Teri Rofkar, Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished Artist 2013

My name is Terry Rofkar,

Chas’ Koowu Tla’a in Tlingit.

I am a Raven from the Snail House, Tak’dein taan.

I am the daughter of an Englishman

and the granddaughter of Kaagwaantaan,

the Wolf clan.(MUSIC)

I have to say spinning is one I rarely do without the music.

So many times I get credited for the creation or,

you know,

the beauty of it,

but I really feel that it's the,

it's the elements,

the materials themselves,

and truly they keep me so humble.

If you

could smell what this mountain goat smells like when I get it,

it's so rotten

and kind of full of bits of goats and a

little

moist.

It's even warm because it's just a bit rotten.

Yeah,

because it takes being a bit rotten to come off of the skin.

Yeah,

so as much as it's very,

"Wow,

that's so lovely and that's going to be in a museum,"

but it's

such a raw kind of connection

with the animal itself.

I think that music reflects that, almost.

So people,

when they encounter them and

say,

"Well,

I'm an artist,"

"Well, what's your medium?"

Oh,

"I'm a weaver."

Oh,

"What do you weave?"

Do you weave?

They're thinking textiles or loom weaving.

I said,

no,

I'm a basket weaver.

And when they look at my work,

the robes are anything but a basket.

But when you look at the technique,

they're done the same way as the spruce roots.

It's two-strand and three-strand twining.

There is no loom involved.

So they're actually big baskets out of wool—

mountain goat wool in this case—

that hold people.

Dancing baskets.

That's what I always think when I see them.

I'm a basket weaver.

My boys call me a basket case.

You know,

it isn't as if I get to do

just a little part of the artwork.

I get to start from the beginning.

I use a spinning wheel,

but originally it was a drop spindle.

This is a frame. You can see it's not attached to anything.

This one's just a stick with holes in it.

Here,

the warps are coming down

and these elements that I'm working with are

weft and they're the ones coming across.

By definition,

a loom would have tension.

On the warps to retain the continuity of the fabric. Now I don't have any of that.

So all of the tension happens here

and when I weave with the weft,

I am actually taking these weft

around to warp,

and see that twist that happens?

There's a twist

between every two warps,

one behind

and a twist,

one behind and a twist.

That's it.

So I'll just work my way across to get my hands in there.

Is that great?

I love the texture.

I've got a basket here that's a great example.

And if you look at this closely,

it's exactly the same.

I average about one hour for one roll,

so this would represent two hours.

What are the things that we have in relationship to the people in the past?

It's the time.

You know,

time was probably just as precious and maybe more so because they had so much to do.

That'll be great.

Look at this day.

How you can see the deer's

heart is just starting to uncurl

and you know it's Spring, and it's a little early,

but this is the time for spruce roots.

So you look for an area where there's just moss starting to mature.

There's getting to be a few little berry bushes.

But you kind of get underneath and

pull the moss back

and underneath there's just some little roots,

little spruce roots.

Hey guys.

Yeah.

See,

there's roots under there.

Boy,

you

can really get a sense of that

chocolate dark brown that's underneath

yeah

and it's this outer bark. You probably wouldn't have even—

look at how loose it is,

and you could take this without even

probably hurting the tree. And that's the material you use for the dye,

for that dark brown

that's in the robes.

Oh goodness,

gunalchéesh.

Thank you so much.

Yeah,

I get to carry the culture for a little while.

And then I'll hand it off.(MUSIC)

Wow,

wasn't that cool?

Look at how muddy I got.

Awesome!