Build week runs Sept. 6-13 at Mariner Park, with the burning on Sept. 13.

The Homer Burning Basket returns this month for its 23rd annual community gathering, inviting Homer residents and visitors to come together in a week of making, remembering, releasing, and celebrating. This year’s basket is titled ‘Smile: A basket of remembrance and unburdening.” 

Created by artist and community art instigator Mavis Muller, the Homer Burning Basket is a participatory, impermanent work of art woven from natural materials gathered from the local landscape. 

“For more than two decades, the project has brought people together through the simple and powerful act of creating something collectively — and then letting it go,” Muller wrote in a press release.

From noon to 5 p.m. daily, Sept. 6-12,  the public is invited to come to Mariner Park at the base of the Homer Spit and help build the basket. No artistic experience is necessary. Participate as much or as little as you like. Participants may weave, decorate, write, share storie, or simply lend a hand. Every contribution becomes part of the basket and part of the story it carries.

“Come help. You are needed and appreciated,” Muller wrote. “… After 23 years, the invitation remains wonderfully simple: Come weave. Come remember. Come release. Come celebrate.”

Starting at 5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13, the completed basket will become a gathering place for community participation. Everyone is invited to add personal touches, messages, and decorations reflecting the themes of remembrance, unburdening, letting go. The evening will include drumming and community participation, followed by an artist talk at 7 p.m. 

Then, at sundown, the basket will be ignited and burned to symbolically release the community’s collective positive intentions. A fire spinning performance follows.

Muller explained why she chose this year’s title of Smile for the basket.

“A smile can be an offering. A smile is the closest distance between strangers becoming community. A shared smile reminds us we are not alone,” she wrote. “The Burning Basket  invites us to consider what happens when we remember those we have lost, acknowledge what we have carried, and give ourselves permission to let some things go.

“The Burning Basket is ultimately about community, connection, impermanence, and the power of collective intention.”