JOIN US! The awards presentation: Saturday, November 1, at the Center for Contemporary Art in Rockland, ME
Doors open at 5:30 PM | Presentation starting at 6:00 PM. All supporters and friends of Sarah, Gabriel, and the MCA are welcome to attend. Registration is not required, but strongly encouraged.
The Maine Crafts Association proudly announces Gabriel Frey as the MCA Maine Craft Artist Award recipient.
Each year, the Maine Crafts Association recognizes artists whose achievements exemplify excellence in the field of craft with the Maine Craft Artist Award. The award honors individuals who have made a significant impact on Maine’s craft community through their work, mentorship, and advocacy.
Recipients are selected by an appointed juror according to benchmarks of excellence in craftsmanship, inspired design, a distinctive artistic voice, and a career of service to the field. The 2025 honorees were chosen from a pool of public nominations by Amy Hausmann, Executive Director of the Maine Arts Commission.
“Gabriel plays a significant role as a cultural leader, teacher, and connector. His artistry reaches beyond the studio, fostering meaningful connections between Native and non-Native communities through shared creative experiences. His recent collaborative contribution to Tekakapimek at Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument exemplifies his ability to infuse place-based art with deep cultural significance, environmental respect, and a modern aesthetic. His partnership with the fashion brand Manitobah employs traditional weaving to create a line of contemporary leather shoes. In Gabriel’s hands, a woven basket becomes an invitation to engage, to learn, and to participate in the living tradition of Wabanaki culture. His work ensures that this heritage is preserved and actively experienced in daily life, strengthening the ties between people, land, and tradition.”
– Amy Hausmann
Gabriel Frey, a Passamaquoddy artist and thirteenth-generation black ash basketmaker, continues a family tradition passed down since time immemorial. He is widely recognized for his finely crafted pack baskets and for his commitment to pedagogical models that broaden understanding of Indigenous worldviews. His baskets bridge the utility of traditional practice with contemporary aesthetics, holding conversation with the past while looking toward the future.
Woven exclusively from black ash, Frey’s baskets often feature hand-crafted leather straps, lids, and liners. Using his grandfather’s axe, passed down through generations of basket makers, he locates and harvests basket-quality trees, processes the logs, and transforms the materials into their final form. Each basket incorporates hand-carved elements, including hoops, rims, handles, and wooden pins, while many of his tools, such as molds, gauges, and a shave horse, are adapted from traditional Wabanaki designs.
Frey’s work conveys his love for the natural world and embodies the interconnection of past, present, and future. His baskets carry cultural knowledge, family traditions, personal experiences, and hope for the survival of this precious material, inviting reciprocity between people, the land, and all beings.
Frey has served as a Craft Apprentice Program mentor, was named a United States Artist Fellow in 2019, received a Traditional Arts Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission in 2021, and most recently contributed as a Wabanaki advisor and creator to the development of the Tekαkαpimək Contact Station, opened in June 2025 by the National Park Service.
Frey’s work has been featured in several recent exhibitions, including Dark the Night and Bright the Stars, curated by Lights Out Gallery and presented at Waterville Creates’ Ticonic Gallery; Transforming Traditions: Gabriel Frey and Gal Frey at the Hudson Museum, University of Maine; and Code Red at the Maine Historical Society.
Alongside Gabriel Frey, fiber artist Sarah Haskell of York, Maine has also been selected as a 2025 Maine Craft Artist Award recipient.
Both honorees will be celebrated at the annual awards presentation on Saturday, November 1, 2025, at 5:30pm at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland. The ceremony will coincide with the CMCA 2025 Biennial exhibition, in which both artists are featured, and will include tributes from guest speakers, the presentation of a handcrafted award pin, and remarks from Maine Crafts Association leadership. Friends, supporters, and the public are warmly invited to register and join in honoring the recipients.
The 2025 Maine Craft Artist Awards are generously supported by the Maxwell | Hanrahan Foundation.
Alongside Sarah Haskell, Passamaquoddy basketmaker Gabriel Frey of Orono, Maine, has also been selected as a 2025 Maine Craft Artist Award recipient.
Both honorees will be celebrated at the annual awards presentation on Saturday, November 1, 2025, at 5:30 pm at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland. The ceremony will coincide with the CMCA 2025 Biennial exhibition, in which both artists are featured, and will include tributes from guest speakers, the presentation of a handcrafted award pin, and remarks from Maine Crafts Association leadership. Friends, supporters, and the public are warmly invited to register and join in honoring the recipients.
The 2025 Maine Craft Artist Awards are generously supported by the Maxwell | Hanrahan Foundation.
