Bruce Presents: Jeremy Frey: Woven, A Panel Discussion

Bruce Presents: Jeremy Frey: Woven, A Panel Discussion

Wednesday, June 4, 2025
6:00-Wine reception
Discussion:–6:30-7:30

Jeremy Frey (b. 1978, Passamaquoddy Indian Township Reservation, Maine) is one of the foremost Passamaquoddy craftspeople of his generation. A descendant of a long line of Indigenous weavers, Frey learned traditional Wabanaki methods from his mother and by apprenticing at the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance. Woven from natural materials that the artist himself forages, such as sweetgrass and wood from black ash trees, Frey’s vessels are characterized by subtle forms, delicately layered colors, and elaborate weaves. Building on and experimenting with the material histories of Wabanaki basketry, his work is also in dialogue with contemporary sculpture’s emphasis on materiality, form, and variation within repetition. To create his basket relief prints, Frey has developed a novel form of flat weaving that can be run repeatedly through a printing press, preserving and sharing his techniques without impacting the stock of his rare materials. Frey lives in Maine.

The first solo show of Frey’s work was held at Karma, New York, in 2023. His first institutional solo exhibition, Jeremy Frey: Woven, which debuted in 2024 at the Portland Museum of Art, Maine, was on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through February 2025. In June 2025, Woven will travel to the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut. As a 2024 finalist for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, Frey was included in The Celebration of Craft, a group exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo. Other recent group exhibitions include Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2024); Baltimore Museum of Art (2024); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (2024); Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC (2022); and deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2022). He is the first two-time winner of Best of Show at the Heard Museum Indian Guild Fair and Market in Phoenix, Arizona. Frey’s work is held in the public collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; University of Delaware Special Collections & Museums; and Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, among others.

Support for Bruce Presents is generously provided by Berkley One, a Berkley Company.