Clara Neptune Keezer's home was strewn with baskets, pictures of baskets, and basket-making materials. This multi-colored basket, which had gone on a museum tour in 1989 with a number of other native baskets, was sitting in her living room when this photo was taken in 2002.

Clara Neptune Keezer rolls a strip of ash after demonstrating how she spits the wood using traditional tools. Keezer, who was 72 when this photo was taken in 2002, had just won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for her Native American basketry. She was honored on the opening night of the National Folk Festival in Bangor that year.

Clara Neptune Keezer often braided sweet grass and ash for her baskets. She would often work on anywhere from two to six baskets at a time.

Clara Keezer Neptune works on a basket in her home at the Pleasant Point reservation in Perry in 2003. Keezer died Tuesday in Calais, a day before her 86th birthday. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer