As a little girl, Molly Neptune Parker played with scraps of ash discarded by her mother. She fashioned those scraps into little baskets, impressing her mother and other traditional basketmakers.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you use some good material and see what you can do,’ ” Parker recalled her mother as saying. “I started just by fooling around. You know how kids are. They pick up a piece of ash or whatever and start doing what they see others doing.”

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Basketmaker Molly Neptune Parker of Princeton has won a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Courtesy Keith Ludden / Maine Arts Commission

Parker, a Passamaquoddy basketmaker from Princeton, has been named a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow. The honor recognizes folk and traditional artists for their skills and their effort to share those skills with future generations.

The fellowship, which includes a $25,000 stipend, is the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.

“It’s a great honor, and it means a lot to me,” Parker said by phone today. “I don’t like to compete. I don’t put my baskets anywhere to compete. I just enjoy making baskets. But this particular award is very prestigious. It means that all the work I have done in the past with my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren is being recognized.”

Parker will receive the award in Washington, D.C., in October. She is one of nine Americans to win the fellowship this year, and the sixth from Maine who has won the award since its inception in 1983.

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