continued making as a hobby. Mostly because I had no context for being a professional artist or how anyone could have the audacity to think they could actually make a living from making baskets from kudzu. But as passions do, kudzu filled my dreams and eventually more and more of my time. I made rustic, functional baskets for about 13 years simply as a creative release and a way to stay connected to my creative self. I had no idea what lay ahead.

Everything Changed
In 2008, things began to change, and I heard, “Go back and re-learn your craft.” It was internal and strange but I sensed I needed to revisit the basics. As I did, newfound inspiration filled my heart, and my work began to take on a new life. By 2009, we moved to the mountains of western North Carolina – Asheville – partly as a lifestyle choice and partly as a way for me to focus more on my basketry work. Things progressed quickly and by 2011, I had been accepted into the prestigious Southern Highlands Craft Guild, was serving on the board of the National Basketry Organization, and was even included on a registry of American Artists Under 40 by the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery. It was like I was living a dream.  And yet, it was only the beginning.
 
Being in Asheville, one of the centers of fine craft in America, caused me to dream again about my basketry and start seeing it as sculpture, rather than simply functional. I loved functional work, but as a working artist trying to make a living, I realized early on that my ideal clientele placed a much higher perceived value on basketry they saw as art versus baskets they saw as functional. My basketry evolved from more than just a convergence of traditional techniques and materials into a creative language that allowed me to express myself through the wild natural materials I loved. That freedom set me on a whole new course artistically.

Inspiration & Mentoring
I was also during that time; I was introduced to some really influential people in my artistic journey. Michael Davis, one of the fathers of the contemporary basketry movement, and Billie Ruth Sudduth, one of the most celebrated basketry artists of the last 30 years who, in her own words, created baskets to “hold your interest, not your objects”. Both befriended me with encouragement and advice as I sought to make a living as an artist and create work that was inspiring, well-crafted, and beautiful. Jonas Gerard, a renowned painter who encouraged me to create work for the wall, and encaustic artist Julia Fosson, who helped me take a chance on encaustic wax in my work. Additionally, the work of artists like Dorothy Gill Barnes, Ed Rossbach, Polly Adams Sutton, Ane Lyngsgaard, and others challenged me to push the limits of functional basketry into a place of beauty and expression. Each leaving their mark on my creative journey and woven into the fabric of my story.

Speaking the Language of Natural Materials
Being immersed in a natural environment rich with natural materials like southern Appalachia, I was like a kid in a candy store. I spent my days walking through the forests and sustainably harvesting natural materials like kudzu and grapevine, honeysuckle and bittersweet. Winter days were spent harvesting vines and branches, while humid summers were spent harvesting bark from tulip poplar and mimosa trees, giving me a visceral connection to the materials with which I created and an unexplained joy that bubbled forth from me anytime I would talk about my work. Most people saw these materials as invasive, making it easier for me to connect with landowners in the area who had materials, but I saw them as my creative partners. Beautiful and waiting with anticipation for me to invite them into this inspiring dance of basketry.
 
Through being inspired by the forms I saw in nature, like nests, pods, and rocks, along with the crooked thickets of mountain laurel that covered the mountainsides of southern Appalachia and 19th-century ikebana baskets, I started creating works that seemed they had almost been discovered in nature rather than created by human hands. My work progressed as I moved from single baskets on pedestals to the wall, creating large-scale sculptures for luxury homes and commercial spaces reflecting the natural world's rustic elegance. Harvesting materials from the property of my commissioned clients and creating works with a sense of place resonating with the beauty of their land and homes. Using sustainably harvested mountain laurel branches and driftwood as the stage on which my baskets could perform.  Incorporating various other materials like encaustic wax, copper, and clay into my work as my creative voice continued to find its own uniqueness. All these materials become a palette from which I create nested forms and sculptures that echo the beauty of nature and its Creator.
 
It's Not About the Weaving
For me, my work has never been only about weaving. That’s just one part of the making process. One that is equal to but not more important than the harvesting and processing the materials. But the materials and the land are what have always captured my heart. In fact, I don’t think I would have ever pursued basketry without my connection to the materials and the natural world. Each has continued to connect me to the work in a way weaving alone never could. The natural world continues to inspire me with its endless forms, colors, and textures, weaving its unlimited bounty into my story. For me, the weaving of a basket is simply where all those things come together.
 
As I look back on the evolution of my work and career, several themes come to the surface: community,  weaving, and risk. Communing with nature and materials. The way my woven objects commune with each other in sculptural settings. The way my clients feel when they commune with the beauty that fills their homes when they display my work. Weaving not only materials but also being woven into a community of makers and clients who support, challenge and inspire me every day. And risk. Not being afraid to push boundaries, take calculated leaps of faith, follow my gut and be true to the creative expression resonating inside me. To risk going against the grain of what others are doing in order to make a living and build a business that serves me and my family, rather than becoming subservient to the work and mainstream beliefs of how to make a living as an artist, which ultimately causes burnout and resentment.
 
Beauty for Beauty's Sake
Although I never set out to create work with an overt purpose – I embrace beauty for beauty’s sake - the natural outflow of my work has evolved into art that speaks of convergence, celebrating how disparate parts work together and unity. How we all live, function, and and thrive as people woven together in the story of life. Something we desperately need more of in today’s world. As I continue my creative journey and collaboration with the natural world and humanity, I hope my work continues to resonate with these timeless messages of hope, beauty, and community and be a part of weaving together a better world. That’s the artist’s dream, right? That what we do really can make a difference in the world.
 
It has been said that all creativity happens at the edge of chaos and order. For me the chaos just happens to look like tangled, gnarly vines wrapped tightly around strangled trees and laurel, pods and cones littering the forest floor; the order like a beautiful sculptural basket that reminds me of its source. Somewhere in the middle is where the magic happens, where Creativity broods over the chaos and new life begins; beauty is born. A simple walk through forest explodes into a symphony of possibilities; back breaking in giddy glee as I carry the treasures toward their purpose. What once was dead is now alive, that which was hated is now desired, that which had no breath suddenly heaves with hope afresh. The weaving is the easy part; it's seeing beauty while it's still hidden that is the adventure. Even though these woven creations seem to simply form in the hands of their maker, as if to say it is only skill that brings them to life, it must always be remembered that every basket begins with a walk in the woods. It's time to take a walk.
 
I Am A Maker
I was made to be a maker
With busy hands and thoughts and dreams.
I see the things that no one else sees
And wonder why not me.
I begin in places not understood
Just to end in places of unexpected joy.
I dream of beauty yet manifested
And wake to craft the wind.
I hear the sounds of life blowing through ideas
As I quiet my soul and quicken my hands
To make, create and release the dreams
Of the One who dreams with me.
I am a Maker.

Copyright 2014.  Matt Tommey