The Art Box - Episode 121 - Stumbling Blocks into Stepping Stones - Meet Jane Tolar

Jane Tolar creates baskets inspired by Gullah sweetgrass and Native American pine needle baskets, both ancient traditions of coiled and stitched natural materials.  Jane uses pine needles and grasses, the coils bound with thread or cord. Jane urges you to touch her art, saying “I would like everyone to pick up a basket, then feel its textures and inhale its scent. I want people to look at my work and see thread and straw brought together by my love of the materials and my excitement to create something beautiful and useful. Every piece is a lesson in something to me: shape and color to start, to pattern and texture, then the bringing of it all together into a finished piece.” Steve met Jane in the mid-80's playing adult ice hockey in Easton, Maryland. It is through Face Book we rekindled a friendship with Steve's wife Gwen falling in love with Jane's beautiful baskets.