Artist Conversation: Jeremy Frey
@ The Art Institute of Chicago
111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603
Opening Thursday, November 14th, from 6PM - 7PM
Delicate, intricate, and sinuous—the vessels that Jeremy Frey weaves from the heavy lumber of ash trees are astonishing to behold.
Born in 1978 and raised in the Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation in Maine, Frey descends from a long line of esteemed basket weavers and draws on his heritage for the vocabulary of his works. At the same time, he radically innovates within these long-standing forms and techniques to masterfully sculpt objects with unprecedented complexity and elegance.
Join artist Jeremy Frey and curator Andrew Hamilton for a conversation about the first museum exhibition of Frey’s work, Jeremy Frey: Woven—a mid-career retrospective that showcases both the time-honored art form of Passamaquoddy basketmaking and the way he has transformed it into something uniquely his own.
About the Artist
A color image of the artist adjusting one of his finished baskets on a pedestal in a modern gallery space. The walls and pedestal are the same light-blue color.
Jeremy Frey (b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, Maine) is one of the foremost Passamaquoddy craftspeople of his generation. Frey, a descendant of a long line of Native weavers, learned traditional Wabanaki weaving techniques from his mother and by apprenticing with the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance.
Working with time-honored materials such as ash wood and sweetgrass, Frey introduces new forms and techniques creating art that is all his own.
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 90-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, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Denver Art Museum, and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, among others.
If you have any questions about programming, please reach out to museum-programs@artic.edu.
Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email access@artic.edu.
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