Peculiar Creature
Mary Jackson has honed traditional sweetgrass baskets to an artform that is only arrived at through patience and practice. Sweetgrass basketry is a longstanding African-American tradition that descended from its roots in African basketweaving, through slavery and now into the modern era. Mary's beauty is in the impeccable skill and care that she puts into every one of her baskets.
She is a link in a visual and oral history that is only expressed in its physical result, and maintained by those who have taken the time to learn this craft and perpetuate it. That is a wondrous aspect of her basketmaking, but another is the time it takes to make each coiled container. When one is holding one of Mary's baskets, what you have in your hands is an item of power and grace, made possible by hours upon hours of meticulous work.