Lissa Hunter: Stories, Munson Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Review: Fiberarts, March/April 2001
by Kathleen McCloud

Lissa Hunter's baskets, whether framed in a wood box or delicately perched on a shelf, are a paradox of simplicity and complexity. On the one hand, they are solitary vessels, placed in hollows within the frame. On the other hand, the baskets and frames are so embellished with twining, wrapping, coiling, fastening, and marking that they take on a dramatic presence, silent and yet laden with ritual activiity.

Hunter's show, titled "Stories," at the Munson Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in July 2000, was grounded in her history as an accomplished and painstaking basketmaker. The bold, singular wall pieces, like succinct monologues, are especially strong. In Obsession, a basket is tightly enveloped within its wood frame, which is covered with horizontal rows of graphite marks—indecipherable but closely resembling script.

For a moment, the viewer steps close to see what is being revealed. Rather than suggest meaning by forming words, the O’s drawn on the wood draw the eye to the loops of the netted basket surface and, from there, to the roundness of the basket. Hunter's mindful use of repeating forms leads the viewer into the matrix of the basket itself.

The tableaux pieces arranged on shelves allude more to the utility of baskets. In Small Gifts, Hunter gives a nostalgic glance at what is cherished. The sealed letters, tied stones, and baskets used for storing pencils speak to a relationship between things. A few words written on paper and sealed become a letter, and a rock wrapped in raffia becomes a talisman.

In Reunion, the metaphor of vessel as body is taken to the top. An array of baskets in a variety of sizes, each topped with thin strips of translucent rawhide “buttoned up” like starched white shirts, reads like a 20-year school reunion where tall, short, fat, and thin all converge—size being the distinguishing feature in this reunion.

Hunter's background as a basketmaker is evident in her willingness to conceal all signs of her expertise in weaving the core structure. Working with strands of coated wire, she coils the basket and then wrapes it with waxed linen thread. She then wraps it in a skin of paper. As when drapery covers an oiled body, what is concealed compels us to look closely. On some of the baskets, the subtle protrusions of the underlying structure emerge. In others, the final addition of net stitched to the paper-covered basket leads the eye into the repetition of the pattern.

Gourds, small shells, and beads are also incorporated into some of Hunter's baskets. These embellishments evoke fragility, but the knots, ties, and coils she uses to attach them to the basket imbue a structural integrity that overrides delicacy. If a basket were to fall from its environs, it is as if it would be protected by the rhythm and repetition of technique that went into the making.

Kathleen McCloud is a visual artist and arts writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.