*_When did you start making baskets?_* I started puttering around with this when I was in college then I switched over to straight woodworking. I’ve been doing woodworking all my life. I got back into basketry probably in the mid 90’s, so it’s been going on 15 years. *_What was it about baskets that interested you?_* Surface texture and form. I think the basket that first caught my attention was this one right here... (Dennis points to a birch berry basket on the table) and it was the shape of it as much as anything. *_How would you describe this shape?_* !>files/berrybasketwboxsm.jpg(Baskets by Dennis Chilcote)! It’s like a truncated cone. It’s a very traditional form for the aboriginal people who lived across North America in birch country. Actually I started with simpler baskets. The first ones I made were the kind where you take a sheet and fold up the sides and stitch it around the top. But what caught my eye and really kept my interest was a form like this. It’s found everywhere and not only is it visually pleasing but the thing that just fascinated me, is that when you look at a basket like this, you can see there was a lot of work put into the rim. It was wrapped and the decorative wrapping doesn’t add anything to the usefulness of the basket but it adds a lot of beauty to the piece. So what struck me was that interplay between functionality and beauty. *_Where did you learn how to make baskets?_* Well actually most of what I do is self-taught. In fact I like to tell people - and it’s true - that I’ve had many, many instructors but I’ve never met a one. I just read everything I could get my hands on. Then you see things that impress you, things that you feel are beautiful and you run across an article in a book that gives a general pattern and you start working on that pattern. Maybe the first one isn’t so good but you know where you’re headed and so you just keep adjusting things to the point where you can finally look at the piece and say, “Yes, that’s where I want it to be and I’m happy with it.” Actually, my grandfather introduced me to this whole field of nature craft. He was a woodsman. He hunted deer for the lumber camps in northwestern Minnesota and when they finished clearing the white pine, he came east to the Iron Range and worked in the mines for a short period of time, then cut pulp until he finally retired. So he spent most of his time in the woods. You know, you get this imprint in your head... I can remember, he would put me on his shoulders and head out into the woods to this wonderful, mystical and mysterious place where he lived, a place that he loved. Although I didn't get a lot of information directly from him that I still remember, he got me started in this direction. *_You’ve introduced a variety of elements into your basketry that aren’t just associated with North American aboriginal traditions. Could you talk a little bit about this?_* !>files/Luna_Basket.jpg(Luna Basket by Dennis Chilcote)! Well, it’s not like they’ve come out of nowhere. Because of the world we live in today, we’ve got access to the old art and craft out of Norway, Sweden and Finland. You can see how those people approached their functional pieces and how the approach is different from here. And you can mix the two (the Scandinavian and North American traditions) because the basic material is the same. The Scandinavians had a different mind set and a different sort of mystical quality about them, a different spirituality expressed through their art. And that’s very fascinating to me, to take the artistic elements that were expressed from people all over the northern hemisphere and combine these into the piece itself. Plus I am part Norwegian myself so it is nice to connect to that ancestry through my personal art and craft. *_You gather and prepare your own materials. Why?_* Most of the basket makers in this country now go online or down to the local basketry store, pick up their catalog, order reed and use that as the starting material. They typically have no investment in where it originates (Southeast Asia), you just buy it and go to work. From my point of view, as an artist, I personally like the process of going back as far as I can to procure the material that I use. It’s like the old masters who used to mix their own paints. It’s the same sort of a thing. It gives you a better connection to the work. It puts me in the woods at a period of time I really love. It connects what I like to do when I’m walking through the woods, to the art that I make here in the workshop or the studio. It just connects everything for me. *_You’ve been teaching at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota for about five years now. How do you incorporate your preference for working with natural materials into teaching basketry?_* I teach a couple of birch bark basket making classes and a class on black ash basketry that is more on the process of securing or creating the splints. We’ll do a simple black ash basket but the focus isn’t really on the basketry so much as on the materials, on gathering and preparing the materials. *_So do you take your students to a specific place to gather materials?_* In the berry basket class, we actually go out into the woods. We have a permit when we gather the bark. We start right from the tree and then we lay-out the pattern, cut it, mark it, punch it, and stitch it to create the basket. I gather the root for them though, because to go through all that, would add tremendously to the length of the course and root gathering in that country, at least the way I do it, is kind of hard. What I do instead is show a video on gathering root so they can see exactly how it’s done, so they can at least experience it vicariously. It's difficult to bring a group of six people out into a swamp and have them tear up the sphagnum moss trying to gather root. That makes me uncomfortable to leave that scar on the land. So to give some protection to the environment and yet, still let students have the experience, I have to compromise. But I really do like to get them out and start at the point where the material originates and bring them through the process. We do the same with black ash. We don’t go out and gather the log but we bring a log in. We peel it, pound it and strip it, then process all of the splints. So it’s very hands-on from start to finish. *_When you’re looking for materials, does it make a difference in how you conceive of a piece?_* !>files/Birch_Basket_Cherry.jpg(Birch Bark Basket with Cherry Lid)! Sometimes it does. In the sense that you might be gathering bark and run across a particularly nice specimen and think, “I know generally what I can use that for.” Now you can’t always tell by looking at the tree, which way it’s going to go but often times, when I do some of the bigger baskets, especially like the one with the cherry lid, you can look at a tree and find surface features that you’d like to feature in a piece. So sometimes you’re looking for just the quality of the bark that would lend itself to this or that particular style of basketry and other times you’re looking for an actual expression on the bark itself that you can incorporate into a larger piece. *_You’re a woodworker, a wood carver and a basket maker. Which methods or materials have influenced you most aesthetically?_* It all comes down to what pleases me. It’s the form, the surface texture. It’s how a piece strikes your eye. It’s not like I can say I ascribe to this particular kind of art, or style of basketry, or school of carving. It’s the way the piece is executed which is influenced by a lot of natural forms that I’m attracted to as well. Forms that mimic the natural world in one way or another. So, in carving, for example, I can create a black ash basket with a lid that has a carved moose antler as a handhold, and then make a piece like that tall birch bark basket where the handhold or knob for the lid is a carved arch with a pleasing filigree on either side. There was a time in my life where I actually spent a lot of time doing watercolors. I was really fascinated with that field but I could never figure out how to distinguish myself from all the other good artists that were out there. When I moved back into this medium, then I knew I had a distinct voice. I could really make a statement other people weren’t making.