Jonathan Kline
Artist
Jonathan Kline
Artist Jonthan Kline is a sculptor and basket maker based in New York’s Finger Lakes Region.
Kline’s process begins in the black ash and hickory woodlands surrounding his homestead.
There, he strips bark from a selection of logs, crushing the spongy fibers found between growth layers by steel mallet before peeling long strips from the logs, cutting to size, and shaving by knife.
Pieces are lashed into functional baskets or non-functional sculptural vessels
and finished in linseed oil or with casein and mineral pigments.
Kline was first introduced to the art of black ash baskets in 1980 while working with
Newt Washburn, a fourth-generation basket maker of Abnaki and European descent living in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Black ash basketry is a distinct process, working the material which grows in isolated pockets of the Northeast and southeastern Canada and retains the unique ability to separate along its annual growth layers. With a studied approach perfected in the decades to follow, Kline has developed his own technique and relationship with the historical material and medium while exploring the artfulness of the sculptural vessel.
SHOWS
Sculpture, June 6 - September 6, 2014
Matter & Form, October 17 - November 18, 2024