Jeremy Frey

In the studio

About the artist

Jeremy Frey (b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, Maine) is one of the foremost Passamaquoddy craftspeople of his generation. A descendant of a long line of Indigenous weavers, Frey learned traditional Wabanaki methods from his mother and by apprenticing at the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. Woven from natural materials that the artist himself forages, such as sweetgrass and wood from brown ash trees, Frey’s vessels are characterized by subtle forms, delicately layered colors, and elaborate weaves. Building on and experimenting with the material histories of Wabanaki basketry, the artist’s work is simultaneously in dialogue with the formal language of Greek and Roman pottery and with contemporary sculpture’s emphasis on materiality, form, and variation within repetition. Frey lives in Maine.

The first solo show of Frey’s work was held at Karma, New York (2023). Frey won Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2011, marking the first time a basketmaker achieved this honor in the market’s ninety-year history. That same year, Frey won Best of Show and at the Heard Museum Indian Guild Fair and Market in Phoenix, Arizona, which he would repeat in 2015, making him the first artist ever to do so. Frey’s work is held in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; University of Delaware Special Collections & Museums; and Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, among others.