Annual Maine Indian Basketmakers Sale Dec. 11
Contact: Gretchen Faulkner, (207) 581-1904
ORONO — The 2010 Maine Indian Basketmakers Sale and Demonstration will take place Saturday, Dec. 11 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Collins Center for the Arts at the University of Maine. The event is free and open to the public.
The annual holiday event features Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot Basketmakers who sell their hand-made, one of a kind, ash-splint and sweetgrass basketry. Work baskets, such as creels, pack and potato baskets, and fancy baskets ranging from strawberry and blueberry shaped baskets to curly bowls can be found along with quill jewelry, wood carvings and birchbark work. Traditional music, demonstrations of brown ash pounding, basketmaking, carving and birchbark work, in addition to traditional drumming and dancing, will be part of the day’s activities.
The schedule is as follows:
9 a.m., doors open for the public;
9:30 a.m., a traditional welcome with Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis and traditional greeting songs with Watie Akins of the Penobscot Nation;
10 a.m., a brown ash pounding and work basket demonstration with Micmac Eldon Hanning;
10-11:30 a.m., a book signing with Penobscot author Charles Norman Shay;
10:30 a.m., a fancy basket demonstration with award-winning basketmaker Molly Neptune Parker and family;
11 a.m., a bead-working demonstration with Penobscot Jennifer Sapiel Neptune and Passamaquoddy Gal Frey;
11:30 a.m., a birchbark wigwam presentation by Barry Dana, Penobscot, in the Hudson Museum;
12 p.m., a carving demonstration with Penobscot master carver Rick Love;
2-3 p.m., Burnurwurbskek Singers with traditional signing and drumming;
3 p.m., the drawing for the Hudson Museum Friends Maine Indian Basket Raffle.
This year’s Hudson Museum Friends Raffle basket is made by Molly Neptune Parker, an award-winning Passamaquoddy basketmaker. Her work has received recognition from the Maine Arts Commission and the First Peoples Fund. Parker’s baskets are included in many museum collections, including the National Museum of the American Indian, and in private collections. Parker uses tools that have been passed down in her family for generations and creates basket forms that she learned from her mother and other relatives, according to Hudson Museum Director Gretchen Faulkner, who coordinates the annual basketmakers’ sale in collaboration with the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. The raffle basket is a large fancy sewing basket that includes a pincushion and sewing notions pocket on the inside.
The museum can be contacted at (207) 581-1904 for further details.