{"id":40097,"date":"2018-11-18T15:02:25","date_gmt":"2018-11-18T21:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=40097"},"modified":"2018-11-24T14:06:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T20:06:46","slug":"walking-through-adversity-women-artists-of-the-great-basin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/walking-through-adversity-women-artists-of-the-great-basin\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking Through Adversity: Women Artists of the Great Basin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nMany years ago, when my larger-than-life uncle drove from his home in Florida to Salt Lake City he arrived at my parents\u2019 house and bellowed, \u201cWhat a godforsaken place you live in!\u201d Which was shocking to me since I had always considered my homeland one of the most beautiful places in the country. I mean, where else can you get this kind of space, color, light and piercingly blue skies in the autumn?
\n
\n<\/em><\/strong>Women Artists of the Great Basin<\/em>, text by Mary Lee Fulkerson and photographs by Susan E. Mantle, pays homage to 32 women artists who \u201cprove there is much richness, life, and creativity in what has often been dismissed as a barren desert.\u201d Ranging in age from 50 to 80, these women describe their journeys to art along roads often marked by painful twists and turns, with the added challenges of being largely responsible for holding their families together and raising children. In fact, many of the profiled artists employ techniques familiar to their history as women, like stitching, weaving, making do with less, and using materials at hand. As clay sculptor Gillian Hodge once said, \u201cArtists who work in unnoble materials are opening the door to what art is, can be, and should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the featured artists work in three-dimensional materials, and their work varies widely from glass, fibers, wearable art, knotting, storytelling with dolls, natural and synthetic mixed media, welding metal to lava rock, and enshrining the Twinkie\u2014which does not decay over time. Three of the artists call Utah their home: Jann Haworth, Pam Bowman, and Sue Cotter.<\/p>\n

Jann Haworth has made her mark in the contemporary art world with soft sculptures, life-size figures, and\u2014of course\u2014the co-creation of the Beatles\u2019 Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. She lived in England for 30 years, but moved to Sundance in the late \u201890s, where she created the Art Shack Studios, the Sundance Recycle Hot Glass Studio, and was co-founder of the Sundance Mountain School. Haworth credits her creative energy to living in Utah and says, \u201cDry air helps you to think clearly, and inventing things is part of the resourcefulness of the West. And when you\u2019re surrounded by desert, it loosens your mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Installation artist Pam Bowman bases much of her art on quotidian tasks, noting that there are \u201cmany endless loops in our lives\u2014personal grooming, sleeping, cooking, doing dishes, going to a job day after day.\u201d Her labor-intensive creations illustrate how time-worn small tasks can \u201chelp to build strength, build character, and over time result in the \u2018becoming\u2019 of a greater, even more holy person.\u201d Unlike many artists, Bowman recycles her materials into other artworks or discards them altogether as her way of not contributing to the \u201coverproduction and excess\u201d of art derided by art critic Suzi Gablik. Perhaps this philosophy is reflected in her sentiment, \u201cYou can\u2019t live here without being affected by it\u201d [light and space.] Resources can be tight in the Great Basin, and one must make the most of what one has.<\/p>\n

Fulkerson notes that Sue Cotter, the third Utah artist portrayed in the book, \u201cexperienced poverty, displacement, and feelings of failure, but, like a river, she eddied around the rocky obstructions to pursue a career in art.\u201d Cotter\u2019s first encounter with the Great Basin was less than pleasant, since she cites her family\u2019s move to Las Vegas as akin to hell. Over time, however, she came to appreciate the land and became enthralled with the shapes of the contours as represented in topographic maps. She says, \u201cThe patterns of the land were beautiful. They seemed like a mystical calligraphy, a secret language. I began to incorporate topo-maps in my artwork.\u201d She later embraced artists\u2019 books as a way to tell the stories she wanted to tell, and still respect the land. She says, \u201cI look west toward the desert that is so often overlooked, written off, considered a good place to dump toxic waste. The Basin makes you stop, be still, then move slow, explore carefully, sit down in silence, and absorb an indefinable presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fulkerson\u2019s book is replete with good stories and quotes from various artists. For example, Kathleen Weymouth Durham, a storyteller who makes dolls, was told in high school that she had no talent. She quit making art until after she had her sons, and now says, \u201cEvery artist has a guy on her shoulder at one time or another who says you\u2019re not good enough. You have to knock him off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jill Atkins, an artist who makes unusual sculptural purses, had some personal life challenges that led her to embrace her favorite quote from Camus: \u201cIn the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.\u201d Atkins says, \u201cThe trick is to find summer. And we need to make sure our self-talk isn\u2019t destructive. We get enough of that from the outside world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on Atkins\u2019 story, Fulkerson said, \u201cI have written this book to highlight women like Atkins\u2014women who have walked through adversity to create art that changes our perceptions of the world because they do it their way.\u201d And indeed she has.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Women Artists of the Great Basin<\/em>
\nMary Lee Fulkerson and Susan E. Mantle
\nUniversity of Nevada Press<\/a>
\n216 pp.
\n$49.95<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many years ago, when my larger-than-life uncle drove from his home in Florida to Salt Lake City he arrived at my parents\u2019 house and bellowed, \u201cWhat a godforsaken place you live in!\u201d Which was shocking to me since I had always considered my homeland one of the most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1622,"featured_media":40100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/womenartistsgreatbasin.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 19:41:43","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1622"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40101,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40097\/revisions\/40101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}