Billie Ruth Sudduth at work in her Bakersville studio

Famed North Carolina basket maker Billie Ruth Sudduth will be honored at a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, at UNC Asheville's Reuter Center. The reception, hosted by UNC Asheville and the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, will celebrate Sudduth's 25 prestigious years in basket making. A special exhibit of Sudduth's baskets culled from numerous private collections will be on view for one night only. A video retrospective of Sudduth's work will also be presented. Light refreshments and music by Asheville hammer-dulcimer player Susan Weatherford will round out the evening.

After leaving a 20-year career as a school psychologist in 1989, Sudduth began spending more than 10 hours a day in her Bakersville studio making, collecting and writing about baskets. Her destination studio is known as JABOBS, an acronym for "Just a Bunch of Baskets." Sudduth's baskets, which are often derived from mathematical formulas discovered by 13th-century Italian mathematician Fibonacci, are in the collections of the Renwick Gallery in Washington, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Asheville Art Museum, the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Art in Wisconsin, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Alabama and the Mint Museum of Craft and Design in Charlotte. She has been selected to exhibit at the prestigious Smithsonian Craft Show 13 times. In 1997, Sudduth was designated a North Carolina Living Treasure, the state's highest honor for creative excellence in crafts.

The event is free but reservations are required. For more information or to RSVP by September 19, call the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement at 828/251-6140.

The reception kicks off a weekend basket making workshop with Sudduth as part of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement's Studio Master Series. Other distinguished artists who have taught courses in the series include photographer Tim Barnwell, painter Julyan Davis, conductor Daniel Meyer, furniture maker Gary Rawlins and painter Deborah Squier.