(Image: @learning.by.hand)

Before the pandemic I learned to create cordage. I sat and split and peeled and twisted until bits of plant fiber, from dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum), became two-ply cord. So deeply focused that my fingers cramped from this new type of hand movement, I realized that I was doing something simultaneously remarkable and simple. Like the hemp-like strings I was creating, I was being bound tight to a relationship between plants and humans.

This spring I was finally able to take a class that built off this experience. The instructor for the class I took at Wildcraft Studio in Portland, (Seattle, where is our version of this?!) Chloë Hight was in the traditional teacherly way, a wealth of information. But my favorite thing about learning from her was the emphasis on reciprocity, play, and wonder throughout the process.

All the students were there to weave a small basket, but our time was more about the process than the product. And something else caught my attention: we weren’t using plants grown purposefully for production weaving – but species I could find in my yard or in an overgrown patch on Capitol Hill.

Hight was gracious enough to speak with me this summer and helped me wrap my head around weaving and its deep roots in nature and art. We discussed what it means to work with plants as part of an artistic practice, how using plants as material is a deeply human thing, and about giving ourselves permission to play. In Hight’s view, weaving is as much about sidestepping capitalism, unlearning certain modes of being, and disrupting hierarchical models of learning as it is about creating a basket.

Hight’s background is found at the confluence of art and nature, from a childhood playing outdoors in the Columbia River gorge. Surrounded by a family of artists and teachers, she grew up knowing that “nature and expression are human birthrights.” While studying art in college, Hight realized she felt disconnected with the materials used for art, stuff you buy at a store and have no real relationship with. She cites several pivotal experiences that brought her where she is today. One was living in Oaxaca, Mexico and learning about traditional plant based dye and textile practices. The other was the mentorship of Sharon Kallis who embodied practices Chloë was intuitively seeking out while transplanted in an urban setting, as a student at the University of British Columbia.

A view into Hight’s world of craft on her @learning.by.hand Instagram page.

My personal interest in Hight’s story and work was that I’ve been seeking out new ways to relate to the natural world while connecting with my artistic roots. Weaving in particular hits home when we consider introduced species, which I cannot help write about on the Hill. Call them invasive or non-native – we have a multitude of plants that were brought to the Pacific Northwest for one reason or another and have taken root. After spending a day learning with Hight, I realized that some of these plants, like yellow-flag iris, Himalayan blackberry, and English ivy are all wonderful species for weaving.

Hight and I spent a lot of time talking about how using plant materials in creativity and play can be a gateway to altering our view of so-called invasive species. It’s unlikely we’ll get rid of Himalayan blackberries in most of the places they have established. Sometimes I would prefer a hedge of native shrubs over a pile of brambles, but that’s not always a choice I get to make, (and one that requires tremendous input to change). The beauty of using a plant like blackberry as a material is that we are unlikely to do serious harm by harvesting them, they are everywhere, and mostly people would be excited to have them groomed back.

“In working with plants like blackberries, I think about tending a plant vs eradication,” says Hight. “Viewing them as plants that are asking for our attention might help us see them as a living being, rather than a thing.”

Learning to harvest blackberry canes for their fibers also highlights something that Hight was insistent on: that we need to stop worrying about the product. Instead by learning to scrape off thorns, crush, and peel away fiber from a pithy cane we realize that making things with our hands, from plants that we share spaces with, is entirely possible and that it’s not something we don’t know how to do, it’s something we’ve forgotten. And that harvest is possibly just as satisfying as using the resulting material. And that’s good according to Hight: “80% of basketry is harvest.”

The tiny basket I wove from daylily, crocosmia, and cattail. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

People who harvest plants for any craft, growing wild or tended, must know at least a few things about that plant’s life history. Hight suggested a good starting point for people interested in trying all this stuff out: observe just one plant and try to make cordage with it. In class she showed us a journal she’d made of all the various species she’d made cordage with. You could use a common plant that is a known entity when it comes to weaving, like daylily, or simply pick out a plant you have access to that looks good to use. By harvesting it, and trying to make cordage, you enter into inquiry-based learning, asking questions of the plant like “when are you best harvested?” or “how strong a cord can I make with you?”

Hight says she likes to teach through the lens of children, meaning that it’s ok to play with a bit of material without worrying about what it will turn into. We all instinctively picked at plants as children (and adults), pulling apart blades of grass and tying knots in stems, our fingers stained with chlorophyll on sunny afternoons. In the past I have been so concerned about doing things right, of failure, that I held myself back instead of giving that grass in my yard a try.

Many of us today find ourselves in an ecological predicament. We’ve moved around, we’ve been displaced from ancestral places where possibly only a few generations ago (or even now) people made things by hand from local plants. They knew these plants, how and when to harvest them, how to tend species they relied on for daily life. You might find it absurd to try to make cordage, because after all you can simply go out and buy some string. But that’s not really the point of what Hight does – she isn’t asking everyone to live a life divorced from modern technology (we spoke on Zoom afterall), but instead to embrace what making things with our hands can mean. This isn’t a throwback, it’s a comeback to ecological thinking and living.

With all this said, it will still be intimidating to try to make something by hand if you have no experience. Lean into that. Find one of the species mentioned here (blackberry, ivy, daylily, or yellow-flag iris). Ask permission to harvest (or fuck it, just do it). Learn to make cordage. Watch tutorial videos on your favorite platform (just search “cordage making” on Youtube). And most importantly play around, have fun.

When I asked Hight if there were any final things she wanted to say, it was to highlight those who helped her along the way. Both Sharon Kallis, of the EarthHand Gleaner’s Society and Peter Michael Bauer, of Rewild Portland have been important mentors to Hight in her journey with nature, art, and people. It’s important to name our mentors – be they a plant or a person. After all, this confluence of nature and art is made beautiful specifically by the comingling of humans and plants past, present, and future.

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