By Kip Greenthal

Special to the Weekly

Artist Pamela Maresten speaks softly as she refuses to take too much credit for the remarkable array of button blankets now being shown at the Lopez Library. If you look carefully over shelves of books and into the corners, a hummingbird or frog, turtles and ravens, a kingfisher or flicker, even a seal will jump out at you, stitched to a rectangular form in lush shades of wool illuminating their shape. Abalone buttons brighten their stories of flight or song. Looking closer, you will see each blanket belongs to a person who lives on Lopez. These blankets have been given to them as a gift – usually a surprise – and Maresten is at the heart of their invention.

In the same way Pamela invented her last name – Maresten, “a place where stone and water meet,” she herself has become a meeting place for people seeking an image or design for a button blanket they wish to give to someone. It’s alchemy, going to her studio with the big window, with an idea you wish to give. For some, images emerge in traditional Northwest Coast designs, for others in folk art or in true “eclectic Lopez style.” With her sewing kit in hand, Pamela listens to someone’s idea and sets the image on the blanket, weaving design elements around it. She then prepares the blanket for friends to come together and stitch, much in the tradition of quilting circles.

“I’ve made things all my life and look for a way to put material together,” she says. “These button blankets have become my signature for shape and color.”

Maresten said her fascination with ceremonial rituals began as a young girl.

“I’ve always loved making costumes,” Maresten says. “Making things with fabric and dressing up can be a transformative experience and take a person out of time.”

When she moved to Lopez, she was influenced by Gregg Blomberg and his knowledge of Northwest Coast art and traditions. His wife, Irene Skyriver, initiated the blanket process by wanting to make one for her father’s birthday in a Northwest Coast-style. After their collaboration 20 years ago, two or three blankets a year have been created by the community.

“I am attracted to the concept that button blankets are stitched by many hands and then wrapped with love around the one who receives it,” she said.

Each blanket is an honoring, Maresten says, and tells its own story.