watch: Making the Jíbaro Basket

The Jíbaro Basket. Steam bent White Ash on a bent laminated and coopered Hickory base, stitched with copper wire and cane. "Jíbaro" is a word that is quintessential to the Puerto Rican identity. We now use it to describe someone who lives in the countryside or cultivates the land, but it comes from a Taíno word that translates to "lover of the forest." I love that because it means this term is both distinctly of our land of Borikén, as well as universally human in meaning.

I drew from various cultures for inspiration. My West African ancestors guided the overall shape with their bold and beautiful baskets, and lent me the triangular detail that serves as a starting point for much of the piece with their sense of geometric form. Incredible bamboo weavers in Japan inspired the feeling of water in the curved ash (a theme that flows through much of my work already), and pushed me to "think outside the basket." My Taíno ancestors' fantastic sense of motion, and lines that constantly and fluidly morph depending on the viewer's vantage point, fueled the ever-changing composition of those watery curves. And the Jíbaro's humble but emblematic straw hat, the pava, informed the spiraling ends that float out like blades of grass.

And so, yes, this is a basket. But it is also a celebration of humanity, a call to learn from and listen to one another both near and across the globe, and a reminder that every one of us is capable of adding beauty and purpose in this world, regardless of the violence around us.