Baskets are an ancient craft and were originally developed as utilitarian vessels to store food and carry things. When our modern culture began to embrace plastics, basket usage declined. With increased concerns about the environment, however, baskets meet today's need for a reusable, "green" product. Basket weaving as a traditional craft is alive and well, evolving to meet current needs for functional yet beautiful utilitarian vessels. Along the way, basket weaving has also become an art form.

My baskets are hand-woven using natural materials such as reed, cane, black ash, or various tree barks. I also hand-dye the colored materials. I sand and finish all wood parts with polyurethane prior to weaving, and I treat the completed basket with a protective oil finish. Black ash and bark baskets are left natural.

For me, basket weaving is almost a spiritual practice that connects me:
• to the earth through the materials I use.
• to people when I weave with others or when they hold one of my baskets.
• to myself when I listen to what basket weaving teaches me about who I am as a person.

Barbara made her first basket in 2000 in a class taught by her sister-in-law at a family reunion. After making a second basket at another family reunion, she decided to become serious about learning how to weave. She set herself the goal of making a basket a week, initially learning through trial and error. Later she discovered the High Country Basketry Guild, which offered local classes and a social connection with other weavers. When Barbara retired from the federal government in 2005, she immersed herself in as many basketry workshops and classes as she could find and continues to work at improving her skills. She loves experimenting with new materials, but her favorites are black ash and western red cedar.

Barbara grew up in a large family on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. She earned a Ph.D. in zoology and spent 30 years working for the U.S. Forest Service as a research scientist and later as a research administrator. Her left-brain love of nature and of learning was fulfilled through her science career, and now she satisfies the same love of nature and of learning through the whole brain craft of designing and weaving baskets.