Untitled, #151

Working initially as a sculptor, John McQueen taught himself how to make baskets while living in the American Southwest. His creativity arises from an experiential relationship with the natural world, and his baskets are the physical manifestation of his response to nature. McQueen challenges both the formal and technical norms of basket-making and considers his work to be conceptual--not formally addressing function, but playing on the idea of containment. This work shows his attraction to unconventional basket-making materials such as bark, vines, and sticks. In discussion of his work, he states, The baskets I make are branches of trees rearranged and no longer real the way a tree is real. He gathers and prepares materials native to his western New York home, allowing the intrinsic character of each wood, bark, vine or plant full expression in the object.