Creativity in a Basket

A dear friend and I set out at noon on to wander through Mitchell County, NC, visiting glass, pottery and basket artists who open their studios to the public twice a year. We pack a small picnic lunch so we can spend our time enjoying the beautiful creations instead of trying to find or waiting in line at a restaurant. It is a warm June day, one of those days where you could be lazy in a chair with a book all afternoon or active in a shaded garden. I am grateful for the presence of a friend of many years and the time to catch up as we witness some amazing creations.

We head north toward Tennessee and veer off the highway onto a two lane, winding road through dense forests, open pasture lands, past weathered barns, vegetable gardens springing with lettuce and climbing beans, and arrive at Billie Ruth Suddreth's studio. She is a renowned basket artist whose red, black, yellow and walnut baskets wow the eye and lift the spirit. I attended a show of her twenty-five year basket-making anniversary two years ago and am so happy to meet and talk with her today. Something in me is pleased by her baskets in the way that witnessing a sunrise or hosta leaves turning out of the ground deepens and enriches me.

A student of mathematics, she creates her baskets' unusual patterns by using Fibonacci numbers, a mathematical pattern identified as early as 200BCE and named for a 13th century biologist. The natural Fibonacci pattern is found often in nature's fern curls, pine cones, leaves, flowers and the reproduction of bees. By definition, the first two Fibonacci numbers are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two. Fibonacci numbers are those in the following :

I am pleased to learn that these incredible baskets priced in the thousands of dollars and collected by museums are created using a pattern of nature. I think again of Matthew Fox writing that creativity is the place, a space,a gathering, a union a where--wherein the Divine powers of creativity and the human power of imagination join forces. Such places are sacred and draw us closer to our own spiritual center. Billie Ruth's baskets are such a place and they invite me to seek that space in myself today.

note: I tried in vain to find a photo of one of her baskets on line for you to see.