Cathie Harper has never met a material she couldn’t weave. A basketry artist based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Cathie creates functional and decorative pieces using traditional and modern fibres and findings. Her most recent achievement is a solo exhibition titled Interwoven, showcasing almost fifty pieces of her work. It will be displayed at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife from June to early December, 2022.
Cathie made her first basket in 1979 using commercial reed and a wooden base. She didn’t keep that basket but was intrigued by the process of basket weaving. When she relocated to Yellowknife in 1996, Cathie was encouraged to join the Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts. She enrolled in a willow basketry class thinking that her time in Yellowknife would be short and basketry would require less investment than other disciplines like pottery or stained glass. Fast forward more than twenty-five years and Cathie, still in Yellowknife, has made a considerable investment in basketry tools and materials!
As an experienced basketry artist, Cathie primarily weaves with willow that she collects and prepares herself. She strives to expand her repertoire with new techniques and other natural and synthetic materials. Her academic background in forestry helps her to understand the properties and potential of various materials. Although predominantly self-taught, she frequently travels to Washington State and elsewhere for basketry conferences and workshops to broaden her skills and gain inspiration for her projects. Dabbling in other disciplines often influences her work, with touches of silversmithing, pottery, and fibre arts apparent in her pieces.
When asked about her favorite materials, Cathie is quick to praise the versatility of wild northern willow. Her piece From NWT to Alberta uses more than twenty-five varieties and thicknesses of wild willow collected throughout the Northwest Territories and Alberta combined with cultivated willow and red osier dogwood. This commissioned piece truly demonstrates Cathie’s talent for willow basketry, featuring more than twenty different willow weaving techniques.
From NWT to Alberta. Wild and cultivated willow, red osier dogwood; willow weaving techniques
Willow Bark Knitting is a wall-hanging made from cultivated willow bark using knitting techniques. While Cathie admits to having only rudimentary knitting skills, and despite the skepticism of experienced knitters, she rose to the challenge and managed to manipulate the bark as if it were yarn.
Willow Bark Knitting: Knit and purl knitting techniques. Click to enlarge.
Birch Bark Patchwork is a small wall-hanging comprising numerous patches of bark sewn together with waxed linen thread and sweetgrass using embroidery stitches familiar from crazy quilting. Cathie continues to explore even more possibilities for working with willow and birch bark such as adding texture with embossing plates.
Birch Bark Patchwork: Birch bark, waxed linen thread, sweetgrass; crazy quilt embroidery stitches. Click to enlarge.
In 2004 and 2005, Cathie collaborated with ceramic artist Astrid Kruse to explore forms that combined clay and basketry materials. Their joint exhibition included pieces that used ceramic bases as the foundation for reed basketry. Each project required careful planning, since clay must be dried slowly, and its form, including holes for insertion of basketry stakes, cannot be changed after firing. Leaves combines a raku base with hand-dyed round reed. Raku is a low-fire process where red-hot pottery is removed from the kiln and cooled in a closed container with combustible materials to create unique and unpredictable glazed surfaces.
Cathie explains that this piece took ten years to create. She had envisioned the use of a packing weave technique to create a leafy design which would blend with the colours and carving of the raku base but needed reed in the right shades of green. Her patience was rewarded when a serendipitous hand-dyeing session produced reed in a range of greens perfect for completion of the piece.
Leaves: Raku fired base, hand dyed reed; packing weave technique
Since learning coiling, a technique in which material is coiled around itself and stitched together in successive rounds, Cathie has experimented extensively to identify materials that will hold their structure using this technique. Unconventional media like metal zippers and acoustic speaker wire have yielded better results than natural materials.
Lady in Red: Metal zippers, waxed linen thread, craft wire, abalone shell, knotted netting; coiling stitch technique. Click to enlarge.
Lady in Red is a sixteen-inch figurine, cleverly sculpted using a coiling stitch technique applied to regular and heavy-duty zippers in a variety of sizes and colours, and embellished with craft wire, knotted netting, and abalone shell.
Cathie has discovered that some techniques can be successfully applied using either natural or synthetic materials. The pieces comprising Six Feet of Fun employ a diagonal plaiting technique to create a set of functional baskets fashioned from both natural and manufactured materials. The pattern is equally effective for vessels constructed from birch bark strips and strips cut from hand-painted boxboard or recycled cardboard boxes.
Six Feet of Fun: Birch bark strips, hand painted boxboard; diagonal plaiting technique
Although her recent willow pieces focus more on sculpture than function, Cathie continues to create some items for daily use such as unique jewellery, market baskets, water bottle covers, and basketry containers of various sizes and shapes. Black and White is a punch bowl constructed from hand-dyed round, flat, and oval reed using a variety of weaving techniques. It incorporates multiple sizes of reed in shades of natural, black, and grey. Embellishments include yarns, silver craft wire, beads, and earrings. The overall effect is rich in both texture and detail.
Punch bowl: Hand dyed reed, yarn, silver craft wire, beads, earrings; variety of weaving techniques.
Cathie’s approach to basketry is fluid. She starts each project with a general concept of the type of piece she wants to create and the materials and weaves to be included but then allows the materials to guide development of the piece rather than forcing them into predetermined shapes. The infinite possibilities presented by her materials and embellishments ensure that each piece is unique and that each project will continue to lead to new discoveries and possibilities.
Cathie creates her basketry and offers workshops at her home studio, Northern Willow Studio, in Yellowknife, N.W.T. Her solo exhibition Interwoven can be seen at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre through December 2022. Cathie sells her work both privately and through Down to Earth Gallery and occasionally accepts commissions. She frequently travels to teach classes and workshops throughout the Northwest Territories and further afield.
Images courtesy of Cathie Harper.
