Theresa Secord | This artist is a member of SWAIA.org

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Theresa Secord (b.1958) is a traditional Penobscot basket maker and the founding director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA). During her 21 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 150; in the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes. Among honors for this work and for her artistic excellence, she received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2016. In 2009, she was honored with the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award and in 2003, the Prize for Creativity in Rural Life by the Women’s World Summit Foundation, presented at the UN in Geneva Switzerland; for helping basket makers rise out of poverty. Theresa’s work resides in museum and private collections across the nation and she’s won many prizes for her own basketry in national juried art shows.