Weaving a Community

Bessie Johnson displays one of her pine straw baskets

Governor Haley Barbour will honor five unique Mississippi artists at the annual awards for excellence in the arts next month. Each Friday until then, MPB arts reporter, Ron Brown will introduce us to each of them. Today he tells us about honoree, Bessie Johnson’s art of giving.

Sometimes, before she even knows it’s happening, Bessie Johnson quietly breaks out in song to herself while alone at home.

“I have always had the desire to sing but I had 14 siblings and I was the one that wasn’t supposed to sing. And can you imagine growing up and you have 14 folks poking fun at you?"

Bessie, a senior citizen, is preparing for her first public performance, a recital. If she’s not singing, she’s usually humming, sometimes several hours a day.

“It’s very peaceful, calming and very therapeutic too. I always enjoy it. It’s kind of like, blending nature. You know birds sing out in nature? And it’s really relaxing.”

If Bessie Johnson were a songbird, it’s most likely that she’d make her home in a long leaf pine tree. Long leaf pines are not common to Tibbee in central Mississippi, where Bessie lives. But Bessie brought one up from the coast and planted it. The pine needles grow 8 to 18 inches long.

“I go out and collect them. That’s the fun part. I like going out and collecting. In fact in the fall of the year I have a long leaf pine tree in my yard. And I watch ‘em and when they start falling I go out and pick ‘em up.”

What Bessie does with the needles has brought her statewide acclaim and awards over the past 40 – she’s a traditional pine straw basket weaver. Taking the dried out needles, she ties them together and creates beautiful oval, round, even scalloped baskets. It is not only beautiful art, Bessie is also carrying on a folk tradition. It takes hours to hand weave each basket, but she does it with a song in her heart, and remembering the days when her father taught her the craft as a child.

“When I first started there were no artists in Mississippi weaving baskets with pine straw, very few maybe, I didn’t know of any in this area anyway. I have a hat in my collection that’s at least 120 years old. And they’re still together and they still look good. Back in that time people didn’t have money so they had to use what they had. My first Easter basket, my mom made it.”

Johnson is credited with saving an important part of Mississippi’s artistic heritage. And because of her, basket weaving is something that is not likely to disappear. Just as important as her artistry, Johnson also is a teacher. Betty House is one of her senior citizen students.

“I used to see her in the paper all time. And I’d say I want to know how to do baskets like she do it. I called her and I said, Miss Johnson why don’t you teach us a class and she said I will, I will, you get ‘em together and I will. And finally we got started. And I got in the class.”

A master artist in the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Folk Art Apprenticeship Program, Johnson will receive the Governor’s Award for excellence in the arts, for contributions to heritage. Johnson calls it the greatest honor of her life. Not surprisingly, it’s something, like her art, that she will share.

“I’ve had five apprentices under my tutelage and they’re in different states, but they’re all coming back for the awards. And I’m really on cloud nine.”

A bus load of excited friends and family will travel from Tibbee to Jackson next month for the awards ceremony.

“I’m just really thrilled. It’s an experience of a lifetime. And it says maybe my work was not all done in vain.”

It is a tribute a long time in the making. Because Bessie Johnson has been working with her heart as well as her hands as she wraps, folds and sews her pine straw baskets, she has also been weaving a community. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown.