A Tisket, a Tasket, Get Your Easter Basket

– Special to WEKY AM 1340 –

Photo Robin Reed creates bark baskets at the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea;

The Kentucky Artisan Center will feature basketry during the month of March with artist demonstrations showcasing a wide variety of Easter baskets. Artists will be making baskets from tree bark, reed and vines. All demonstrations at the Center are on Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

On Saturday, March 4, Robin Reed, of Irvine, will create baskets from bark from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Bark, the outermost covering of a tree, is a versatile natural material that for thousands of years has been used to make huts, houses, roofing, buckets, canoes and boats. A self-taught artisan, Reed keeps this tradition alive by creating baskets from the bark he harvests from willow and poplar trees growing along the banks of the Kentucky River and its tributaries, near his rural Estill County home.