Artist: Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy, born 1978)
Title: Untitled
Date: 2023
Medium: Unique relief print and embossment with handwoven Wabanaki basket on handmade Dieu Donné paper
Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University. Purchased from Karma Gallery, 2026. 2026.8.
Centered on a cream-colored sheet of handmade paper is the blue-gray impression of a woven rectangle. The four sides are left loose, forming a slightly uneven fringe of parallel lines that breaks apart at the corners into delicate wisps. Within the central rectangle, tightly woven bands loosen into a subtle checked pattern, while variations in the blue-gray ink create a ghostly surface that reveals the pressure of the woven matrix during printing. At first glance, the work appears almost minimal. Look more closely, however, and it reveals an extraordinary process that transforms one of the oldest artistic traditions in the Northeast into an innovative form of printmaking.¹
Rather than carving a woodblock or etching a metal plate, Jeremy Frey created this print using a handwoven Wabanaki basket as the printing matrix itself. Made from brown ash harvested by the artist in Maine, the woven form is inked and pressed into handmade paper, producing a unique relief print that exists somewhere between basketry and printmaking. Technically, the work is significant for its innovative cross-media creation process, reimagining both weaving and printed works on paper while reflecting Frey’s ongoing experimentation with materials, process, and form.²
The matrix itself is derived from the flatwoven base of a basket before its walls are formed. Frey began creating these flatwoven works as wall pieces that occupied less space than finished baskets while allowing viewers to appreciate the intricate geometry of the weave. Working with Wingate Studio, he discovered that these woven forms could also function as reusable printing matrices. He has since experimented with different shapes, colors, and printing techniques, producing unique impressions that range from blind embossings to richly inked relief prints like Untitled. Each time the woven matrix passes through the printing press it gradually breaks down, making every impression part of the material’s own life cycle.³
An enrolled member of the Passamaquoddy Tribal Nation and a seventh-generation Wabanaki basketmaker, Frey learned to weave in his early twenties from his mother, Frances “Gal” Frey, before apprenticing with Theresa Secord through the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. Today he continues to harvest, pound, split, dye, and prepare his own brown ash wood, following practices passed down through generations of Wabanaki basketmakers. His understanding of the landscape extends far beyond the needs of an artist. Frey has described learning to recognize healthy ash stands almost instinctively, reading watersheds, companion plants, and forest conditions through years of experience and inherited knowledge.⁴
That relationship to brown ash is both practical and cultural. According to Wabanaki origin stories, the cultural hero Glooskap split open a brown ash tree, from which the Wabanaki people emerged into the world. Basketmaking, therefore, carries profound cultural significance while remaining rooted in generations of technical knowledge about harvesting, processing, and weaving the material.
As a male artist specializing in a style historically associated with women, Frey seeks a balance between honoring and transforming one of the oldest art forms in the Northeast, combining learned technical mastery with continual experimentation in color, form, and scale. While Frey is often described as an innovator of Wabanaki basketry, critics have noted that such language can mistakenly conflate recognition by the contemporary art world with artistic innovation, overlooking the generations of experimentation that have long sustained the tradition. As one reviewer observed, “it’s become a truism that Frey is an ‘innovator’ or ‘elevator’ of Wabanaki basketry. But often, such language can unfairly conflate recognition by a ‘contemporary art world’ with the quality of the artwork, dismissing the many chains of innovation necessary to sustain any practice.”⁵ Frey himself situates his work within that continuum: “The changes I’ve made, while they’re contemporary now, I’m still Passamaquoddy, and I’m still making baskets.” He has similarly remarked that what we call “traditional” was once contemporary, explaining, “Traditional has been done before. But everything that is traditional started off as contemporary… I’m just the next person in line making the tradition.”⁵
That spirit of innovation has earned Frey widespread recognition. After attracting the attention of Karma Gallery through the 2022 New England Triennial, he presented his first solo exhibition before the Portland Museum of Art organized Jeremy Frey: Woven, the first major retrospective of a Wabanaki artist presented by a fine arts museum.⁶ The exhibition traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bruce Museum, and Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center. In 2025, Frey received a MacArthur Fellowship, recognizing both his extraordinary craftsmanship and his expansion of basketmaking into new artistic forms.
Much of Frey’s recent work has also been shaped by an urgent environmental reality. Brown ash forests throughout the Northeast face an existential threat from the invasive emerald ash borer, which kills nearly every ash tree it encounters. Frey has spoken openly about the possibility that his generation may be among the last able to make Wabanaki baskets from traditional materials. In response, he has developed new forms of basketmaking—including wall works, relief prints, and experimental sculptural forms—that preserve traditional knowledge while adapting to an uncertain future. He has also begun stockpiling harvested ash, recognizing that the material at the heart of his artistic practice may become increasingly scarce. As he has remarked, “As what I’m doing as an artist peaks, I’m going to lose the material to actually do it.”⁷
Untitled brings an important contemporary Indigenous perspective into The Block Museum’s collection while expanding its holdings of innovative works on paper. The work enters into dialogue with baskets by Kelly Church, Shan Goshorn, and Jennie Brown, as well as artists including Jordan Ann Craig, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Mona Hatoum, Dyani White Hawk, Willie Cole, Helen Frankenthaler, and others who investigate material, process, and repetition in distinctive ways. Through its remarkable synthesis of basketry and printmaking, Untitled stands as a singular example of how traditional knowledge continues to generate new artistic forms.⁸
–Text based on acquisition research by Kirsten Lopez, Curatorial Coordinator, Collections Information and Digital Interpretation
Notes
- Object description adapted from the acquisition justification by Kirsten Lopez.
- Kirsten Lopez, acquisition justification, “Description and significance of the object.”
- Kat Zagaria Buckley, “At the Portland Museum of Art, Jeremy Frey’s Baskets Conjure the Past While Presenting a Warning for the Future,” Boston Art Review (September 4, 2024); acquisition justification.
- Virginia M. Wright, “The Modern Master of Wabanaki Basketry,” Down East (June 2024); acquisition justification.
- Julia Silverman, Review: Jeremy Frey: Woven, First American Art Magazine, Summer 2024(23), 88-89.
- Karma Gallery, “Jeremy Frey”; Portland Museum of Art, Jeremy Frey: Woven; MacArthur Foundation, “Jeremy Frey,” Class of 2025 Fellows.
- Virginia M. Wright, “The Modern Master of Wabanaki Basketry”; Maine Forest Service, “Emerald Ash Borer (EAB)”; acquisition justification.
- Kirsten Lopez, acquisition justification, “How does this work relate to The Block’s collection?”
–Text based on acquisition research by Kirsten Lopez, Curatorial Coordinator, Collections Information and Digital Interpretation
