As we journeyed further south in China, we traveled through more agricultural areas. In these areas, we began to see more and more of the basket men of China. We were taken by the tremendous loads some of these men and women hauled using simple basket carriers over their shoulders. I wanted to initiate discussions about the physical nature of the work that these poorer workers were doing and the fact that both men and women shared this task equally.
I fashioned a stick figure from driftwood and a shoulder basket from sticks and wire I had around the house. It mirrored the primitive baskets I saw some of the workers using. I also fashioned a cone-shaped hat form sheet metal similar to the ones I observed.
The loads that I created for my sculpture were made from driftwood sticks and had English-Chinese words, phrases and numbers. I had the students use these in vocabulary exercises. As simple as this piece was, it still generated numerous questions from the students.
It seemed only fitting that the basket man reside in my gardens.
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