By Emily Burkhart
May 7, 2023
Dawn Nichols Walden, Random Order XIII, 2006. Cedar bark, cedar root, bear grass. 23 ¾ x 14 1⁄2 in. [irregular] Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Weaving sculpture is like creating a spirit, pursuing an essence of plant and purity of form.
The completed form in the end represents both the plant and the artist’s essence.
–Dawn Nichols Walden
Dawn Nichols Walden
Dawn Nichols Walden (b. 1949) is a Native American basketry and fiber artist known for her woven pieces incorporating elements of basketry and contemporary sculpture. She uses cedar tree bark, roots, beargrass, and other natural materials to craft her work. A descendant of the Ojibway tribe, she was born in Vulcan in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in a historically preserved town with a reconstructed Ojibway village and is a member of the Mackinac Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians.
Walden studied Commercial Art at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. She worked for the U.S. Department of Defense and Air Force for ten years after college. During this time, she also studied fine art, sculpture, ethnobotany, and native cultures. With no formal education in basketry or ethnobotany, Walden acquired her technical skills and knowledge in these areas through workshops led by elders and artisans of various indigenous societies.
Dawn Nichols Walden. Image courtesy of United States Artists.
Walden’s artistry fuses sculpture with basketry, and incorporates her research of Great Lakes ethnobotany. Joining plants with ancient technology, her work focuses on the significance of raw materials and the manual labor involved in acquiring and preparing the material. “It begins,” she says, “in the woods to collect the plant materials with the reverence and reflection on the sacredness of nature.”
Walden’s woven sculptural vessels are often composed of two layers. For Random Order XIII (2006), the inner layer is made with cedar bark sourced from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Walden then devised the unusual outer layer–an intricate pattern created with what has been described as a dense matrix of interwoven cedar bark and beargrass fibers that radiate freely, in a “random order,” from a central cedar root medallion. The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired this exquisite piece in 2021.
Dawn Nichols Walden, Random Order XIII, 2006. Cedar bark, cedar root, bear grass. 23 ¾ x 14 1⁄2 in. [irregular] Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Walden’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the country including the ones mentioned below:
Random Order of Anishinaube (ca. 2006)
Dawn Nichols Walden, Random Order of Anishinaube, ca. 2006. Cedar bark, cedar root. 51 x 23 x 23 in. Photograph by Jon Bolton. Image courtesy of Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin.
Walden’s large cylindrical work called Random Order of Anishinaube (ca. 2006)was among the artifacts displayed in Woven: The Art of Contemporary Native Basketry at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington (March 1-April 23, 2016), and at the Schingoethe Center Museum of Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois (October 4-December 16, 2016). About the Woven exhibition, the curator Todd Clark, founder of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit IMNDN (I am Indian), stated that “exploring Native mythologies, colonization, and identity, with clear vision and lacking romantic overtures, these artists embody the idea of what it means to be a Native artist in the 21st century.” Walden’s Random Anishinabe appears to guard the past while opening to the future. The vessel is ringed on top by a border of what might be construed as conjoined Anishinabe stick figures that recall the Ojibway people, or, more broadly, all of the culturally and linguistically linked tribes.
Ties that Bind (2013)
Dawn Nichols Walden, Ties that Bind, 2013. Cedar bark, cedar root, 52 x 14 in. Image courtesy of Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX.
Walden’s superb piece Ties that Bind (2013) was presented in the traveling exhibition, Rooted, Revived, Reinvented: Basketry in America (2017-2018), a collaboration between the National Basketry Organization in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and The Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri that traveled to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi, in 2017, and to the Houston Center of Contemporary Craft in Texas in 2018. The exhibition featured ninety-three objects providing a historical overview of American basketry from its origins in Native American, immigrant, and slave communities to its presence within the contemporary art world. Co-curators Jo Stealey and Kristin Schwain of The Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri remind us that “baskets convey meaning through the artists’ selection of materials; the techniques they use; and the colors, designs, patterns, and textures they employ.”
Walden’s Ties that Bind is an imposing work 52 inches in height and some 14 inches wide. Walden constructed this woven vessel with the double layer method used previously in Random Order XIII and other pieces. This vessel is, however, gashed from top to bottom as though torn asunder, but the “wound” appears in the process of repair as roots tentatively bridge the gap. A knob or medallion of cedar root rests in the opening as though applying its healing power as a salve to the wound.
Radiate (2013)
Dawn Nichols Walden, Radiate, 2013. Cedar bark, cedar root. 52 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of United States Artists.
Another 52 inch tall work entitled Radiate (2013) was included in the 2014 exhibition Elementals: Women Sculpting Animism at the Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York City from November 1-December 13, 2013. The all-women exhibition featured artists whose pottery and basketry “express the animistic essence of life.” Since animism may refer to an essence animating the material universe, the exhibition’s name suggests that the pieces embody this dialogue. Indeed, speaking of her artistic process, Walden says: "the maker becomes infused with the materials, and then the materials make the basket". She goes on to state that she ‘‘believe[s] that the artwork is not only about a beautiful shape and well-crafted materials, but also about the spirit within the materials and within the artist.”
Three pieces from Walden’s Restless series (2014-2015) further exemplify this idea as “roots” appear to emerge from each vessel to various, progressive degrees.
Restless (2014)
Dawn Nichols Walden, Restless, 2014. Cedar bark, cedar root. 14 x 48.
Image courtesy of United States Artists.
Restless (2015)
Dawn Nichols Walden, Restless, 2015. Cedar bark, cedar root. Dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of John Bedell.
Dawn Nichols Walden, Restless, 2015. Cedar bark, cedar root. Dimensions unavailable.
Image courtesy of John Bedell.
For her artistic accomplishments, Walden was awarded a United States Artists Fellowship in 2018. And more recently, as previously mentioned, her sculpture, Random Order XIII (2006), was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2021.
If you enjoyed today’s article on Dawn Nichols Walden and admire her work, please share it online. For more information on the IMNDN exhibition series, visit the website here. To learn more about the National Basketry Association and its work to preserve the art form in America, check out this website.