The Artist
Artist Statement
I am a basketmaker and fiber artist who uses the ancient techniques of wicker, plaiting, coiling, and twining to make things.
I began to sense the magic of making things by watching my name- sake Danish grandmother Tressa crochet when I was a child. As an adult, I took a class in basketmaking and fell in love with baskets. In 1990 I quit my corporate job when the boss noticed I had baskets in my eyes.
Watching Joseph Campbell on TV, I was moved to follow my bliss. I have always told my children, John and Andrea, to follow your heart. I have made a good life and earned a living as an artist and a teacher of basketmaking. I built a business on baskets.
My first body of work was traditional, functional baskets: catheads, egg baskets, quilting baskets. I studied the basketmaking traditions of cultures everywhere. My baskets were made to be used as well as admired.
My work transformed when my first husband, John Sularz, died in 2005. I created a body of work called Solitude. Color left. Working through my grief, I made pieces which look like vessels. I learned my inner life can be reflected in the work I make.
When Mike Hazard and I fell in love in 2010, color returned.
An experience with breast cancer in 2013 forced me to change how I work once again. I experimented with cotton cord, making things that I could hold in my lap. It was liberating to leave the functional work behind and begin to play with more abstract forms.
My work also began to be more influenced by the news of the world. Pieces became not only sculptural in form but embodied a deeper social, emotional, even spiritual content. The work shows what I call my inner gold.
Inspired by my grandmother and artists like Olga de Amaral, Judy Onofrio, and Louise Bourgeois, as well as by basketmakers like Pat Hickman, Ann Coddington Rast, and Jiro Yonezawa, my work embodies what it feels like and means to be a human, dancing through life. I weave love into everything I make.