Oberen Chance Jones, born in 1917 to a country merchant in rural southeast Alabama, married Emmett Jones at the age of 17. She spent the next 25 years rearing four children. As her children grew up and left home, Oberen turned to crafts. Her first project was a bouquet of pine cone flowers for her youngest daughter's dormitory room.

Soon, basket-making became the focus of her creations. Oberen relied upon nature itself to supply the inspiration as well as the materials for her basketry. For creating basket handles and rims, she gathered wisteria, honeysuckle, and wild grapevines from the woods around her country home between Clayton and Louisville Alabama. To add texture and color, she collected moss, dried leaves and road grass, wasp and bird nests, feathers, river stones, and pine cones. These additions made her craft an art.

Oberen stripped bark from fallen mimosa trees to use for weavers and made dye from acorns, black walnut hulls, and polk berries. She used a myriad of other natural materials -- from strips cut from her daughter's old wool sweater, blue suede jacket, and pieces of antique silk quilt to the occasional pair of deer antlers.

She exhibits at numerous shows throughout the southeast, including Brown's Crossing, Milledgeville, Georgia, Powers Crossroads at Newnan, Georgia and Seville Square, Pensacola, Florida. She won many blue ribbons and "Best of Show" honors. Most recently, she brought home a blue ribbon from the '98 Alabama National Fair in Montgomery for one of her mimosa baskets.

Want to try basket-making?