MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2019

69 words :: Feet Banks Meghann O’Brien became an artist out of necessity—she needed a basket that would allow her to pick berries with both hands. “I was really into harvesting wild food,” says O’Brien, whose Haida name is Jaad Kuujus , “and I heard a story about Native berry picking baskets that you could wear on your forehead and it made so much sense to me.” O’Brien, 37, is descended on her mother’s side from the Kwakwaka’wakw village of Weka’yi T’sakwa’lutan (Cape Mudge) and the village of Kiusta, Haida Gwaii. Her father’s lineage is Irish. Raised in Alert Bay, a village off the north coast of Vancouver Island, she spent her youth snowboarding professionally and working on her father’s fishing boat. She became drawn to weaving about a decade ago. “I got someone who worked on my dad’s fishing boat to help me harvest bark to weave a berry picking basket. I worked on it myself a bit and then went back to Alert Bay and got some teachers. It was a special time, the cedar tree has been tied to our lives on the northwest coast since the beginning of time, and I feel like weaving that basket, I tapped into all that. It was a special moment in my life—who I was and what I valued and how I thought about the world—and to receive that gift from my ancestors put me in a really special place.” From learning basketry with weaver Kerri Dick on Vancouver Island, O’Brien expanded her focus to Yeil Koowu weaving (Raven’s Tail), studying with Sherri Lightbown in Haida Gwaii, before apprenticing under master weaver WilliamWhite to learn Naxiin (Chilkat) techniques. In February 2014, When weaver Meghann O’Brien needed her artwork to be in two places at once, technology had the answer words :: Feet Banks ARTIST PROFILE WRAPPED IN THE CLOUD The artist and the Sky Blanket. DAVID KOPPE/COURTESY OF DOUGLAS REYNOLDS GALLERY