Untitled Basket by John McQueen

Untitled Basket by John McQueen 

John McQueen (American, b.1943).  Untitled basket, comprised of wild cherry bark, bound to reveal entry, from 1979; diameter 15 x 9 in. 

Fiber artist John McQueen, an Illinois native, received his B.A. from the University of South Florida before receiving his M.F.A. at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. McQueen has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship three times: 1977, 1979, and 1986. He works with a variety of natural materials gathered from his Upstate New York farm in Saratoga Springs. His vesseled works are considered baskets, but are not meant to function as containers. In Rob Pulleyn's The Basketmaker’s Art (Lark Books, 1992), McQueen described his work: “The baskets I make are branches of trees rearranged and no longer real the way a tree is real.”

Provenance: Daniel Jacobs and Derek Mason Collection