Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), First Light, 2023, ash, sweetgrass, birchbark, porcupine quills and synthetic dye, 11¼ x 16½ x 16½”. Collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine. Museum purchase, Lynne Drexler Acquisition Fund, 2023.10. © Jeremy Frey. Photograph by Jared Lank (Mik’maq).

Co-curator, Ramey Mize, Ph.D., assistant curator of American art at the Portland Museum of Art, adds that “Woven highlights Frey’s resourceful gathering of natural materials and their cultural significance in his designs. The confluence of materials, process and time are inherent and powerful in Frey’s work,” Mize says. “Audiences are often astonished to discover that it can take many months for the artist to complete one work. Frey gathers every material that he uses in his practice—black ash, sweetgrass, cedar, spruce root, birch bark and porcupine quills.”

Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), Shooting Star, 2008, ash, sweetgrass and dye, 6 x 7½ x 7½”. Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Museum purchase with support from the Peggy and Harold Osher Acquisition Fund, 2022.30a,b. © Jeremy Frey. Image courtesy Luc Demers. 

“The retrospective is also an introduction to some more contemporary thought,” the artist expresses. “This is my first ever solo museum show…I’m honored to be that person and to do that with a traditional medium—it’s a contemporary version of traditional art. It’s an honor for me as a Native artist and to honor my people in that way.”

Frey continues to explain his vision: “My career has been about innovating on a very traditional format since the beginning. I’d rather take the basic building blocks of a basket and keep them traditional but present them in a very contemporary way. On one basket I might change a different weave or refine a type of material. Each one of those pieces informs the next.”

Going from a traditional weaver to contemporary artist that weaves, has taken the artist on a journey of “one basket at a time,” he says. The exhibition highlights earlier, more traditional looking pieces like 2012’s Basket Within a Basket and the 2008’s Shooting Star, and then moves to unique colors and layers of pattern displayed in Frey’s distinctive pieces like Defensive or Observer, both made in 2022.

“The recent works are more of a sculptural aspect of weaving,” Frey shares. “If you read about the exhibition, it’s a basket show essentially, but when you really get in there, these things are sculptures—it’s not what you think it’s going to be.”

This is evident in pieces like First Light, made in 2023, and commissioned by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. “I like to make pieces for where they’re going,” the artist admits. “I wanted to have something that would be perfect for their space and came up with the sunrise over the ocean because the museum is located in the most eastern state in the country, near the water. “[For instance], I made a piece for the Denver Art Museum and put a cougar on the lid cause they’re known for having [these big cats in the area]. I’ve always done animals and never scenery and wanted to paint a sunrise with quills. The basket itself is an expansive ocean.”

Left: Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), Defensive, 2022, ash, sweetgrass and dye, 12½ x 7½ x 7½”. Collection of Carole Katz, California. © Jeremy Frey. Image courtesy Eric Stoner. Right: Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy), Observer, 2022, ash, sweetgrass, porcupine quill on birch bark and dye, 13½ x 10½ x 10½”. Collection of Carole Katz, California. © Jeremy Frey. Image courtesy Eric Stoner.

The retrospective, on view from May 24 through September 15, is ultimately “a nod to the people that this tradition comes from,” says Frey, also heavily influenced by the early teachings of his mother. “Although the show is about me, there’s thousands of years of people behind that have made this possible.” 

May 24-September 15, 2024
Jeremy Frey: Woven
Portland Museum of Art 7 Congress Square, Portland, ME 04101, (207) 775-6148, www.portlandmuseum.org

Powered by Froala Editor