Honoring Craft, Community, and Tradition: The 2025 Maine Craft Artist Awards

Each year, the Maine Craft Artist Awards celebrate artists whose work embodies the depth, resilience, and imagination of Maine’s craft traditions. These makers carry forward techniques honed over generations, reimagine materials with contemporary vision, and create work that connects people to place, history, and each other.

At this year’s celebration, our Executive Director Amy Hausmann had the privilege of serving as a juror. In her remarks, she reflected on reviewing fifty-eight artist nominations—a breadth of artistry that she described as both inspiring and humbling. Through these submissions she witnessed windows into the varied, masterful, and deeply personal craft practices found across Maine.

From this remarkable pool emerged two honorees whose work exemplifies patience, reverence for material, cultural continuity, and a profound relationship to nature and community: Gabriel Frey and Sarah Haskell.

Below is an introduction to the two artists whose practices stood out for their vision, integrity, and enduring contribution to the fabric of creativity in Maine. Amy’s full remarks follow in our extended blog.

Gabriel Frey: Black Ash Basketmaker and Cultural Steward

Passamaquoddy artist Gabriel Frey weaves black ash with extraordinary skill and deep cultural reverence. His contemporary pack baskets, shoes, and leather-accented pieces honor Wabanaki basketmaking traditions while bringing a distinctly modern sensibility to form and design.

Gabriel’s work begins long before the weaving—deep in the forest, where he locates and harvests basket-quality black ash. His process honors the tree, the land, and the ancestral knowledge passed down through generations. Every basket becomes a living conversation between tradition and innovation, material and maker, past and future.

Beyond his studio practice, Gabriel plays a vital role as a cultural leader, teacher, and connector. His work strengthens relationships across Native and non-Native communities and preserves the legacy of Wabanaki basketry for future generations.

Read more about Gabriel Frey →

Sarah Haskell: Weaver, Dyer, and Storyteller Through Cloth

Textile artist Sarah Haskell creates handwoven and botanically dyed works that explore natural cycles, memory, and human connection. Using linen, cotton, paper, and natural pigments, Sarah transforms simple materials into richly layered textiles that honor beauty, impermanence, and the stories objects can hold.

Her practice blends ancient handwork with experimental methods like rust dyeing, compost dyeing, and weathering. Sarah’s work is rooted in curiosity and care, but also in community: for decades she has led weaving circles, intergenerational workshops, and public art projects that use shared creativity as a source of healing, connection, and collective memory.

Her textiles are more than objects—they are vessels for experience, reflection, and communal storytelling.

Read more about Sarah Haskell →

We invite you to explore Amy Hausmann’s full reflections on this year’s honorees and enjoy images from the celebration.

Photos: Bret Woodward Photography

Maine Craft Artist Awards Ceremony/Maine Craft Association

Remarks by Amy Hausmann, Executive Director, Maine Arts Commission

Presented November 1, 2025, at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME

Good evening, everyone.

It was privilege to serve as a juror for this year’s Maine Craft Artist Awards. The process was both inspiring and humbling. As the new executive director of the Maine Arts Commission, this was an incredible opportunity to be introduced to the rich pool of artists living and working in this place we now call Maine.

I reviewed fifty-eight artist recommendations—that is a lot! I felt honored to be given a glimpse into fifty-eight windows of creative expression and mastery. It was an eye-opening joy to see the range of materials, techniques, and ideas expressed by artists who live and create in Maine.

Each recommendation brought something extraordinary to the table. After reviewing and researching each artist, and sitting quietly with the submissions, two artists emerged whose work shared a powerful connection—rooted in nature, patience, meditation and reflection. Their practice reminds us that creativity is not only about the end-product – it’s the making of the thing—it’s about the process, the journey towards that making. The making requires deep patience and understanding of forces larger than ourselves. The journey requires faith, conviction, strength – both physical and spiritual. It requires quiet, deep humility, confidence and curiosity. In their work, both artists invite nature as a collaborator, a teacher, a co-conspirator, a helpmate, thought partner, ancestor and muse.

These artists— Gabriel Frey and Sarah Haskell—work with natural materials, holding a deep respect for their origins, their place, their impermanence Their practices are meditative, intentional, and profoundly connected to the rhythms of the natural world.

Across time and cultures, the artist and the healer were often the same person. Their medicine is made of the same elements: patience, attention, and care, combined with herbs, plants, trees, earth, water, sunshine, moonlight, wind. In Gabriel and Sarah’s work, that balance, healing and connection is crystal clear.

Both artists are weavers. Weaving requires attention, rhythm, repetition and trust in the process. It’s about intertwining separate parts into something to make a whole. Gabriel and Sarah weave together natural materials, stories, traditions and people, communities to create functional and tender beauty.

Gabriel Frey demonstrates extraordinary mastery of traditional Passamaquoddy black ash basket-making, creating work that is traditional and contemporary, connected to the place and the people of the Wabanaki lands. In his work, Gabirel is dedicated to carrying basketmaking tradition from the past, through today and into the future. Gabriel’s work begins in the forest where he locates and harvests basket-quality black ash, honoring the tree through every stage of preparation and weaving. His pack baskets, market baskets, shoes and purses—adorned with hand-carved elements and fine leatherwork—embody a balance of form and function that speaks to both ancestral skill and contemporary vision. Each piece is a living bridge between generations, carrying the voices of his teachers, the knowledge of his people, and the enduring relationship between maker, material, and the natural world.

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 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. I selected Gabirel for his exceptional craftsmanship, cultural stewardship, generosity of spirit, and vision.

Sarah Haskell’s mastery of traditional hand-dyeing and hand-weaving reflects a deep reverence for the timeless role of textiles as vessels for storytelling and human connection. Using botanical dyes made from plants and minerals, she transforms linen, cotton, and paper into richly layered works that honor both material and process. Her practice embraces the ancient rhythms of weaving, embroidery, and crochet, pairing them with transformative techniques like rust dyeing, compost dyeing, and weathering. These meditative methods reveal and honor the beauty in impermanence and echo the cycles of natural growth, decay, and renewal that connect all living things. In Sarah’s hands, cloth becomes language—each thread a phrase, each stitch a gesture—telling universal stories of love, loss, and belonging.

Sarah’s artistry is rooted in her decades-long commitment to engaging and honoring community and healing through the act of making. A long-time teacher, Sarah guides intergenerational weaving circles, leads public art projects across the country, and creates participatory works that memorialize, heal, and unite. She uses her creative craft as a bridge to build connections in communities throughout Maine and across the globe. Projects like Woven Voices and the Mandala Community Weaving embody her belief that shared creative practice fosters empathy, resilience, and collective memory. By preserving traditional handwork and inviting others to contribute their own stories and labor, Sarah ensures that the fabric of her art is literally and metaphorically woven from the lives it touches. I selected Sarah because of her exceptional skill, dedication to tradition, experimentation and profound commitment to Maine’s cultural landscape.

In honoring Gabriel and Sarah tonight, we are celebrating more than mastery of material or technique. We are recognizing artists who remind us of something essential: that creativity is a bridge that builds connection—between individuals and community, past and future, humans and the natural world.

There is a long and beautiful tradition here, in this place we now called Maine, of turning to nature for inspiration and guidance. For millenia, makers have drawn from the land, the sea, the trees, the light, finding in them raw material and a deep and ancient wisdom. Gabriel and Sarah are part of that story, weaving past and future into a vision of connection, healing, care and community.

It is my great pleasure and deep honor to recognize Gabriel Frey and Sarah Haskell as the 2025 Maine Craft Artist Awardees—two artists whose work, patience, and presence strengthen and illuminate the fabric of creativity, community, and well-being across Maine.

Thank you.