On Exhibition: Weaving a Legacy: Ho-Chunk Black Ash Basketry

Weaving a Legacy: Ho-Chunk Black Ash Basketry
March 15th–June 29th, 2025
Curated by Tom Jones
The Paine Art Center and Gardens
1410 Algoma Blvd., Oshkosh, WI

by Jane Aspinwall

Weaving a Legacy: Ho-Chunk Black Ash Basketry is a groundbreaking
exhibition that introduces audiences to the historically important and visually
compelling tradition of Native basketmaking in Wisconsin. Featuring more than
100 works by more than 40 Ho-Chunk makers from the early 1900s to present
day, this exhibition is curated by Ho-Chunk artist and University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Photography Tom Jones.

Weaving a Legacy debuted at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend in fall
2024 and is currently presented at the Paine Art Center and Gardens in Oshkosh
from March 15 through June 29, 2025. For more than a decade, Jones has
collected and studied thousands of Ho-Chunk baskets, piecing together tribal
history. He was inspired by his own family history when he began researching
and collecting black ash baskets. His great-grandmother Mabel Lowe was a
highly regarded basketmaker of the early twentieth century. Baskets featured
in the exhibition were lent by Jones and other pioneering collectors with strong
ties to the Ho-Chunk community.

The story of how and why Ho-Chunk basketmaking came to be is said to have
originated sometime in the early 1800s. A part of the Ho-Chunk tradition of oral
storytelling, it begins with a tale about a distraught Ho-Chunk woman whose
loved one had recently died. Ho-Chunk tradition mandated that a Medicine Dance
take place—an almost weeklong event in which the host incurred significant
costs. Lacking resources, the woman was unable to provide the necessary items.
One night, she dreamed a “voice” instructed her to find a specific tree in the
forest, identifiable by its bark and leaves (a black ash tree). The voice outlined
how to prepare, dye, and weave strips into a basket that could be sold or traded
for the money needed to purchase the necessary items for the Medicine Dance.
And thus, the beginning of Ho-Chunk basketry.

Around the time this origin story began to circulate (in the early 1800s),
large numbers of German, Norwegian, and French immigrants were arriving
and settling on traditional Ho-Chunk lands which helped fuel the Ho-Chunk
basket market. With limited employment options and increasingly frequent
government policies displacing Ho-Chunk from their land, families needed a
way to supplement income. Basketmaking became a family endeavor that kept
households intact and acted as a conduit for retaining customs and traditions.

By the 1820s, Ho-Chunk black ash basketmaking had fully emerged in Wisconsin.
Design inspiration was borrowed from the Indigenous traditions of hand-woven
twill and wool mats, rugs, and panel bags. Over the decades, growth of the tourist
industry helped fuel the demand and proliferation of the baskets. By the early
twentieth century, tourists were flocking to central Wisconsin brought by newly
constructed roads like Highway 12, connecting major cities like Chicago and
Milwaukee to increasingly popular regions like the Wisconsin Dells. Ho-Chunk
entrepreneurs opened roadside stands to sell baskets, along with beadwork,
textiles, and handicrafts. Carloads of visitors stopped to purchase baskets,
drawn in by the vibrant colors and dynamic patterning.

All of the components of Ho-Chunk baskets are harvested entirely from the
black ash tree. In addition to the weaving, handles, handle attachments, and
other decorative additions are hand-carved out of black ash. Ho-Chunk men
typically select and cut down the trees, prepare and pull splints—thin strips of
pliable ash wood—from tree trunks, and carve the handles while women dye
and weave the baskets. Although the act of making a basket often involves the
entire family, most weavers are women. Often weaving styles, skills, or color
palettes are passed down generation to generation from mother to daughter.
Contemporary Ho-Chunk weavers, although still predominantly female, include
a highly skilled group of male artists represented in the exhibition.

Preparing wood for basketmaking is no small feat. Splints are cut from the
concentric age rings that make up the trunk of a tree. Once a suitable tree is
selected and cut down, the branches and bark are carefully removed. The trunk
is pounded using an even and consistent pressure until the age rings can be
loosened with a knife. Each ring is carefully removed in long splints that run the
length of the trunk. Splints can be further divided into thinner and thinner pieces
increasing the pliability for intricate weaving purposes. The bark of the trees is
often used to create canoe baskets while wood from branches may be used for
carved basket handles. One log can produce as many as thirty to fifty baskets.

More than fifty known basket shapes are named for function, supporting
domestic chores like laundry, sewing, waste collection, and food storage.
Outdoor activities include fishing, flower gathering, picnic, market, and
shopping. Tall, sizable feather baskets store large eagle feathers regularly used
in traditional ceremonies. A few basket names emphasize the shape of the basket
including barrel, kettle, urn, or canoe. It is important to note that categories
do not necessarily strictly dictate shape and size. Makers often re-interpreted
function, creating innovative shapes with unexpected weaving styles and colors.
Basketmakers tinted basket splints a variety of vivid colors, creating natural dyes
from minerals, berries, fruits, flowers, seeds, roots, and grasses. By the 1920s,
with the introduction of commercial dyes like Rit, most basketmakers shifted
away from natural dyes.

Modern and contemporary works establish Ho-Chunk basketry as an enduring
and evolving art rooted in uniqueness and individual expression. Although most
basketmakers did not sign their work, there are notable exceptions. Weaving a
Legacy highlights a few artists whose works are collected by major American
museums like the National Museum of the American Indian and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Helen Lonetree (1932–2014), for example, is widely regarded
as the most experimental Ho-Chunk basketmaker of the twentieth century.
Lonetree was known for her elaborate plaiting and sophisticated color palette.
Her self-invented curlicue pattern technique is considered a tour de force of
weaving.

More than ever, Tom Jones’s endeavor is profoundly important. Recently,
the continuation of the Ho-Chunk basketry tradition has come under threat
by the proliferation of the invasive emerald ash borer insect which is rapidly
destroying black ash trees across the Upper Midwest. His groundbreaking
original research is all the more remarkable considering there have been no
comprehensive monographs or major exhibitions solely dedicated to this history.
As an expression of commitment to this art form, the Museum of Wisconsin
Art accessioned its first Ho-Chunk basket in 2024 and has continued to acquire
work, many of which are featured in this exhibition for the first time. In its role
as the museum for the state, MOWA endeavors to represent all Wisconsin- based
communities and histories. MOWA is proud to partner with Tom Jones and the
Ho-Chunk Nation in this critical collective act of preservation.

The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend,
the leading institution dedicated to preserving and presenting the work of the
state’s artists. Author Jane L. Aspinwall is the Deputy Director of MOWA and
institutional curator for Weaving a Legacy.

Jane Aspinwall is the Deputy Director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Aspinwall holds an MA and PhD in art history from the University of Missouri–Kansas City and an MBA in arts management from the University of Missouri–Columbia. She received a BS in accounting from St. Louis University.