David GillinghamKelp Basketry
website: www.pacifickelpbaskets.com
".......cast ashore with time in the sun, kelp becomes a beautiful and color varied substrate for basket weaving."
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Artist Statement
I grew up in Seattle and was introduced to the underwater world as a diver in Puget Sound at an early age. Diving in Puget Sound led me to Western Washington University where I got a degree in Marine Resources. Course work and work/study jobs got me involved with kelp, studying kelp growing and ecology.
After graduating, I went straight to San Diego, California and started working for Kelco Co. which was commercially harvesting kelp from the beds along the California coast. This started a long kelp career for me as a biologist diver in the California kelp beds and that instilled in me a deep love of the ocean and everything in it. I moved back to Seattle and started working to develop methods for kelp aquaculture. It was at this time, in the early 1990s, that I took a small kelp basket weaving class in Fremont in Seattle and have been weaving kelp baskets ever since.
I am retired now and travel to the beaches between Southern California and Washington collecting raw materials for my baskets. I am fascinated by the First Nations of the Salish Sea area in their cultural uses of kelp, both as a food source and as household equipment. The focus in my baskets is functionality as well as art. The material used for the kelp baskets is obtained from what has been broken free from the substate during rough seas at the end of the kelp’s life cycle. Once cast up onto the beach, the color variations are caused by the sun before collection.
I grew up in Seattle and was introduced to the underwater world as a diver in Puget Sound at an early age. Diving in Puget Sound led me to Western Washington University where I got a degree in Marine Resources. Course work and work/study jobs got me involved with kelp, studying kelp growing and ecology.
After graduating, I went straight to San Diego, California and started working for Kelco Co. which was commercially harvesting kelp from the beds along the California coast. This started a long kelp career for me as a biologist diver in the California kelp beds and that instilled in me a deep love of the ocean and everything in it. I moved back to Seattle and started working to develop methods for kelp aquaculture. It was at this time, in the early 1990s, that I took a small kelp basket weaving class in Fremont in Seattle and have been weaving kelp baskets ever since.
I am retired now and travel to the beaches between Southern California and Washington collecting raw materials for my baskets. I am fascinated by the First Nations of the Salish Sea area in their cultural uses of kelp, both as a food source and as household equipment. The focus in my baskets is functionality as well as art. The material used for the kelp baskets is obtained from what has been broken free from the substate during rough seas at the end of the kelp’s life cycle. Once cast up onto the beach, the color variations are caused by the sun before collection.