NEW YORK (AP) For centuries, generations of Japanese artisans painstakingly and anonymously wove baskets from strips of bamboo harvested from Japan's dense hillside forests to use for everything from carrying crops to displaying flowers.
About 150 years ago, some of those talented basket makers began to sign their names to their creations. But it was only after World War II that a new generation of artisans started to use the woody grasses of the bamboo family to make sculpture and not just practical containers.
This fall, the Japan Society has mounted an exhibition relating the story of the evolution of bamboo art from vessel to sculpture.