Turtle Island S.O.S.
Kathy Pollard
Sweetgrass, birch bark, thread, semi-precious stone, paint, 6” x 3”
"This coiled sweetgrass basket is topped with a turtle with the image of Earth painted on her shell and sign imploring S.O.S. The turtle is a Native American symbol for Mother Earth, our only home, and she is in distress due to the disproportionate toll of human(un)kind."
Kathy Pollard, a self-taught basketmaker of mixed European & Native American (Cherokee) ancestry, spent her early years in Southern Maryland & Southeastern Massachusetts. Her father’s early teachings and family experiences shaped her love of and appreciation for nature’s beauty and bounty.
Kathy learned to make baskets from oak splints and hand shaved them into weavers. She began using black ash for baskets and later experimented with sweetgrass and coil-stitched techniques. The combination of birch bark and coiled sweetgrass has been her style for fifteen years.
Kathy gathers sweetgrass from saltwater marshes in Downeast Maine and birch bark from commercially harvested trees. With these simple ingredients, she creates one-of-a-kind pieces that will last many generations and hopefully speak to the place in all of us that finds peace, solace and beauty in the natural world.
