The Next Generation, 2011
Black ash and sweetgrass
Learning black ash basket weaving from her mother Kelly Church, Parrish (Pottawatomi/Ottawa, Match-e-be-nash she-wish Tribe) continues as the sixth generation in this tradition. Woven to suggest the form of a pregnant woman, this basket both figuratively and metaphorically embodies the intergenerational connection of basket weaving, honoring Native women as “carriers of culture” in myriad forms.
Courtesy of Kelly Church.
Cherish Parrish is a sixth-generation, black ash basket weaver, having learned the craft from her mother, artist Kelly Church. Using the pliable bark of black ash trees that she harvests from the swamps of the Michigan wetlands, Parrish weaves tightly woven baskets. While she continues the tradition of free form weaving, her work was transformed with the introductions of weaving around a mold. She also creates birchbark bitings in the tradition of the Anishinaabe of Michigan. Parrish was one of the recipients of the Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2006, won best of show in the 2012 Eiteljorg Museum Indian Market, and also participated in the 2006 Smithsonian Folklife Festival as a “Next Generation Weaver.”