The art in driftwood

Red osier dogwood, seagrass, poplar bark and honeysuckle; wool and copper; philodendron and yucca leaves; water and air and obviously skilled hands, nimble fingers and a vision for art she claims doesn’t originate within her.

Sharon Breckenridge’s serene, shapely and beautifully surprising exhibit entitled Interwoven with Nature on display at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery right now is described in the gallery newsletter as "basketry," but it is so much more than that.

For this viewer the term vessel, given all that the word connotes, seemed immediately more appropriate: a collection of empty curved objects to welcome other things inside, hold and carry them gladly; or maybe to float smoothly on water as boats are meant to do, or to stand as graceful urns alone and statuesque in the spaciousness of time.

The artist, gifted crafter that she is, agreed the two dozen or so pieces she’s created for this exhibit don’t, for her, represent simply the notion of baskets, either.

"Particularly when I start with a piece of driftwood or an antler, or vines, the piece just forms itself depending on that and that’s what motivates what comes out of it."

The end result? Always a surprise, she remarked, but she also knows when it’s finished. Inevitably, satisfyingly, she realizes the work has become something more than what it began as in the natural world where she first found it.

"Sometimes I won’t notice there’s a kink in the wood; all of a sudden the basket takes a little turn there and I think ‘wow, didn’t see that coming in advance’, but that’s cool; I like that. And sometimes when it does things I wasn’t expecting I don’t know if I like that and so I have to deal with it. But," and this may be why Interwoven with Nature is so quietly powerful, "this teaches me (us) how to deal with stuff in life. Because life takes turns that one isn’t expecting, doesn’t it."

Breckenridge said she can’t, for instance, weave with plastic "because it doesn’t nurture me, doesn’t feed me, because it was never alive."

Her artist statement puts it like this: "think of a piece of driftwood; begun as a sturdy limb on a tree, it may have its bark stripped by a beaver and then it gets tumbled and tumbled by the waves, ending up in my hands to be formed into a basket (vessel). I try to honour its beauty and strength with what I create. Its life continues."

So, said to anyone at the end, middle or beginning of a stressful day: go visit Breckenridge’s vision for vessels. You’ll be inspired.

Then step, or rather, embark upon a dream-ride in TBAG’s largest gallery where, like an exciting theme park colossus in the distance, Kenora-born Alison Norlen’s Glimmer beckons with ghostly whispers of blue, aqua and white pastels and charcoal on giant panels of paper, and silver, structurally-sound, perfect meshes of wire and solder.

Nothing of nature’s world here, but the architectural complexity of Glimmer is equally amazing, near profound.

Up at the gallery until the end of February, these two exhibits can transport viewers to quiet places of wonder, or wonderlands of man’s own making. Visit both soon.