Artwork Details
- Title
- Sustaining Traditions-Digital Memories
- Artist
- Date
- 2018
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 9 1⁄2 × 4 1⁄2 in. (24.1 × 11.4 cm)
- Copyright
- © 2018, Kelly Church
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the Decorative Arts and Crafts Endowment
- Mediums Description
- black ash, sweetgrass, rit, copper, vial EAB, flashdrive
- Classifications
- Highlights
- Subjects
- Allegory — other — memory
- Object Number
- 2020.49A-B
Artwork Description
Kelly Church is from an unbroken line of Anishinaabe basket makers. Along with her family, she harvests and processes the materials for her work. Sustaining Traditions—Digital Memories is a basket that carries the past, present, and future teachings of this art. Woven with black ash and Michigan-sourced copper, the radiant green color alludes to the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle that has decimated black ash trees in over twenty-three US states and two Canadian provinces. When opened, the basket reveals a sealed glass vial with the carcass of the beetle. It also contains a computer flash drive with directions on how to harvest and prepare black ash for weaving, in case those traditions are lost without access to healthy trees.
This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, 2022
Exhibitions
