Featured Artist – Dominica Lord-Wood

Q & A

Q: Tell us a little about your art.

A: I have been a craftswoman for many years. As a young woman living in New England, I enjoyed producing hand crocheted work, patchwork pillows, pine needle baskets and traditional style rattan reed baskets, which I sold at craft fairs and in fine craft galleries.

Q: Why did you start doing what you do?

A: I grew up in a family that respected and appreciated cultural expression.  My great grandmother was a concert pianist. My father’s parents were artists who met at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art. My mother’s mother was a self-taught water colorist. I have been making art and doing craftwork for as long as I can remember. 

Q: What makes you different from others in your field.

I had a single lesson with a Metis Cherokee/Scots Irish woman on how to make a pine needle basket when I was living in Northern California.  Later, I had only two lessons in New England basketry from a woman who grew up on Peaks Island in Maine.  After each of these experiences, I worked on my own, finding a meditative, natural way to connect with the basketry materials.

Today, living on the Olympic Peninsula, my primary creative focus is weaving baskets made of pine needles, often trimmed with ceramic or glass beads, sweet grass, pinecones, or walnut slices; traditional baskets, made of hand dyed reed and wood; or rustic baskets of reed, gathered weeds, and driftwood collected from the ocean and lake shores.

Q:  What are your biggest influences?

A: After I moved to Northern California from New England,  I obtained a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Research in cultural anthropology led to a fascination with the relationship between women, culture, eco-spirituality and traditional arts. As part of my research, I attended the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts & Crafts in Cape Breton and visited  the Highland Village in Nova Scotia.  This research in Celtic culture related to my father’s ancestry and inspired me to focus on those artistic forms for my own creative expression. 

Q: Where would you like to go next?

A: I intend to continue to develop my basketry techniques, while expanding my Many Paths Artist Services to support other artists using my administrative and technical skills to help them promote their own art.