Living Willow in Euskadi

photo: Carlos Fontales Ortiz

An invitation to return to Spain, or more specifically Euskadi, to create a living willow structure was eagerly accepted by me.

I sometimes wonder why I don't spend more time in Spain because I always enjoy being there so much. Perhaps it's just that the people who work in the basketry field are particularly nice, but I don't really think so, it seems to me that the people I come across just enjoy being sociable more than those of us living further north. A couple of years ago I read an article comparing  primary education in European countries and it suggested that one of the goals of primary education in Spain is to turn children into social creatures who enjoy the company of others and feel at ease in groups. Well if this weekend was anything to go by they succeed, as it could not have been more sociable or enjoyable at Garaion Sorgingunea  near Vitoria/Gasteiz in the Basque region.

Garaion is a an Association that works to preserve the Basque language, heritage and the natural environment through cultural activities and the weekend was full of them. An exhibition of the work of local textile artists, a theatre performance with an audience of almost 100 and a 2 day living willow workshop run by Joan Farre and Carlos Fontales Ortiz. I was invited to join in to create  an artwork in the grounds to add to the collection of living and dry willow structures  done in previous years by Carlos, Joan, Tim Johnson, Corentin Laval and Karen Gossart. In the summer months Garaion runs an action packed  summer camp for groups of children, many of whom have little other opportunity to  be in the countryside.

'Mirador'  and work done in previous years by Joan and Carlos (photo: Carlos)

photo: (Carlos)

I haven't done a living willow structure for some years, but I had developed an idea for one, for another project, a couple of years ago that didn't in the end go ahead, so I took that as a starting point and developed it further. It is a 'lookout', a bit like a hide for bird watching, a small enclosed space with openings that frame the views for humans of all heights. I have called it 'Mirador', until I find out what the Basque word is.  At the moment it is skeletal but by summer it will be clothed in greenery and become a more intimate space until the leaves fall next autumn when the coloured tubes will reveal themselves again. The tubing is normally used for burying cables and is not designed to be in UV light so I have no idea how long it will  survive in the light, for sure they will fade. But at the moment I am happy with the way it has turned out, we will see what the weather, schoolchildren and the sunshine do to it. The setting of Garaion is stunning as it sits on top of a small hill in the middle of a valley surrounded by mountains and fields, rivers and lakes with no other buildings in sight, despite being only a kilometre from the nearest village. The weather can change quickly there and we were very lucky to have 3 dry days to work in.

My thanks go firstly to Carlos for suggesting me for the task and for taking some beautiful photos for me after I had left. Next  thanks to  Amaia and Julia for  inviting me and being such fantastic organisers and hosts, then to the people who helped me make the work, particularly Saioa and Josune, (in the photo above) without whom I could not have finished in time. But also to all the other lovely people I met there who with their big hugs made me feel so welcome.

photo: Carlos

Farting About

Weaving Ghosts at An Lanntair

According to the Oxford English Dictionary ‘farting about’ seems the best way to describe the current post-exhibition phase of my work cycle. It’s always hard getting back into it when I have been away from the studio for a few weeks.

It wasn’t possible to be at An Lanntair in Stornoway to set up Weaving Ghosts so I was keen to go and see if my written instructions had enabled Roddy Murray and the gallery staff at An Lanntair to install it as I wanted. Barring problems to do with lighting (which meant the shadows on The Ossuary were not as intended) and the very high ceilings that prevented the installation of Hoose, (hopefully I will get another chance to install it somewhere else) the exhibition looked good in the space. I was particularly happy with North Atlantic Drift because the spacing between the individual baskets was perfect (not easy with 70 plus baskets all different shapes and sizes), so my thanks to Roddy Murray for that.

North Atlantic Drift and There Were 15 To Feed At Midbrake 

The 8 schools workshops for children aged between 5 and 13 were full on but I had very generous help from two members of the Scottish Basketmakers Circle, Dawn Susan and Angela Price along with JJ plus staff from the schools and An Lanntair, for which I am very grateful. Thanks are particularly owing to Moira for her organisation and communication skills and to Joe for his knowledgeable and willing practical aid. A gallery talk and an interview on BBC Radio Scotland were also packed into 4 days.

Unravelling with Joe!

Exhibitions are really important for me, without them I don’t do much in the studio. I love the whole process involved in creating, curating and organising an exhibition, but this post-exhibition phase is always the hardest bit.

Weaving Ghosts has had 5 showings so far (2 Scotland and 3 Norway) and there is at least one more venue planned in England but not until next year, so at the moment I am trying to find more galleries to fill the gap or continue the tour, but it’s a pretty thankless task.

On the evidence of my experience the only way to get venues to give you a show is if you actually know someone who works there, or have some link to the venue. Sending unsolicited proposals has seldom been successful for me. It doesn’t take much to just acknowledge receipt of a proposal but it’s obviously too much effort for a lot of the people responsible for planning exhibitions. Many of the bigger and better known galleries also specifically say that they do not accept unsolicited submissions so unless you know someone working there you haven’t a hope in hell. Smaller regional museums and Art Centres in Britain are easier to get a show in than the big galleries, so that is where I concentrate my efforts though even with them it’s also often hard to get a response. Just a ‘thank you’ would do. So far I have sent out 4 detailed proposals tailored to individual venues in the last couple of months and not had a single response. I am an artist, not a salesperson, so I am not going to cold call or doorstep people, I try to find a more sympathetic way of doing things, but even after 30 plus years at it I still don’t really know what is the right way to get results!

Meanwhile I have plenty more ideas I want to explore for Weaving Ghosts but without a confirmed date for its next showing I am finding it difficult to focus so today have spent my studio time flitting from one thing to the next.

 

Here is a typical unfocused day in the studio…..ironing some plastic lids, I really like the resulting flat brightly coloured disks with the vestiges of their ribbed edges and screw mechanism. Making willow frames for the planned Southport Boat Basket. No kinks today, possibly because I had soaked the white willow for much longer and had altered the former I made with some concave shaping on the corners and an inner tube to cushion it. Cutting up heavy duty polyethylene bottles, possibly for the SBB but not sure and cutting up inner tube for tying the frames. Playing with gladioli leaves to see if I can remember how to start a continuous, non-stitched, coiled, plait, like the one Carlos Fontales briefly showed me how to do with esparto. Gave up after a while, as it wasn’t working and was just making me cross. In principle it seems very simple, I am just having difficulty with the rhythm of it and the hand positioning at the moment.

Took some photos of work in progress on the Southport, responded to some emails and social media, edited the Weaving Ghosts proposal for galleries and looked on line for some regional museums. Sorted some willows and put them to soak in the pond. Started writing this blog post. Shaved some skeins of willow, for the SBB, and watched an astonishing amount of large hailstones come out of the sky and cover the ground outside the studio in a few seconds. 

I hope this phase doesn’t go on too long, because it feels a bit tedious and uncreative, but I know it’s the only way I am going to get back into it, it’s essential to be in the studio just ‘farting about’.

Toxic Basketry

Dyed cane and willow wastepaper bins, early 90's

Students and fellow basket makers often tell me that they only like to work with ‘natural’ materials.

These are people who are also genuinely concerned about the environment and about ethical production methods. This makes it all the more surprising to me to discover that some of them buy natural materials to make baskets with that are in fact highly processed in one way or another and often have both environmental and ethical problems associated with this processing.

Firstly, I am not in any way suggesting these people are being devious or dishonest. In fact I think most of them genuinely believe that they are using natural, sustainable and environmentally sound materials when they purchase them on line because that is how they are being marketed. If you have never visited a commercial willow grower, that doesn't grow organically go in late spring and you will discover how unenvironmentally friendly it can be.

Commercial willow cultivation 

Willow is a ‘natural’ environmentally friendly product in itself, it is how it is grown and processed that is the problem. In much of Europe a lot of the big commercial willow growers still use a lot of herbicides and pesticides because they grow many hectares in monocultures, consequently they cannot control weeds or insect attacks without resorting to chemical warfare. But it isn’t just the growing, in order to ship natural materials it is often necessary to spray them with fungicide.

On one of my visits to one of the bigger willow growers in Somerset, I was presented with the sight of a worker in the yard spraying willow fencing panels with fungicide, prior to their shipment abroad. The man doing the spraying had some protection against the spray but the weavers of the panels, totally unprotected in their normal clothing, were working in the same mist in an open sided shed no more than 10 metres away from the spraying. It was 16 years ago and I hope very much that this sort of thing doesn’t happen now. I am sure that many of the customers who bought willows or fencing panels from this grower at the time had no idea that this sort of thing went on because their marketing only spoke about their lovely ‘natural’ product.

But things are changing in the commercial willow world, at last, and there are an increasing number of growers who do it without resorting to chemicals and who manage to make a living at it. 

Dyed cane and found netting 1984

The last cane baskets 1984

Things are not however so good in the world of rattan. I know quite a bit about rattan because when I started making baskets I used a lot of it in its highly processed form known in Britain as ‘centre cane’ and in America as ‘reed’(France 'rotin', Germany 'pedigrohr') I even wrote a book featuring ‘centre cane’ techniques. It had lots of advantages for me as a city dweller, I could purchase it easily, I could dye it any colour I wanted, I could store it easily, soaking only took a few minutes and could be in done in a small bowl. All of these qualities also made it very easy to use in the classroom and students could learn many different techniques with this versatile spaghetti like material. It was and remains in some places a popular material for use in occupational therapy for all the same reasons. Its been imported to Europe for centuries and in Britain after the first world war many convalescing soldiers were taught to make baskets using it, which apparently aided their recovery.

David Drew

Despite all these advantages it was meeting David Drew in the 1980’s who grew his own organic willows in his garden for his beautiful baskets that had a profound influence on my thinking about the materials I was using and the ethical and environmental problems involved in rattan processing. That coupled with the realisation of the part I was playing in this story by my purchasing it from the other side of the globe and dyeing it with fibre reactive dyes convinced me I had to stop using it which I did in the early 90's.

For a while centre cane seemed to have gone out of fashion with basket makers in Europe, though its use in America has stayed fairly strong. But recently there has been a rash of it cropping up all over social media and being used by young makers. I thought that maybe now it is all being grown sustainably and the use of diesel oil and chemicals in the curing process has all been stopped, because otherwise why would these people be using it? So I did some research and what I found is that whilst there is an increased awareness of the environmental and health and safety problems at a governmental and NGO level there has been little progress on improving the situation for all sorts of interconnected reasons.

Calamus (rattan) is a jungle creeper that has traditionally been harvested from virgin forest in south East Asia and more recently Africa which, due to high demand for the product for the furniture industry has caused a lot of problems ecologically and shortages in some places. Rattan palms are slow growing not arriving at a productive harvest size for 12 years. So the idea of creating managed plantations was apparently a good solution to the problem of over harvesting, except that the land needed for a rattan plantation is equally suitable for an oil palm plantation. Oil palm is more profitable so the enthusiasm for planting rattan gardens as they are known has waned and harvesting from the wild remains the modus operandi.

IKEA in conjunction with the WWF have been instrumental in encouraging sustainable plantations in Vietnam and they have also implemented health and safety procedures in the few workshops that they work with directly. The problem however goes far beyond their control because there are not enough ‘sustainable’ rattan plantations to meet the needs of all the furniture manufacturers that want it.

Another major problem with rattan is the processing which includes 'curing' the rattan. Curing is considered to be a necessary process to kill insects and stop moulds developing in the moisture laden air of the places where it grows. It is done by steeping the rattan in boiling diesel oil. The problem here is that because many of the communities where this is done are very poor they often employ used diesel and cannot afford the face masks and protective clothing that are needed to protect themselves from this highly toxic activity. There are quite a few videos on the web of rattan processing plants made by the companies doing the processing but few showing the diesel boiling process though on some you can see the blue smoke coming out of sheds in the background, (of course they might just be burning lunch but I doubt it.) However on some tourist videos it is possible to see people working with the boiling tanks wearing no masks or other protection. Another process that is often recommended is to sulphur the rattan immediately after harvesting to stop moulds developing that discolour the canes. A similar process to that used for whitening willow can be employed but they have discovered that a more effective method is to soak the canes in a sulphur solution which give off far more toxic fumes than the dry method. Not only is this bad news for the workers but both the diesel and the sulphur have to be disposed of at some point and apparently much of the residue ends up in the local water source.

Despite considerable time spent researching this issue I have been unable to find a source of genuinely sustainable centre cane/ reed for basket making. If anyone knows of one please tell me about it and I will be happy to promote it.



In the meantime, developing a close relationship with your materials by gathering or growing your own is still the easiest way to be sure that you are working sustainably. It also makes your work unique to you and your environment, it uses no air miles, endangers no one else’s health or well being and costs nothing. What's not to like?