A couple of weeks or so ago, we saw a basket show by Jeremy Freyan. It was terrific! Both as Art and in its presentation. Freyan is an Indigenous American, and the baskets are in the Passamaquoddy tradition. It takes at least several months to make a basket, starting with searching for and then cutting down just the right Brown Ash tree; this alone can take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks of wandering through the forest.

Next, he uses a heavy tool to beat the shit out of the log, causing the wood to separate, naturally along its growth rings. Then he separates these thin layers into small strips of wood, dyeing some and leaving some natural. Only then does Freyan weave the basket from the strips of wood, keeping them wet to keep them pliable. The results are stunning.

But I want to add that they are stunning because we take our time looking at them. We did this for two reasons. Before we walked into the show, we watched a movie detailing the construction of a basket, from felling a tree to making strips of wood and then weaving them into a basket. (Weaving is not very accurate, but it’s the best I can do.)

As an aside, the basket is burned at the end of the film. First, we see a wisp of smoke rising from inside; it could almost be our imagination. Then more smoke, then flames, until the basket is consumed by fire. All that remains of that basket is the image on the film. End aside.

The second reason we took our time and looked at each basket is because of the way they were displayed. They are art, and they are displayed like art. In every other basket show I have seen, or ceramic bowl show, for that matter, the art is displayed as a collection of artifacts, not as a piece of art. The difference was refreshing.

About a month before we saw the Jeremy Freyan show at Stanford, we went to the Silicon Valley Modern Quilt Guild Show. It was not at a museum but at a local Elementary School in Los Altos. I was shocked at how good many of the quilts were. I was also dismayed that they were not displayed very well – in my humble opinion -making it easier to just mindlessly stroll through, which would have been a mistake because there were quite a few quilts that I thought were superb.

I have been a fan of quilts – especially Amish quilts – ever since I saw a show at the Whitney Museum in the early 1970s, and this show had some of the most interesting quilts I can remember seeing. Seeing the basket show and the quilt show side by side drove home the importance of curation. Still, both shows were worth seeing.