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.
[excerpted from Karma website: www.karmakarma.org]
Frey’s experimentation with weaving includes this series of monoprints on thick, handmade paper. The printing technique he developed with Wingate Studios translates the delicate details of the weaving and wood texture into singular, colorful impressions.
Frey’s retrospective Jeremy Frey: Woven—the first major retrospective of a Wabanaki artist in a fine art museum in the United States—opened at the Portland Museum of Art in 2024 and will travel to The Art Institute of Chicago and the Bruce Museum. Frey’s work is held in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Denver Art Museum; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland; Portland Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; University of Delaware Special Collections & Museums; and Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, among others.