Thursday, November 2, 2023
Pop-Up Shop: 10am - 8pm
Meet the Artist + Artist Demonstration: 1pm - 4pm
Minnesota Marine Art Museum Shoppe
Meet 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Elizabeth James-Perry. James-Perry is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer and artist, and her work is included in the current MMAM exhibition, Re/Framing the View. She sculpts rich purple and white wampum jewelry and woven wampum from the quahog shell, and makes naturally-dyed northeastern handweavings of Indian hemp, milkweed and wool. James-Perry will have a limited edition of her collection available for sale throughout the day. She will share her insights and approaches to her craft, demonstrating various techniques from 1pm- 4pm in the MMAM Shoppe.
Wampum pendants on hand-spun milkweed with natural dyes.
Elizabeth James-Perry
(Aquinnah- Wampanoag), artist, writer, 2023 NEA Heritage Fellow
2023 NEA Heritage Fellowship recipient Elizabeth James-Perry is an Aquinnah Wampanoag writer and artist who sculpts rich purple and white wampum jewelry and woven wampum from the quahog shell, and makes naturally-dyed northeastern handweavings of Indian hemp, milkweed and wool. In cultivating many of the plants used in natural dyes at her home in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, her gardens serve to re-seed the suburbs with environmentally valuable Indigenous species. A 38th Voyager onboard the historic Charles W. Morgan whaling vessel, she is a descendant of Gay Head whalemen. The artist holds a degree in Marine Science from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and a certificate for Digital Tribal Stewardship from Washington State University. Employed for over a decade with the Aquinnah Tribal Historic Preservation Office, she served as Federal Tribal Co-Lead of the Northeast Ocean Planning Body and consults on matters involving tribal marine resources, Wampanoag life and whaling history. As a member of a Nation that has long harvested the sea, James-Perry’s perspective that combines Algonquian Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Native genealogy, art and science in her ways of relating to life on the North Atlantic. Museums commissions include the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Volkenkunde, and Allard Pierson. She co-produced a short film with designer Christien Meinderstma that focuses on wampum beads and red glass trade beads, and her wampum appeared in the theatrical productions of Manahatta, the A.R.T. Harvard production of Moby Dick, Rutherford Falls, Desperate Crossing, and the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Program film As Nutayunean; she researched 19 th century Wampanoag abolitionists for her essay in Dawnland Voices Vol 2.0 and rare eastern textiles for an article about King Philips Sash in the collection of Peabody Harvard Museum. She has installed creative Native plant gardens around Massachusetts as a way to highlight Native continuance.