Elizabeth James-Perry uses materials she has foraged and grown to create fine art inspired by the environment
“Milkweed Warriors,” 2023, by Elizabeth James-Perry. Milkweed is of cultural importance to Native people, as the plant’s stem fibers are used in fine spinning and weaving. It also supports pollinators such as the endangered monarch butterfly. James-Perry incorporated both in this billboard that hangs outside the SMFA at Tufts building. Photo: Mel Taing Photography
In Elizabeth James-Perry’s exhibit “Double Arrows,” on display through November 12 at the Tufts University Art Galleries at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, the title represents the two-way relationship between humans and the environment, a give and take that should be much more balanced than it is.
Throughout her work, artist James-Perry, a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head-Aquinnah, emphasizes our interdependencies with the Earth. She incorporates fiber cords dyed from native plants she has grown, jewelry carved from shells she has gathered, and woven matting made of ash, reed, or cedar bark she collects.
“Experience/Nature,” 2023, by Elizabeth James-Perry. Red willow screen.
James-Perry created these earrings and necklace as a nod to the giants Maushop and Squant, two powerful, creative figures in Native legend who are “responsible for shaping lands and waters and weather and guiding folks to places that are safe in times of change.” Her materials included quahog shells, milkweed fiber, and dye made from black walnut and mint chlorophyll.
“Voyage,” 2013, by Tanya Crane. James-Perry invited other artists to display their work in the exhibit, including her mother, her brother, and SMFA at Tufts professor of the practice Tanya Crane. Crane made this oversized necklace from reeds she foraged from a Wisconsin lakeshore in winter. She said her intention in this piece was “to understand the mundane and dismissed labor of my ancestors, which provided utilitarian objects to support sustenance for their community.”
“The Future,” 2023, by Elizabeth James-Perry. A photograph of seedlings that the artist cultivates for use in her artwork.
At an artist’s talk on October 18, James-Perry described how she has learned to grow plants from wild seeds, so as not to disrupt populations of sometimes rare species. “It allows you to have a real direct personal relationship with the natural world,” she said. “You can see what’s thriving … and it’s very quickly something that becomes quite addictive to be out there all the time, seeing what’s coming out, what’s doing well this year.”
Foraging for her art supplies in the woods or at the seashore is more time consuming than stopping at Walmart, she joked. But the process is a physical experience that employs all her senses.
“There’s a wonderful quality to the different plants in terms of textures and colors and scents,” she said. “You might smell sassafras at one time of the year, another time … the goldenrod might be blooming. For me, it’s such an evocative scent of the end of the growing season in New England that I think I would be kind of lost without it.”
In a Q&A that accompanies the exhibit, James-Perry explains that producing fine artwork is her way of challenging widely held notions that Indigenous cultures are unsophisticated and don’t deserve to continue.
“For decades I have worked on Native self-reliance, reciprocal land use skills, and, throughout, reading the weather well,” she said. “One can only imagine all those skills are going to become all the more necessary on the eve of severe climate change.”
Photo: Mel Taing Photography
Elizabeth James-Perry’s textured weavings and jewelry aim to highlight the natural beauty of the local ecosystem.
