Theresa Secord
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TRIBAL AFFILIATION: Penobscot
MEDIUM: Basketry - Ash, Basketry - Other
BIOGRAPHY
Theresa Secord (b.1958) is a traditional Penobscot basket maker and the founding director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA). During her 20 years of leadership, MIBA was credited with saving the endangered art of ash and sweet grass basketry by: lowering the average age of basket makers from 63 to 40; and increasing numbers of weavers from 55 to more than 200; in the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes. Over the course of 30 years, Theresa taught more than a dozen apprentices the endangered art of ash and sweet grass basketry. Now, some of her apprentice’s apprentices- have apprentices!
Theresa has been honored several times for her advocacy. Among the most notable, the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed her with the prestigious life time achievement award, the National Heritage Fellowship, in 2016. In 2003, she was awarded the Prize for Creativity in Rural Life by the Women’s World Summit Foundation, granted at the UN in Geneva Switzerland, for helping basket makers rise out of poverty.
She has won a number of first place ribbons for her own basketry at the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Eiteljorg Indian Art Market and the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market. Her baskets are in many private and museum collections.
In addition to weaving baskets, Theresa continues to help other artists achieve their own goals of art and economic self-sufficiency, through work for national Native arts organizations; First Peoples Fund of Rapid City and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation of Portland, OR.
In Maine, Theresa sits on the Governing Board of the Colby College Museum of Art, has consulted to the Portland Museum of Art on the Portland Biennial, and has co-curated a number of local Wabanaki basketry exhibitions.
