Jeremy Frey

Jeremy Frey was born and raised in the Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, and from a young age, he painted and made his own toys.^[1]

He worked kitchen jobs during his early 20s and suffered from addiction. He soon returned home to clean up from his addiction and began learning traditional Wabanaki basket weaving,^[2] as his mother was also studying. He studied at workshops run by the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance,^[3] and became a basketmaker himself. Soon, in 2011, his baskets received Best in Show at both the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts and the Heard Museum.^[4]

He is noted for crafting his baskets utilizing materials including porcupine quills, brown ash, cedar, sweet grass, and spruce root, and for utilizing much smaller weaves than is traditional^[5] (32nd of an inch as opposed to a quarter of an inch).^[4] He has also began utilizing copper strips in his art as a response to the Emerald ash borer.^[1] His art has been described as "dizzying" and "kaleidoscopic".^[6]

He had his first major retrospective and traveling exhibition, Jeremy Frey: Woven^[7], begin in 2024. It has so far appeared in the Portland Museum of Art^[8][9], where it was the second-most visited exhibition^[10], the Bruce Museum^[11], the Art Institute of Chicago^[12], and the Cantor Arts Center^[13].

He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2025 for his basket weaving.^[14][15] He was awarded the Rapaport Prize, granted to an exceptional artist with connections to New England, in 2024.^[16]

He published his first book, Jeremy Frey: Woven, in connection with his traveling exhibition of the same name.^[17]

His art is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art^[18], the Smithsonian American Art Museum^[19], the Denver Art Museum^[20], and others.