Basket #3
© Leon Niehues
While employed as a sawmill worker, Niehues taught himself the art of basketry. His skills quickly took him beyond the functional and into the sculptural. Since the early 1980s, after he and his wife moved to Arkansas, he has been crafting his baskets from natural elements found on their property. Niehues consciously uses traditional materials and methods while weaving and sculpting contemporary forms. Through that approach he sees his work as being simultaneously familiar and new. In the case of this sculptural basket, he uses bright-blue linen thread and iron-dyed ribs of white oak to accent the verticality and asymmetry of the work.
Exhibition Title: Asheville Art Museum: An Introduction to the Collection
Label Date: 2021
Type: Catalogue Entry
Written by: Whitney Richardson
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