My home and studio are full of baskets: the collecting started when I was a child; the weaving, in the early 1990s when I found a book and begged a lesson. I’m still obsessed with baskets and find great satisfaction working with my hands, merging an age-old art form with the contemporary world. Baskets, their history and cultural reach, the variety of techniques, and the limitless creative possibilities, motivate me to weave; to create.
As a maker, my work is somewhere between traditional and contemporary. Weaving with paper, from imagining to painting to weaving, has given voice to my passion for color and fascination with mathematical design. The process of making is all important to me; each piece is the springboard to the next idea, the next adventure.
When not weaving, I am teaching – which I enjoys as much as weaving. My focus as a teaching artist is mastery, technique and stretching my student’s perceived limits. I have been teaching locally and at basketry events and guilds across North America since 2000. Traveling and getting to know the basket community across the country has enriched my life more than I could have imagined; it is a community is filled with amazingly talented and precious people.
More about Annetta at Annetta Kraayeveld and Prairie Wood Basketry