Atz Kilcher

	Atz's Baskets...
	The following are pictures of baskets that are currently in stock -- others will be added as they are made. If you have an idea of the size and shape you want, he also custom makes baskets. Click here to contact Atz for details.


Beach Rose 5"X5"	Don Quixote 8"X8"	Aladdin's Lamp 3.5"X5.5"
$150	$500	$275

	Basketry Bio...
	Atz Kilcher’s creativity comes from the deep roots of his Alaskan homestead childhood. It indeed reflects the rich, spontaneous and secluded subsistence upbringing his parents created. His music, the pottery he has made, and his jewelry and basketry, are of the land and earth of which he was taught he was a part. Singing, songwriting, story telling, recording and performing have long been and continue to be the main stay of Atz’s creative outlet. It is after all what the Kilcher family of Homer and their many talented off spring are perhaps best known for. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, Atz studied pottery at the University of Utah and the University of Alaska. He has had several pieces accepted into juried art shows on the Kenai Peninsula. After moving back to his home town of Homer in the early 80’s, Atz began making jewelry out of found objects, mostly bone, antler, teeth, hooves and claws. He also includes ivory, baleen and stones. Some pieces are strung together with animal sinew, and include hand made beads of wood, bone, or ivory. During this same period, while raising his three young children as a single dad, and living back on his childhood homestead, he began making baskets out of roots. Aside from music, basket making is currently Atz’s main artistic outlet.

“There is nothing like taking a part of the earth, a part of nature, and creating a work of art with no more than a pocket knife and your hands. It is such a reciprocal gift, the earth gives you ingredients with which to make a basket, and you in turn honor the trees, alive or dead, with the same gift. Every time I create a basket, I feel no different than I did as a child on the homestead after finding a perfect sparrows nest neatly hidden in a bush, or large eagles nest in a cotton wood tree. It’s magic! Both are a part of nature transformed, living on with new function, new purpose, new life. Sometimes the only difference between nature and art is that one is man made.”

“I once picked up a hitch hiker out East of Homer. When he first got in I thought he was on drugs, he was acting extremely hyper, almost vibrating. He then told me that he was taking an anthropology class in Kenai, and had been assigned steward of a midden at Cotton Woods, on the beach up Kachemak bay a ways. He had just come from there and had found a basket almost entirely intact! He showed it to me! Now there were two of us almost vibrating! It had been made of birch bark and roots, of the earth, returned to the earth, and now again discovered; A powerful example of the interconnectedness between nature, art, and humans!”

Atz transforms roots of spruce, birch, cotton wood, alder, willow, elderberry, rose bush, and even devils club, into works of art. Just as the growth rings of a tree have much to tell, each of his basket holds history, memories and stories. History of his parents, Yule and Ruth, homesteading in the 40’s. Stories of childhood homestead trails, canyons and alders and deep dark spruce forests which were his play ground. Stories of the Fox River Valley, cattle drives and round ups, horse rides and remote cabins, winding rivers and glaciers.

Stories of the willow baby basket in which his mother carried him from Switzerland to Alaska. And countless memories of years growing up in the warm brown hand- hewn log cabin his parents built with axe and cross cut saw. Memories of how the roots he uses were harvested. Silent rivers. Eroded banks, exposing life- giving roots. Knife and hatchet. Sorting, coiling and bundling. Pack horses loaded with precious cargo, crunching their way back to waiting cabin, through carpet of yellow cottonwood leaves. Memories of skiing those same rivers, on snow covered ice, with root laden sled in tow.

His baskets display a wide range of nature’s colors, textures and shapes. He uses the natural round unpeeled root, as well as roots peeled or split. Some roots are braided, or twisted to resemble small ropes. Root bark is also used, either coarsely twisted or finely spun into to cords. A polished piece of horse hoof may be used as a basket handle, a dried cottonwood knot hole serves as an opening for another. An old sparrow’s nest and a small basket of elderberry roots, now rest side by side on the same elderberry branch on which the nest was built, both containing horse hair from the same red horse which shared the pasture.

When asked what he does Atz replies, “ I make stuff out of stuff, I take pieces of nature and rearrange them, give them new life, It’s my way of sharing the land I love with others. It’s also a way for me to honor the earth, to be intimate and stay in touch with her.”

Just as the wide variety of baskets of cultures from around the world represent the people, places and materials where they were created, Atz’s unique style of basketry proudly represent his connection with this wild and diverse last frontier we call Alaska.