Award-Winning Native Basketmaker Part of UMaine Sale, Demonstration
Contact: Gretchen Faulkner, 581-1904; Theresa Secord, 314-3120
ORONO — Celebrated Maine Indian basketmaker Jeremy Frey, who Tuesday evening received a prestigious $50,000 arts grant during ceremonies at Lincoln Center in New York, plans to return as an exhibitor in the University of Maine Hudson Museum’s annual Maine Native Basket Sale and Demonstration Saturday, Dec. 11.
Frey of Indian Township, a member of the Passamaquoddy community, is a long time exhibitor at the 16-year-old basket sale and basketry exhibition, being held at the UMaine Collins Center for the Arts. On Tuesday, he was one of 50 artists to receive unrestricted $50,000 grants from the Los Angeles-based United States Artists (USA), a national grant-making and advocacy organization. USA’s founders — the Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson foundations — created the organization in 2005 as a way to invest in America’s finest artists and illuminate their value to society.
USA grants are among the largest individual arts grants in the country, according to Theresa Secord, executive director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA), and an award-winning basketmaker herself.
Chosen for the caliber and impact of their work, the USA Fellows for 2010 are from 18 states and Puerto Rico, range in age from 32 to 71, and represent some of the most innovative and diverse creative talents in the country, according to the USA.org website. Artists include cutting-edge experimenters and traditional practitioners from the fields of architecture and design, crafts and traditional arts, dance, literature, film and media, music, theater arts, and visual arts. USA considered 138 nominations.
Frey, a 32-year-old father of two sons, was taught basketmaking by his mother, Frances “Gal” Frey, with assistance from the MIBA. He is now a member of the MIBA board of directors and a master basketmaker, says Secord, who nominated Frey for the USA award.
“He is an extraordinary artist in his own right, and a great result of the efforts of the MIBA,” Secord says. The mission of the basketmakers’ alliance includes promoting and strengthening the time-honored Native tradition of hand-weaving utility and decorative baskets, one of the first industries of the state of Maine. Part of that includes convincing Maine’s tribal youth to take up the art of basket weaving, she says.
“As a director and friend of the founding directors, we had some idea of how this would come about and how we would save Maine Indian basketry,” Secord says of the challenge, “but we really never saw this kind of artist — very contemporary but remaining true to his tribal history at the same time.”
Secord says Frey credits basketmaking with many successes in his life.
“It’s been quite a meteoric rise over the last decade for him,” she says.
The UMaine basketmakers’ sale and exhibition is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
The annual holiday event features several dozen Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot basketmakers who sell their hand-made, one of a kind, ash-splint and sweetgrass basketry. Work baskets, such as creels, pack and potato baskets, and fancy baskets ranging from strawberry and blueberry shaped baskets to curly bowls can be found along with quill jewelry, wood carvings and birchbark work. Traditional music, demonstrations of brown ash pounding, basketmaking, carving and birchbark work, in addition to traditional drumming and dancing, will be part of the day’s activities.