(1955-Present)
Tribal Affiliation: Tohono O’odham
Annie Antone learned how to weave baskets from her mother, and sold her first basket at the age of nineteen for $10. She gave the money to her mother.
In making her baskets, Annie uses only plant materials harvested from her homeland, the Sonoran Desert. These include yucca, devil’s claw, and bear grass. Although her techniques in making coiled baskets are traditional, but her designs are completely unique. She specialized in highly graphic, pictorial imagery, and has even featured realistic images of panthers and semi-tractor trailers. Ancient Hohokam pottery designs also provide Annie with inspiration for basket designs, as do the flora and fauna of the Sonoran Desert. To achieve her complex designs, she carefully sketches them out before weaving.
Her baskets are highly collectable. She has exhibited throughout the country, as well as the British Museum, and won awards at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, Red Earth, Gallup Ceremonial, the O’odham Tash Rodeo and Fair, and the Santa Fe Indian Market. She was first invited to exhibit and demonstrate basketry at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1992 and has been invited back by the National Museum of the American Indian many times.