Because of the utilitarian nature of her quilting, Rankin never thought of herself as an artist. That began to change in 1981 when she was invited to be a resident artist at the junior high school in her hometown of Lorman, Mississippi.
Over the course of her life, Harris worked to preserve the Catawba pottery tradition that originated centuries ago.
Gladys Kukana Grace learned the art of weaving lauhala (lau = leaf, hala = pandanus tree) from her maternal grandmother, Kukana, through a longstanding oral tradition.
Adèle Clark was a founding member of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, the chair of the Virginia League of Women Voters (1921–1925, 1929–1944), a New Deal–era field worker, and an accomplished artist and arts advocate.
Ailsa O’Connor linked her art to society, both the themes she developed in her art and in the essays she wrote to explain the role of art in society.
Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim is an embroiderer whose journey as an artist started in her birthplace of Safad.
Graves excelled at embroidering colchas with birds, animals, flowers, and other whimsical images. Her favorite subjects, however, were Catholic saints borrowed from religious paintings called retablos and three-dimensional sculptures called bultos.
In 1978, Fang Nhu and her husband were forced to leave Laos, their livelihood threatened by the Communist regime. In Providence, Fang Nhu became active in the immigrant Hmong community and was eager to teach her weaving skills to her daughter-in-law Ia-Moua Yang. For Fang Nhu, weaving was not just making cloth, but was representative of a social fabric.
A basket maker and porcupine quillworker, Yvonne Walker Keshick creates birchbark masterpieces realistically decorated with quills that depict natural images as well as cultural symbols of the Odawa tribe. Also a devoted teacher, she has developed resources and provided instruction to ensure this art form is passed down to others as it was to her.
Lebanese-American lace maker