Never Again

Never Again Mary Jackson 2007 Charleston, South Carolina Sweetgrass and Palmetto Gibbes Museum of Art
Maker Mary Jackson
Title Never Again
Date of Creation 2007
Location Charleston, South Carolina
Materials Sweetgrass and Palmetto
Institution Gibbes Museum of Art
Credit Line Gift of the Braithwaite Family
Accession Number 2017.005
Photo Credit Rick Rhodes Photography
Category Folk Art, Tools, and Instruments

Artist Mary Jackson is an internationally recognized master of sweetgrass basketry and is a 2008 recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant. Jackson’s practice is rooted in the Gullah tradition of coiled basketry unique to the South Carolina Lowcountry. Techniques brought to America from West Africa by survivors of the transatlantic slave trade, and local materials including sweetgrass, palmetto, and pine straw define this coiled basketry form that has been practiced continuously since the 18th century. On rice plantations during the 18th and 19th centuries, enslaved Africans and African Americans with expertise in basketmaking worked together in family groups to produce the baskets critical to rice cultivation, harvest, and storage. Various basket forms were used to separate the rice from the chaff and for transporting and storing the grain. Later, sweetgrass basket-sewing techniques were preserved by these families who passed down the craft for generations from parents to children. Jackson learned the artform from her mother and grandmother. She first mastered the traditional basket forms but is best known for her highly inventive, modern forms and unsurpassed craftsmanship. Never Again is the largest basket Jackson has ever created at 42 inches in diameter. Jackson started with the form of a traditional rice fanner basket and extended the curved sides into a cover with a hole at the center and a sweep of unfinished grass. The elegant sculptural design executed with technical mastery is a dynamic work of art. Jackson wryly titled the basket Never Again, a sentiment held in recognition of the three years it took her to make the basket—a work she considers her masterpiece.