The Willow Basket Project is a collaborative and experimental land/arts-based research program that employs art and creative approaches to address the most pressing environmental issues in the Dawson community. Led by Aubyn O’Grady and Jackie Olson, the project’s framework is likened to a basket that weaves local interest, expertise and materials into a network of interdisciplinary and geographically diverse collaborators, ideas and projects that support this practice. For example, they are three years into building a partnership with local placer miners to connect artists to post-mined claims (canvases) and the reclamation process. One of these claims is now home to a burgeoning Willow farm, grown and tended to by Jackie, Aubyn and students of YSOVA.

In this conversation, Jackie and Aubyn will speak about their relationship as colleagues, co-researchers, and collaborators.