Pat Courtney Gold (January 22, 1939 – July 11, 2022)[1] was a Wasco Native fiber artist and basket weaver from the Columbia River area of Oregon.
[3] Gold harvested traditional plant fibers to use in her work, including dogbane, cattail, sedge grass, red cedar bark and tree roots.
[4] Her pieces often reflected the natural world along the Columbia River, mixing traditional motifs such as condors and sturgeon with contemporary elements like airplanes.
[13] In 1991, through the Oregon Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Gold began to study the making of "sally bags," flexible cylindrical baskets created by Wasco-Wishram people for gathering roots and medicines, as well as nuts, seeds and mushrooms.
[14] Gold diagrammed historical basket designs and learned about the stories they told, encompassing the symbolism of fishing nets, petroglyphs and other ancestral scenes.