Return to News and PR**From the AKRON BEACON JOURNAL, Sunday, February 27, 2000, METRO page E4, COMMUNITY EXTRA / NORTH / BEAUTIFUL THINGS. Article by Carrie Garzich, Special to the Beacon Journal.
Basket making is finally fun again for Sharon Klusmann, and she says it’s because she’s making fewer baskets.
Two years ago, Klusmann made a decision to concentrate more on creating basket patterns for other people to make instead of hand weaving them herself. As a result, the business she started 13 years ago, Baskets By Sharon, has taken a more enjoyable turn.
“This was a fun hobby,” said Klusmann, 45, of Tallmadge. “When it becomes a job, it’s not as fun anymore. But I am finding it fun again for the first time. . . . I love the creative end of it, designing.
“I’ve always said my favorite part of my job is January, when I design my new line. Well, now I’m designing year-round. If you have a passion for something and then all of a sudden you have to do it eight hours a day, it’s not the same.”
Klusmann has hired people to help with the basic production of the rattan baskets, leaving her more time to create patterns. She sells her patterns both in stores and on the Internet, at a basket-pattern site and her own Web site -- http://www.sharonklusmann.com.
Some of her more unique creations are a magazine basket with wooden feet, a basket designed with dowel rods to hang files on, a basket that fits over stair steps and a set of wooden shelves with basket drawers.
Klusmann said it takes about eight hours to come up with a basket. After the first version, she decides what she doesn’t like about it and makes another one. Usually, Klusmann said, she’ll really like the basket by the third or fourth try, although sometimes she can get it right the first time.
Klusmann said she even amazes herself sometimes with her productivity in creating new shapes and patterns.
“When you’re listening to music on the radio, and you think, ‘How do these artists keep coming up with new melodies?’ Well that’s their art and it just flows for them, and that’s the way it is with basket weaving,” she said.
Klusmann said she tries to think of a function for every basket she makes. This functionality is one of the things Lorraine Justice said she likes about Klusmann’s work. Justice is owner of Plymouth Reed and Cane Supply in Plymouth, Mich., which carries Klusmann’s work.
“She makes nice, usable baskets,” Justice said. “They’re attractive, but most of them have a purpose.”
The paintings Klusmann incorporates into her baskets, Justice said, also serve to set them off. Klusmann said that when she started refocusing her business, she decided to take classes in order to work on her painting skills. Although she had been doing tole painting even before picking up weaving, the painting she does now is in acrylics, as opposed to the oil she learned with.
Klusmann, who also teaches weaving, learned the art from a friend and said she is largely self-taught. She now has begun taking basket-weaving classes to pick up new skills.
“It’s like furthering education in anything,” Klusmann said. “I need to continue to get better in my weaving, and I need to continue to get better in my painting so that my baskets are always improving. When I look back and see what I wove five years ago, it’s a huge difference from what I’m weaving now, and I want to make sure I can say that in five more years.”
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