Caleb Hoffman, right, with his mother and his winning basket at the Santa Fe Indian Market in August.

Caleb Hoffman did not expect to win a ribbon when he brought his baskets to this year’s Santa Fe Indian Market, the world’s largest Native North American art market and juried competition. In fact, he almost missed the call with the news that his piece titled “Embers” won best in show in the basketry category. He was relaxing in the hotel hot tub, but thankfully, his wife Lauren spotted his phone nearby when it rang.

Hoffman is the son of Theresa Secord, the founding director of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance and a respected Penobscot weaver, and the apprentice to Jeremy Frey, a celebrated Passamaquoddy basket maker who recently had a solo exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art. He’s 32 years old – the same age Frey was when he first won the top prize in Santa Fe. He lives in Orono and works as a physical education teacher, and he credited his faith, his wife, his mother and his teacher for his big win. He recently answered five questions about his basketry.

How and when did you start making baskets?

This started probably from when I was a really young kid, just weaving with my mother, Theresa Secord, in our house. She would take me all around to her workshops, just teaching me the real, real basics. Over the years, I’ve done a couple baskets with her. But in the last year and a half, two years almost at this point, I started working for Jeremy and apprenticing for Jeremy. So it’s been going on for a while, but this past year and a half, it’s gotten serious.

What prompted you to start working with him, to learn more and take this practice to another level?

I don’t know. It’s just something that clicked with me in my life, something I really wanted to do to express myself, my creativity. I loved weaving before, but I never – it was just the right moment, I guess. Jeremy, his career has obviously taken off, so I was coming to just help him and getting to know him.

I watched your speech in Santa Fe, and I really loved how you talked about the many steps of making a basket and the experience of harvesting a tree for the first time. How did starting that process in the woods impact the making of the basket or you on a creative level?

Oh, it’s like your real creation. Does that makes sense? It’s not like a board at Home Depot or something. No, we’re really going there in the woods, and we’re really processing our own trees. I knew that, but I didn’t actually realize it until I was actually doing it and the amount of work that actually went into it. It just makes everything a little bit more yours, if that makes sense, and a little bit more special. It’s just a sense of pride and accomplishment that comes into it.

The very first tree you ever harvested went to make the basket that you brought to Santa Fe. What were your inspirations for that piece? What did you love about it?

That was my first basket made under Jeremy. … It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, you know. That it came out even close to what what it could turn out to be, that I even did it in the first place. I have a full-time job too, so I’m coming here after work and putting in more work, helping Jeremy with his baskets, weaving my own baskets.

When you’re doing something for that long, the way you think about your basket can change. It’s not like you’re finishing it in a week. It took me, I think, five or six months to finish this basket. So I went through multiple different color schemes in my head, different ways it would look. You just don’t know sometimes, and your inspirations and your hopes for it changes all the time. But I just loved the way it looked. I love the way people talk about it. One thing I heard from people that made me happy was that they’d come from around the corner in the market, and it was the first thing that caught their eye out of all these vendors. I was very honored to hear that.

What are your hopes for your career going forward?

I’m still figuring that out. I would love to be able to transition and be a full-time artist and make a living off of it, and I think I could do a pretty good job at that. But right now, I’m a teacher. I’m just taking it day by day, and that’s all I can do in the moment.

I loved the tradition, and I grew up with it, but I don’t think I ever truly realized I could make this as a living. It’s really hard to make your life revolve around art, and most people fail. So I think that was another realization too, that this could be a real thing.