A sweetgrass basket sat behind indigo curtains Thursday morning at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia. For generations, the baskets had been weaved by the Gullah Geechee people for both utility and artistic purposes.
Now, Mount Pleasant native and Gullah Geechee artist Corey Alston's work will stay at the museum. The basket, dubbed Big Percy, is the largest Alston has ever created. It stood at about five feet in height and was ornamented with helixes and circles.
Alston said the work, while physically imposing compared to the rest of his catalog, was still rooted in the traditions of the Gullah Geechee community. It all begins with harvesting.
"It tears up our hands, but we have to do it," he said.
Alston and other weavers have harvested grass in the early mornings to have enough materials for the work. He works at the City Market in Charleston and married into a family where basket making was a continued tradition. He credited his mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law with instilling the want to weave.
Museum leadership commissioned Alston to make the basket in autumn 2024, and he began to work February 2025. Alston said he took the time to make something that represents both the greater Gullah Geechee community and him as an artist.
"I wanted Big Percy to show what the Gullah community can do," he said.
The piece is about 85% bulrush, which is a strong, hard grass. Alston said that grass harvesting has become more strenuous as the Lowcountry develops through areas of grass growth and harvest.
The Gullah Geechee are descendants of African people forced into slavery along the United States' lower Atlantic coast. Descendants span from Florida to North Carolina. And Alston said that while Big Percy serves as a symbol of pride for his Gullah people, the piece is also unmistakably a love letter to the Lowcountry.
"When you see it, you're going to automatically think of the Lowcountry. Automatically, hands down," he said. "You're not going to mistake this for being an art from Charlotte or an art from Atlanta. You're gonna know that the Gullah people made it."
Alston has similar work displayed at the International African American Museum in Charleston and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
This piece will stay on display in Columbia. And Alston said if someone else commissions a bigger piece from him, he will return to Big Percy and expand in spots he left intentionally open.
