Bread Basket

8/11/2006 24" x 24"

$290

Last winter an elderly neighbor invited me to join the class in caning that she taught at the Ashland Community Center for seniors (I'm not there yet, age-wise, but they let me come!) and I brought the chair that I wanted to repair, only to find that it was made in a way that required a different technique. So instead of working on my chair, I scavenged the pieces that the others were cutting out from their chairs, and eventually made use of a piece that told me "I am a bread basket!"

The bread slices are like small pillows, then I added the bread sticks -- tubes of fabric that I had made originally to be tree trunks! I originally pictured the basket as sitting on a table which would come out of the background, with a table and fine tablecloth. But, you don't put a bread basket on a table corner, and I just couldn't find my fine tablecloth material. What I did finally locate was a square made for needlepoint, with a lace edge. And when I put the two together, it wasn't as a tablecloth but a simple background, simple and elegant!

On a sad note, Grace Bunker, the teacher of the caning class, passed away in the summer of 2006, and never saw this work. Grace, this collage is dedicated to your memory.