Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Pasokos (Sturgeon) Basket

Preview image of work. ash, sweet grass, birch bark, commerical dye, Pasokos (Sturgeon) Basket 46039

2023.40

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Pasokos (Sturgeon) Basket

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Artist

Theresa Secord (1958 – )

Title

Pasokos (Sturgeon) Basket

Creation Date

2023

Century

21st century

Dimensions

4 1/2 x 11 x 8 in. (11.43 x 27.94 x 20.32 cm)

Object Type

basket

Creation Place

North America, United States, Maine

Medium and Support

ash, sweet grass, birch bark, commerical dye

Credit Line

Museum Purchase, Anne Dorsey Loth Art Acquisition Fund

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2023.40

Penobscot artist, activist, and educator Theresa Secord has dedicated her artistic career to preserving and teaching traditional Wabanaki basket making to new generations of Indigenous weavers. This basket represents a new phase of creative experimentation for Secord, who combines ancestral techniques and materials with her interest in art, science, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. The basket evokes pasokos, the Passamaquoddy word for sturgeon, its gray body and triangular curls representing the animal’s armor-like scales, or scutes. The birch bark and red, orange, and yellow accents on the lid represent her Penobscot ancestors’ use of torches to hunt pasokos at night from birch bark canoes. Although they once thrived in the rivers and estuaries of coastal Maine, sturgeon populations have since declined precipitously as a result of overfishing, damming, industrialization, pollution, and climate change.