Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron McCarty.
Hi Aaron, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started the journey to becoming a Kuboo basket maker and Bamboo Craftsman due to an interest in bamboo as a living privacy hedge in the landscape. That was the reason for my internship with Keiji Oshima. I started as an intern at his bamboo nursery, Haiku Bamboo Nursery, located in Hendersonville NC. That internship turned into an apprenticeship in bamboo craft. I fell in love with the material process and culture necessary to bring a cane living in a grove to a basket. I also had a brief mentorship with Nancy Basket. Nancy put kudzu in my hands and encouraged me to experiment. I was looking for a solution to wire, as Keiji had taught me the process that uses wire to finish a Japanese rim. Kudzu, or “Kuzu,” the plant’s actual name, was the solution (Kuzu is from Japan). The Kuboo basket was born, and I have not stopped making them since. It is an evolving art form. kuzu and Bamboo are the plant worlds answer to the idea of yin and yang, respectively. Each basket is a reaction between those two forces, and each time the reaction is different. Basketry is about attempting to master tension and material forces.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Necessity required that I end my apprenticeship after 3 years. I had to go over the road as a truck driver for 6 years for financial reasons. I had a business at the time called “Ancient Earth Landscaping.” It was a permaculture business that was quickly becoming about bamboo’s interface with our culture. I had to shut that business down due to life circumstances. That was one of the many “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” I’ve endured along the way. There are plenty more such examples as life tends to do as life does.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Bamboo sets me apart from the others. Splitting bamboo using traditional Japanese technique is becoming rare even in Japan. In America it is exceedingly rare. I also mostly wildcraft. I use Kudzu and Bamboo from wild nature. I do grow bamboo, but none of my groves are mature. It takes about 10-15 years to produce mature and aged bamboo. I had a grove that was maturing and then it flowered and died. Phyllostachys Nigra Boryana, or “Tiger Bamboo” as the Japanese call it. When bamboo flowers all of the canes die. Bamboo flowers gregariously. I use green, cured, and cured/fire treated bamboo, and I do all of the work using three different types of blades. The main blade is called a Takewaribocho. I specialize in bamboo for basketry using Japanese techniques, but I am also a rebel and an aspiring revolutionary in art. I even border on iconoclasm in the techniques. I’m looking for new technique in basketry, which is by necessity one of the most conservative of the art forms. “Form ever follows function.” My love affair is with the process of turning a living bamboo cane into a finely split weaver. Basketry is secondary to that. One must do something with all of that finely split bamboo. I am, however, quickly becoming obsessed with attempting to plan a basket form beforehand. Murphy likes to inhabit baskets, so plans rarely go as planed.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
If you want to be exceptional in art you need to commit your soul to the endeavor. Commit with every fiber composing the weave of your life. Art demands our unstirring fealty because it is always under attack. Execute art with the sovereignty of your souls desire. To do any less is to do an injustice to art.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carolinabamboo.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Carolina_Bamboo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarolinaBamboo.org/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarolinaBamboo/videos
