Book award for Women Artists of the Great Basin
Submitted by Carson Now Reader on Sat, 08/25/2018 - 10:02pm
The book award in Creative Nonfiction for the WILLA Literary Award goes to Mary Lee Fulkerson and her book, Women Artists of the Great Basin. The book is replete with 120 stunning color photographs of the artists and their works by master photographer Susan E. Mantle.
The award is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, one of America’s foremost novelists. Chosen by professional librarians, historians, and university affiliated educators, the winning authors and their books will be honored in Walla Walla, WA, October 25-27, 2018, during their 24th Annual Conference.
Women Artists of the Great Basin is a stunning representation of thirty-two contemporary women artists who are scattered over 200,000 miles in the Great Basin, spanning from Salt Lake City to Bend, OR. A wave of women’s art has begun to paint the land with a giant brush, and nowhere has the winds of change been more evident than in the Great Basin, where a sense of freedom and rugged individualism has swept across the playas and towns.
Reno artist and author Mary Lee Fulkerson introduces each artist in the book and says, “It was during the interview process that I found my aim. The aim, which I realize now is the essence of this book, was to discover and communicate the rich stories of each artist’s individual journey and how their stories influenced the raw vitality of their art. Their journey to fullness was actually their pilgrimage, and writing about them became mine.”
Forged in a hotbed of searing creativity, readers of this book will come to see these women as visionaries, creating their own pathways to success, always defining and redefining what it means to be a working artist. Author Fulkerson and photographer Mantle logged in thousands of miles from their base in Reno to visit these artists in their homes and studios. Actually visiting with the artists helped them to gain a deeper understanding of who these artists were, what their art was all about, and how they went about creating it.
The result is a compelling book with striking biographies of successful women artists, and expresses how each one circumvented economic and domestic adversity overcame sexism and transcended their roles as wives, mothers, sisters, and friends to create lasting and spectacular artworks and forge meaningful careers for themselves in the art world.
Mary Lee Fulkerson is a fourth generation Nevadan. Her works have been shown in numerous galleries and photographed for national magazines. She is the author of Weavers of Tradition and Beauty: Basketmakers of the Great Basin, with Kathleen Curtis. Susan E. Mantle has photographed Nevada for nearly 30 years, 20 of them as lead photographer at Susan Mantle Photography, located in Reno’s historic Midtown district.
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