Pierre Cherie

The Houma people of Louisiana have made dolls from Spanish moss for a long time. To process the moss, artist Janie Verret Luster explains, “The old way of (curing the Spanish moss) was to put it in the Bayou … taking away the air supply it would start to die and then after … two or three weeks … submerged in the water, you would take it out and put it on the banks of the Bayou in a good sunny location and the sun would dry (it) … that grey would eventually fall off ... it takes anywhere from … six to nine months … for it to turn completely black.”