Image: Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg
The exhibition’s opening on November 1 will include the ‘Sewn + Collected: Sweetgrass Basket Opening & Symposium,’ scheduled from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Presented in conjunction with the opening, the symposium will bring together scholars, artists and collectors to explore the history, craft and cultural significance of Lowcountry sweetgrass basketry.
The opening program will feature a 2 p.m. keynote by Dale Rosengarten, author of ‘Row Upon Row,’ an in-depth, illustrated history of South Carolina’s Lowcountry baskets, followed at 3 p.m. by a sweetgrass-basket sewing demonstration by artist Elizabeth Mazyck. At 3:30 p.m., exhibition curator and sweetgrass-basket scholar Amelia Muller will lead a panel with Mazyck, Rosengarten and collector Allison Gulick Muller, the lender to the exhibition.
Since childhood, Mazyck has sewn sweetgrass, bulrush, pine needles and palmetto leaves into coiled baskets while growing up in South Carolina’s Lowcountry. Her lifelong creative practice builds on a tradition that dates to work baskets used on rice plantations in the late 17th century and has evolved over generations into an expressionistic art form.
An image identifies Mazyck’s ‘Triple In-and-Out Basket with Handle’ as made with sweetgrass, bulrush and palmetto.
The exhibition tells the story of the ongoing dialogue and friendship between Mazyck and Allison Gulick Muller, described as one of the artist’s devoted collectors.
