Ann Coddington, President
Champaign, Illinois
Ann is a Professor of Art and Graduate Coordinator Emerit from Eastern Illinois University. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Sculpture Department, and her BFA from the Colorado State University Fibers Department. She utilizes a variety of ancient fiber techniques including twining, looping, and netting in her sculptural forms. She is active exhibiting her work and teaching sculptural twining workshops around the world, having just returned from teaching at the Fibre Arts Australia and Fibre Arts New Zealand.
Nick DeFord, Vice President
Knoxville, Tennessee
Nick DeFord is an artist, educator, and arts administrator who resides in Knoxville, TN. Currently, Nick is the Chief Programs Officer at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Nick has exhibited at the Bascom Center for Visual Arts, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, and the Knoxville Museum of Art and has taught past workshops at the University of Louisville, East Carolina University, Arrowmont, and Penland School of Craft. In the fall of 2018 he was a resident at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida. He has been a reviewer for the Ohio Arts Council and the juror for the American Tapestry Biennial 13.
Christina Bain, Secretary
Pflugerville, Texas
Christina Bain is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin. She holds permanent K-12 art certification from New York State. After taking her first weaving class with Dani Sue Anderson in 2019, she discovered she has a family connection to weaving, as her great grandfather owned a small basketry company. Since 2020, she has developed a passion for fiber arts, taking classes in basketry, dying, weaving, and quilting.
Joe Van Wassenhove, Co-Treasurer
Kirkland, Washington
Since an early age, Joe has been fascinated by weaving. He took his first basketry class in the mid 80’s in the Midwest which confirmed his interest, but other priorities delayed continuing. In 2006 he returned to basketry, attending conventions, and taking classes covering a wide range of styles, materials and techniques as well as teaching occasionally. Past secretary of the Land of Lincoln Basketweavers Association (LLBWA), Joe is now retired and living in the Seattle area. He is a current member of the Northwest Basket Weavers, Vi Phillips Basketry Guild and the LLBWA. An avid traveler, Joe has made baskets across the US and in Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Denmark.
Betty Kagan, Co-Treasurer
St. Louis, Missouri
Betty returned to St. Louis, Missouri after working in HR and Financial systems in New York and London. Her partner Marty has since introduced her to the world of craft, as he collects fiber art. She attended the one day workshop in 2016 launching the “Rooted, Revived and Reinvented” show to learn about the history of basketry. In 2017 Betty participated in her first workshop with Lanny Bergner in Tacoma, giving her an added appreciation of the artistry and talent involved in making baskets. She has been involved in various non-profit boards and committees dealing with culture and the arts, global education as well as advocacy for women, children and families.
Cael Chappell, Immediate Past President
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Cael’s basket making grows from his love of basketry. Fifteen years before weaving his first basket, he founded Baskets of Africa, a fair-trade company committed to economic empowerment for basket weavers from over 20 countries. Traveling across Africa to meet weavers, Cael discovered that basketry is as diverse as it is universal. After years of commitment to the art of basketry, he wove his first basket in 2017. Cael is inspired by global weaving traditions and draws on his depth of knowledge to create his own unique baskets. His work has been included in a number of magazines and publications, as well as gallery and museum exhibitions.
Kate Anderson
St. Louis, Missouri
Kate Anderson transitioned her painting background into a full career in fiber and textile after a knotting workshop at Craft Alliance in St. Louis. Now with nearly 30 years’ experience knotting, she references art history, popular culture, and dialogue with her knotted non-functional teapots, cups and other forms. Anderson encourages a reconsideration of historic images by placing them in a new context, incorporating poetry, politics and varying languages in her diverse works. Her work revitalizes vintage American iconography, allowing one to re-visit subjects and media with a contemporary lens.
David Bacharach
Cockeysville, Maryland
David Bacharach is a self-taught artist, best known for his research and experimentation in textile, basketry, and patination techniques with copper and steel. He has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Art and Design, NY; The Craft and Folk Art Museum, CA; Ashville Art Museum, NC; Arkansas Art Museum, AK; Susquehanna Art Museum, PA; Racine Art Museum, WI: three American embassies, the White House, and numerous public and private collections.
Toni Best
Visalia, California
Toni is a basket weaver of over sixty years who specializes in coiling pine needles, usually on a gourd base. One of the most important things in her creative process is the fabrication of smooth flowing coils which move and undulate with and around the pieces. Sometimes Toni will start with a precise idea or plan, at other times she will let the basket “speak” to her. The concept of touching the art allows the inner vibration of the pieces to come through. The opportunity of weaving is to start with the inquiry “Can this be done?” Joy is in the problem solving and transformation potential.
Anne Bowers
Kearneyville, West Virginia
Anne Bowers has lived in West Virginia all her life and made baskets for 43 years now. The early years were spent learning, which led to production basket making and retail sales of her work as a way of supporting her family. About 20 years ago she started transitioning to teaching basketry, and has since done that full time.
Jo Campbell-Amsler
Monticello, Iowa
Jo Campbell-Amsler has been using willow in her basketry work for the past forty-four years and specializes in using rib-style techniques. From her eastern Iowa home studio, Willow Ridge, she grows, harvests, and weaves the willow to create a wide range of baskets. While most of her baskets are functional, she is non-traditional in her approach of using found objects from nature in her work and likes to push the willow to form some sculptural aspects, creating “one-of-a-kind” baskets. Jo’s work has been featured in magazines and books, and has been in exhibits across the United States, the most recent being an exhibition “Touchstone: A Half-Century of Craft” in the Speyer Gallery at Falling Water, a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Emily Dvorin
Kentfield, California
Emily Dvorin is returning to the board as our Vice President having served as President from 2015 to 2018. She is responsible for putting the original committee structure in place that helped (and continues to help) NBO function smoothly. As a self-taught, award-winning fiber artist, she is known for her innovative, “transordinary”, sculptural baskets.
Rosalie Kessing
Santa Clarita, California
Rosalie began her career as a fiber artist in the early ’70’s. Her love of surface embellishment began with embroidering on jeans with cotton . Trained as a graphic artist, Rosalie’s embroidered motifs were always realistic solid images full of tiny details. As her skills developed so did the sophistication of her materials. She began making wearables and accessories using gold, silver, and silk thread with precious stones and pearls while exploring Or Nué (or shaded gold), a form of embroidery developed in the Middle Ages. A relatively new weaver, Rosalie was introduced to the medium by a dear friend in 2011. Thus began her exploration of tiny woven silk threads with metal and gems. Kessing loves the exquisite fine cloth that is woven from these threads and that they can also provide a ground, or canvas, for other unusual materials. Currently, Rosalie’s focus has been creating basketry. She is experimenting with combining traditional basketry materials and techniques with beads, silk, and gold metal embroidery.
Annetta Kraayeveld
Helena, Montana
Annetta’s home and studio are full of baskets: the collecting started when she was a child; the weaving, in the early 1990s when she found a book and begged a lesson. She is still obsessed with baskets and finds great satisfaction working with her hands, merging an age old art form with the contemporary world. When not weaving, Annetta is teaching, which she enjoys as much as weaving. She has been teaching at basketry events and guilds across North America since 2000.
Eric Stark
Portland, Maine
Eric is a teacher, architect, and maker who has served as the Program Chair for the University of Maine at Augusta’s Bachelor of Architecture degree for the past 12 years. An avid maker, it was a year-long academic sabbatical designed to explore analog and digital ways of making that ignited his love for basket weaving. As part of his investigations, he has traveled to North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Loch Na Fooey, Ireland, to study basket weaving with masters of the craft. He continues to explore various weaving techniques and has had his work included in a number of group and solo exhibits. Eric’s current work represents his interest in process and material, and includes coiling sweetgrass to found rocks as a means of exploring connection, pattern, form, and space.
Nolan Wright
Columbia, South Carolina
Nolan Wright is a largely self-taught fiber artist who uses traditional basketry techniques to make sculptural forms, typically working with dyed and painted pine needles, waxed linen thread, and other materials. He currently lives in South Carolina, but grew up in the desert southwest, and was deeply impacted by the rugged landscapes he was exposed to there, and by his family’s collection of artifacts from many of the world’s indigenous peoples. Both of those threads played an important part in his developing aesthetic, and continue to be celebrated in the objects he creates. Nolan’s work has been included in numerous juried national and regional shows, including Art Evolved: Intertwined, a fiber art exhibition traveling the country from 2023 – 2026, co-sponsored by Studio Art Quilts Associates (SAQA).
NBO Staff
Pam Morton
Executive Director
Pam received her BA in Asian History and studied Japanese ceramics as a counter point to her history studies. While not a traditional artist, Pam’s art is in “managing and supporting artists and non-profit arts organizations”. For 15 year she was the Program Director at the Marin Arts Council managing over 350 artists annually who participated in Marin Open Studios and the Arts Days events at the Marin County Fair. After leaving the Arts Council, she became the Executive Director of DrawBridge: An Arts Program for Homeless Children. DrawBridge’s therapeutic arts program helped the most vulnerable children. In the fall of 2015 she became the Executive Director of the National Basketry Organization.
Jon Shaiken
Administrative Assistant
Jon comes to NBO deeply rooted in the craft community, with years of experience in administration, communications, and project management working for non-profit organizations in the arts world. Born and raised in Connecticut and a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in Communication and Professional Writing, Jon believes that art is a shared language that can act as a vehicle for community, culture, education, and enrichment. Jon loves to spend his free time cuddling with his three cats (Henry, Phoebe, and Tofu), cooking and baking, or drawing in his sketchbooks. Jon joined the National Basketry Organization in the fall of 2025.