2023 NEA Heritage Fellow recipient Elizabeth James-Perry (enrolled Aquinnah Wampanoag) engages with Northeastern Woodlands Native cultural expressions, including basketry, finger weaving and quillwork and primarily sculptural and elegant woven forms of purple wampum shell-carving of the Atlantic Quahog with its connection to Native identity and maritime traditions. The artist both wild-harvests and grows species for spinning and  dyes. James-Perry also designs public and private Restorative Native Gardens and Shellscapes. Her newest work was a Blue Shark Garden in Franklin Park 2023, and a Sea Turtle Mound Corn garden created with the Native students at Amherst College 2022, following her MFA installation Raven Reshapes Boston with artist Ekua Holmes.  

James-Perry’s artwork has been commissioned at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, and Allard Pierson Museum.  Employed with her tribe, she was the Federal Tribal Co-Lead on the Northeast Regional Ocean Planning Body. The artist is concerned with sustainability in Native lifeways, and holds a degree in Marine Science and a certificate in Digital Tribal Stewardship for Washington State University. Recent art exhibits include Double Arrows at Tufts University Art Gallery and Seeping In at the Mead Museum, and in Boundless at the same museum.

This is Jack Troy’s 61st year as a potter. He has taught more than 260 workshops and published over 120 articles and book reviews in ceramics publications in addition to writing Salt Glazed Ceramics and Wood Fired Stoneware and Porcelain. Jack Troy lives in Huntingdon, PA, where he taught at Juniata College for 39 years and started the ceramics program in 1968. He has taught more than 250 workshops in the US and eight countries. His book, Wood Fired Stoneware and Porcelain, and Salt Glazed Ceramics are standards in their fields, and he has published more than 100 articles and book reviews of every major ceramics periodical published in English. He and his crew fire two anagamas three times a year.Castle Hill is a favorite place to remind himself that learning and teaching are inseparable.