Suffix for bush or boss

Baskets made of needles

BY RACHEL HERGETT FOR THE CHRONICLE

Behind the desk at the Artists’ Gallery in the Emerson Center in Bozeman, LeeAnn Galusha grasps the lip of a work in progress — a basket-like piece with bits of negative space formed around a green rock slice with rows of synthetic sinew stitches curving gracefully up its sides and an inverted triangle of glass beads reaching down. Her hands work quickly, stitching around a rope made of caramel-colored pine needles, then reaching for more and repeating the process.

Galusha has tried many art forms. During the pandemic lockdowns, she turned to glass, which she said makes her happy, and created mosaics of glass on rocks.

“I pick up a lot of things and do them, like needlework when I was younger,” Galusha said. “Anything that came along I wanted to do it.”

Basket-weaving with pine needles, however, is her true passion.

“I was always interested in it,” Galusha said, recalling an article about the art in AARP Magazine she read at 12. Gaulsha wouldn’t get her hands on a basket until 1989, when she took a class in Bend, Oregon. She often tells people the work “felt right.” Her hands seemed to possess an innate understanding of the process.

“When I found the pine needle baskets, that was it,” Galusha said. “That was what I was going to do.”

Rachel Hergett for the Chronicle ABOVE: LeeAnn Galusha shows off her travel kit filled with dyed pine needles on Sept. 5. BELOW: Galusha holds a woven piece in the Artists’ Gallery in Bozeman. RIGHT: Galusha works on a piece in her home studio.

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