For as long as he can remember, Anderson Black has known how to weave baskets, using sage plants he strips into usable pieces. During the annual Living Traditions Festival in Salt Lake City, Black and his niece Kayla will demonstrate the ancient tradition of Navajo basket weaving.

"I grew up in a place where there was no electricity and no running water. [Basket weaving] was just a way of life, survival," said Black, who grew up in Douglas Mesa in Utah's Monument Valley.

The baskets were traditionally used in ceremonies, such as weddings for the Navajo people or Diné, as they call themselves. The process of collecting the material and weaving the baskets takes weeks, beginning with finding and gathering a large quantity of the sage plant, Black said. It takes a few days for the sap to dry before the stems can be removed and the white core and bark can be harvested. The plant is then cut into strips, dried again and prepared for coloring. The weaving itself takes only a few days.

"It's an art. I was born with it," said Black, who comes from a long line of Navajo basket weavers.

He learned how to weave from his mother, Mary Holiday Black, who reintroduced the craft in the 1970s with bolder colors and weaving traditional images into her baskets. In 1995, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts, the first person from Utah to earn that honor.

"She was really popular. She sold her baskets to trading posts and other people from different states who heard about her from magazine [articles]," Black said. "I remember artists would come to our house and draw her weaving."

Black is new to the festival this year, as are artists who will demonstrate African cartooning and painting, Sudanese bead work and Scandinavian weaving.

"I am so thrilled to have Anderson be part of the festival," said Carol Edison of the Utah Arts Council, which produces the festival with Salt Lake City Arts Council. "It's neat because [the work] not only encapsulates the stories for the younger generation of Navajo, but it makes it easy for people like you and me to appreciate the work and history behind it all."

Today, Black lives in Salt Lake City, while his mother lives in Mexican Hat near the Arizona state border. While she still weaves, it's her children and grandchildren who now are bringing attention to art.

"I am really proud of my work," said Black, who ruminated on how he feels as he's weaving. "You have to be really strong to do art and sit with it. It teaches you a lot about your life and the people it in, like my mom. She's getting older, but her spirit will always be with me. I think about the older generation, how some young people are forgetting our culture. It drums up a lot of things that need to be cherished."

Edison said the annual event is designed to introduce Utahns to the multitude of folk artists who live and work in the state.

"This festival is really different than most craft fairs because its purpose is actually educational," Edison said. "Everything about this is geared towards the local traditions. It's important for us to find ways to help these diverse communities continue their arts, because that's how they remember their culture."