The Basket Lady returns to Kingston

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The Basket Lady is back. Also known to Native people across the Salish Seas as the Basket Ogress, she is on the hunt. And just in time. That’s because, for Denita Holmes, fall is her season.

“This is the time of year when it’s getting wet, cold, and dark,” she says. “And it’s soup season, and to me that fits, because that’s what the Basket Lady is trying to turn chil­dren into.”

The dark humor fits the hungry, child-snatching figure at the center of “Basket Lady Returns,” a new exhibit by trib­al artists, and dynamic duo, Denita and Joey Holmes, running Oct. 3 through Jan. 3 at La Galeria in Kingston.

The exhibit builds on the couple’s now-leg­endary Sasquatch and Basket Ogress cos­tumes created for Halloween in 2023. This time, woven pieces accompany a series of photographs captured by Suquamish tribal artist Vincent Chargualaf, telling the story of the ogress.

For Denita, bringing the character to life meant experimenting with a familiar mate­rial in a new form. She wove cedar around a simple plastic mask, working vertically and horizontally, strip by strip. Binder clips held the strips in place as she worked.

A photograph by Daniel George inspired another element of the exhibit: the cedar face resting among bright green ferns. Holmes plans to place a mask in a shadow box with artificial and real fronds. Like the ogress herself, the exhibit will transform as the real ferns dry and turn brown.

“I want to see this cedar face mask kind of morph into it,” she says, “like it’s there but then camouflaging with it over time. I can’t wait to see that.”

For Holmes, who remembers hearing about the Basket Ogress as a child, the story carries meaning that transcends a simple scary story for kids. She sees it as a reminder to be aware of dangers beyond what people can readily see.

“I definitely don’t think there’s a lady out there snatching up kids,” she says. “But I do believe that there are things out there that could harm us, spiritually and emotionally, and we need to be vigilant of the dangers that are out there.”