I have been making fiber art off and on for more than forty years, focusing for some time now on using coiling and knotting to make sculptural basketry forms, working with pine needles, waxed linen thread, other cords, and copper wire. My mother was an artist and gallery owner who championed indigenous folk art and contemporary crafts, exposing me to creativity from all over the world, leaving many imprints. Certainly, growing up hiking in the desert and canyons of southern Arizona did so as well.
The biggest inspiration for my work continues to be the juxtaposition of shapes, textures, and colors that catch my eye in the world around me. Trees, twisted by the wind or that have interesting bark or exposed roots, tide pools, tree fungi, seed pods, rock formations, and such. Undulating shapes, rough around the edges, and surfaces that are dense, weathered, showing the passage of time. I don’t try to recreate any specific object or scene. It is more that they resonate with something inside me at an emotional level as well as aesthetically. I see their influence in the materials I choose and what happens as I work on a piece. With each, I hope to create something imbued with that same dynamism – to invoke a feeling of something primal, still growing, alive.
Learn more at my website, Nolan Wright Sculptural Basketry