“There is beauty to behold

in the broken

discarded and old

lessons to share

stories to be told.”

– poem by Jo Phillips

POLSON — Jo Phillips has made everything, from dog bits to woven seats, hats, lamp shades and her specialty — baskets — both large and small. The items she chooses to make, however, aren’t nearly as interesting as what she uses to make them. Materials like carved bone, pine needles and bark, sinew and beeswax — they are her clay, wicker and cotton. She has found that with scattered pine needles and discarded antlers bringing inspiration, there is no limit to what she can create.

“Just the way it fits in my hand, I pick up the horns and I envision the basket that goes with it, or the cradle or the light fixture,” she said.

While most people refer to her art as basket-weaving, technically, Phillips said, it’s coiling. Feeding the pine needles into a consistent circular amount and stitching them together with sinew, she has to keep each coil’s thickness the same all the way up the basket.

“It’s very difficult and it’s hard on your hands,” she said, pointing to the calluses between her fingers. “In the beginning, starting a basket can be overwhelming, because you feel like, ‘Is it ever going to take shape? Is it ever going to look like anything?’

Phillips’ mother, an enrolled tribal member, and her older sister taught her the Native American coiling technique when she was a young girl. She started making baskets more seriously in her early 20s as a young mom trying to figure out a way to earn a little extra cash.

“I wanted to make something I could sell that would catch people’s attention,” Phillips said. “I love art, yet, I wanted it to be practical and usable, a conversation piece.”

With those thoughts in mind, Phillips took the skills of her heritage to another level.

“My mother did a lot with using pine needles as thread,” she said. “She would take the ends off, soak them and use them as short pieces of thread.”

Before starting a project, the first thing Phillips must do is collect the pine needles and other natural materials, bring them home, lay them in the same direction and spray them with a mixture of bleach and water to kill any bacteria. The needles dry in rows in the sun and are then hung until Phillips is ready to use them. While some people choose to break off the end of the needle that connects to the branch, Phillips likes to leave the ends on as they give the final product a desired rustic look.

“It is very time consuming,” she said of her baskets, each of which take around 46 hours to complete. “Even the small little baskets are time consuming because you have to manipulate the pine needles to do something and then get them to stay there.”

Some of Phillips’ baskets have even evolved into water pitchers with very small, tight coils that are as air tight as possible. Then, she melts beeswax in the oven, waxes the interior of the basket and places it back into the oven so the needles will absorb the beeswax. The result is a fully-functional cold liquid-holding container.

“We forget that nature has provided us with all kinds of sources and mediums and textures to make beautiful, functional creations,” she said. “It’s taking something that people would consider garbage and showing that you can really make a beautiful piece of art.”

Phillips uses Ponderosa pine needles because they are in abundance locally and the bull nose needle is just too short.

“Pine needles have a natural turpentine in them and if you get a little sliver from a pine needle, it festers and is very painful,” she said.

She has always believed that if your hands are busy doing something positive, your mind will follow.

“It helps you deal with life,” she said. “To me, it’s a way of dealing with all this crap that happens to you. Instead of turning to drugs, or alcohol or depression, I work on baskets.”

When her mother passed away, Phillips finished a basket that her mother had started. The process, more than anything, helped her work through that pain.

Now a mother of four herself, with a son and three daughters, Phillips spent most of her life in Alaska and Montana, following around her father who was a missionary.

“I left home at a very young age and had to figure out how to take care of myself,” she said.

That led to figuring out ways to use her creativity to make money.

“I was looking for something that was different,” she said. “That’s why I ended up using the pine needles. That became my little niche.”

Phillips said making baskets has opened doors for her to meet other creative people.

“I’ve crossed paths with some very gifted, beautiful people,” she said. “I’ve found that if you focus your energy into creativity and see how far you can push it, there’s no end to what you can do.”

Phillips plans to keep pushing her limits until the day that she dies.

“I do it to prove to my children that if you have a dream or something you want to accomplish in your life, don’t give up on it,” she said. “We can talk politics all we want, but that’s not going to help anything. It all starts at home, watching over each other and appreciating each other, only then will we make a difference.”

Phillips has some big ideas and is currently in the process of making a table top with a pine needle scene.

“Sometimes we get so busy in the world of technology that we forget how to be creative,” Phillips said. “If everybody found something that could make them feel fulfilled, give them that feeling of accomplishment, that says, ‘I did it. I made something out of nothing and it’s beautiful…’ then the world would be a much nicer place. When we begin to build on something positive, then the negative seems a whole lot less important.”