SEQUIM — About 35 summers ago, Ann Adams took a summer school class for Native American teenagers at Sequim High School. She worked on reading and math, of course — and learned beading, basket-weaving, the Eagle Dance and the Bear Dance. She also wove her first cedar basket.
“That was in the early 1970s,” she recalled. “All the projects that students did were taken to Olympia,” though she didn’t hear whether they were displayed.
“They were returned to our tribe a few years back, and some of them still had our names on them,” Adams added.
The artist — now the community health representative for her tribe, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe — has added her work to the tribe’s Hall-Adams Exhibit at the Museum & Arts Center in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley at 175 W. Cedar St.
Visitors can see Adams’ “octopus” bag for carrying flint and stone, a basket Adams wove for her granddaughter, a cedar headband, a yellow-cedar paddle bearing the sea wolf design, several bead necklaces, a woven salt-and-pepper shaker set and some tiny cedar roses.
Her first cedar basket is also here.
And this Saturday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the MAC, Adams will give a free demonstration of her cedar weaving technique.
She’ll start with something small, weaving around a salt-and-pepper shaker set, but if there’s time, Adams will also show how she weaves small hearts and cedar rose buds.
“If there is interest, I can get a couple of people started on the hearts and rose buds,” she added.
Adams credits Kathy Duncan of the Jamestown tribe for continuing her weaving education.
During the late 1980s and early ’90s, Duncan taught simple weaving as well as intricate weaving with designs.
“We worked with cedar, wool, roots [and] leather,” Adams remembered.
Members of Adams’ tribe and family — Florence Adams Monson, Jeff Monson and Danielle Adams Lawson — also plan to give free art demos at the MAC this year.
Other local artists are slated for still more demonstrations: Paulette Hill will make jewelry from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28, and Barbara Ralph and Tuttie Peetz will show driftwood art techniques from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31.
To learn more about the activities and exhibits at the MAC, visit the museum, phone 360-683-8110 or see www.MacSequim.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
