Elizabeth Perry Original Wampum Art / Elizabeth Perry
Tribal affiliation: Aquinnah Wampanoag
How to purchase:
Website: www.elizabethjamesperry.com
Email: marineart@hotmail.com
Bio:
A multi medium Wampanoag artist, Elizabeth was mentored by her mother, a scrimshaw artist and cousins' Helen Attaquin and Nanepashemut Tony Pollard. Her fine artwork focuses on Northeastern Woodlands Native artistic expressions, using sustainably harvested traditional materials for her Wampum shell carving, colorful hand-twined patterned bags, finger woven sash- and oblique- weaving and natural dyeing. She cultivates the milkweed plants for spinning fibers and many different dye plants. The ancient art of wampum comes from the word wampumpeak for white shell bead, and the thick material has a great natural weight and presence. It is used for treaty and history keeping belts, as wholesome adornment and for ceremony by Eastern tribal nations. The shells are harvested each summer from local waters, opened, sorted, and carefully shaped depending on what the artist sees in the rich layered purple and white. Whale effigies, Shark designs, Black bear and other family clan emblems are among her most popular designs, along with long delicate earrings, belts and alliance collars. Elizabeth also consults on questions about techniques, materials and cultural inspiration in Northeastern wampum, textiles, and basketry in museum collections nationwide.
Elizabeth's museum quality work can be viewed at her tribal museum the Aquinnah Cultural Center, the Alaskan Native Heritage Center, and at Sandwich-, New England-, Haffenraffer-, and Wallraf-Richartz museum collections. As a member of a Nation that has long lived on and harvested the sea, Elizabeth's is a perspective that combines art, an appreciation for Native storytelling and traditional environmental knowledge in her ways of relating to coastal North Atlantic life. With a degree in Marine Science from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth 2001, she has offshore commercial fisheries research experience and in animal rehabilitation. Elizabeth was honored to be a 38th Voyager onboard the historic Charles W. Morgan whaling vessel, as a descendant of the nineteenth century Gay Head/Aquinnah first mate. Her work has appeared in multiple publications, including First American Art magazine, and in the New England Foundation for the Arts blog: Centering Justice. She was a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council's 2014 Traditional Arts Fellowship, and is a newly featured artist in a short wampum film on their website.
Elizabeth James-Perry resides in South Coast Massachusetts and worked for a decade in her communities Tribal Historic Preservation Office. Now she is creating in her studio full time.
