Woman of
letters Mary Lee FuLkerson’s new book brInGs THe work anD LIVes oF reGIonaL woMen arTIsTs To LIGHT by Kris Vagner | kr i s v @n ews r ev i ew.c o m
Mary Lee Fulkerson, who is 81, has a new book, Women Artists of the Great Basin, published in September. The idea simmered in her mind for nearly two decades before she started working on it. In 2013, Fulkerson, along with photographer Susan Mantle, began a four-year process of traveling to women’s studios in Nevada and a few neighboring states to interview and photograph them. Fulkerson has had a long career as a basket maker. In art and craft circles, she’s something of a local legend, known as much for being an encouraging team player as for pushing the limits of her materials and exhibiting in hundreds of venues near and far—including the White House. Her trademark style includes large, expressive baskets, some with undulating or irregular shapes, others woven from materials such as colorful plastics. She’s incorporated stories and inspirational messages into her pieces. In earlier work, she wrote words onto reeds before weaving them. Later, she figured out how to form letters from grasses or willow and work them into the structure of a piece. She led the Great Basin Basketmakers and was a longtime member of Wild Women Artists, a group formed in response to a lack of venues for women to show their work in. By the time Fulkerson started thinking about her current book, she’d already authored a book about Native American basket makers and contributed to another book on using locally harvested materials. Even with all this experience, it took a while for her to sort out how to approach writing it. She knew at the outset, though, that she wanted it to be about women.
Different worlDs
Author Mary Lee Fulkerson and photographer Susan Mantle gave a talk and signed their new book recently at Sundance Books and Music. Photo/Kris Vagner
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“I think work by men is every bit as good as work by women,” said Fulkerson, sitting at the dining room table in her West Reno condo under a tidy, floor-to-ceiling arrangement of basketry and other artworks. “That’s a no brainer.” But she’s long been a champion of other women and their work—and she brought up some common differences between women’s careers and men’s careers. For one, the Wild Women aren’t the only ones who’ve been underrepresented in galleries. “We know most work we see “I think we is by men,” Fulkerson said. The art-world gender gap—while need to look beyond it’s been narrowing in recent even defining what’s art. years—still exists. A 2017 report by the Association I love that I was able to put of Art Museum Directors shows that almost half of art wearable art and jewelry museum directors are now and purses in this book— women, but that men are still more likely to be at the helm because that’s art.” of the most prestigious institutions—and more likely to earn Mary Lee Fulkerson higher salaries. Feminist arts group Artist and author
