Evonne Stacia Lewis was born around 1955 in the bush near Docker River, Northern Territory. She belongs to the Pitjantjatjara language and cultural group. Her parents were married in the church at Warburton and as a child she spent some time there learning English, hymns and Bible stories. Lewis is a painter, punu carver and tjanpi basket weaver. Her interest in colours, pattern and textiles is evident in her art practice and her management of the second-hand clothing shop at Irrunytju.
Lewis regularly goes on bush-trips into the country with the minyma pampa (senior women) to hunt tinka (lizard) and perentie (goanna); gather bush foods and minkulpa (native tobacco); collect tjanpi (spinifex), punu (wood) and materials to make resins, linaments and organic dyes.
In 1995 the tjanpi project, an initiative of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yunkunytjatjara (NPY) Women’s Council, first taught coil basket weaving techniques to anangu in the Western Desert region at workshops run at Papulangkutja (Blackstone) and Manatmaru (Jamieson). Women were introduced to raffia in an array of bright colours and encouraged to experiment with locally sourced organic dyes. Tjanpi weaving was enthusiastically adopted across the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands by women who already had a strong textiles tradition which included spinning twine from hair and fur to make head and waist bands; weaving manguri from spinifex, hair and emu feathers; as well as skills in crochet, knitting, sewing and rug making introduced into the area by the Warburton and Ernabella missions.
Baskets woven at Irrunytju are often shaped like coolamon or round bottomed bowls; include raffia dyed a pale golden-yellow using the resinous trunk of the Xanthorrhoea grass-tree; and incorporate emu feathers for decoration. Lewis’s baskets are distinctive for their craftsmanship, form and sensitive combination of colours.
- Writers:
- Knights, Mary
- Date written:
- 2006
- Last updated:
- 2011
