Guest Curator Archive

We are honored and grateful to our Guest Curators for sharing their collections with us. This page will allow you to see what you might have missed or give you an opportunity to revisit their treasures.

Patricia A. Atkinson

Patricia A. Atkinson has been the Folklife Program Coordinator for the Nevada Arts Council since 2007.

Tobey served as a master artist in the Nevada Arts Council’s Apprenticeship Program while in his late 90s and made pipes until he passed away just short of his 101st birthday.

Eagle-Lambert is a prolific weaver and creative beader. She received a Nevada Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in folk art.

Zetaruk was a master artist mentoring apprentices in the pysanky tradition well into her mid-90s.

Originally from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Southern Mexico, Siquenza brought his family’s textile traditions to Nevada.

McCuin is a native Nevadan and premiere Western engraver/jeweler.

Rachel E. Spector

Contains healing water from the shrine’s grotto-Lourdes, France-Christian

The “milagro,” miracle, is an offering placed near a statue of a Catholic saint for thanksgiving when a hand disorder is healed.

Small tablets used as a cathartic several generations ago. Purchased in an antique store in Boston, Massachusetts.

Prayer card illustrating the Statue of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ is Bacares near Almeria, Spain. The hair on the statue grows and is frequently cut. The strands are then given to people for healing.

Small metal “milagros”-examples of a leg, foot, hands, children, and an arm.

Michael Owen Jones

Mojo Painting by Dr. Bob

Bookcase Rocker by Cornett

Space Ship by Ionel

Bike Taxi Toy

Paddy Bowman

Deep in the isolated Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica over Easter in 1998, I was staying at a scientific research station. The old-growth forest there is protected by the government, but the guards had gone home for the holiday. The sound of chainsaws came from different parts of the forest throughout the week and huge trucks hauled enormous trees out of the forest before the guards returned. A biologist told me that a family could live for a year for the price of one tree. One day I met a man selling a few wooden carvings, even this far off the beaten path of major tourism, he had found a market among visitors to the research station. I’m a bird nut and loved how easily I could spot gorgeous birds of all sizes in Costa Rica, including a couple of trogan species. This trogan came home with me. The artist penciled his name and the year on the bottom. I paid him $25, more than the $5 he was asking.

From the New Yorker, Nov. 8th, 1982.

Unlike the dots on faux folk art that I see in too many shops and galleries, the dots on the carved wooden chicken on the right fit in with many other pieces of artwork I saw in Guatemalan markets in 1993. I don’t know why dots were prevalent, but they were. I bought so many pieces in the Antigua market I bought a handmade cloth duffle bag to carry them home. This chicken, carver unknown, has a crack at the neck so was cheap even by this market’s standards, $5. I also bought a dotted mask and a dotted leopard from different vendors. Antigua is famous for tourism, which has fueled the market for many crafts. The carvers are not making these chickens for their homes but for tourists’ homes.

These very different birds come from rural areas of Central America, where I bought each of them. The bird on the left is a species of trogan, large, colorful birds of the tropics, bought in Costa Rica. The chicken came from Guatemala.

On a clear, cold Monday morning in February 1982, I stood on the courthouse square in Scottsboro, Alabama, interviewing traders who regularly sold goods at First Monday Trade Day. Once a raucous, sprawling event where people traded hounds, guns, and farm equipment, the affair had evolved into a flea market attended by tourists, tv crews from near and far, farmers from surrounding states, and locals. Only the older traders still showed up on Mondays, the big crowds came on the weekend. A red pickup truck suddenly pulled up. My folklorist’s heartbeat sped when I saw that the truck bed was filled with split white oak baskets. A woman hopped out, and I hurried to talk with her. She was on her way home to Woodbury, Tennessee, after delivering baskets to the Cherokee Museum in North Carolina. She explained that their shop sold them, with the implication they were Cherokee made. I didn’t yet know that Cannon County, Tennessee, was a hotbed of basket makers, but this woman, alas I have lost her name and address, told me she was a 7th-generation basket maker. A graduate student, I could only afford two, $15 each. Months later a quarter-page ad in the New Yorker caught my eye. Three split white oak baskets hovered above the text, “Deep in the Cherokee National Forest of Tennessee, skilled craftsmen have kept alive an art and a tradition.” Price for my basket in the New York City-based Anne Rothschild Country Collection: $68. Never mind these baskets were made by a woman from Middle Tennessee. I mailed a photocopy of the ad to the basket maker to let her know she could charge more next time. Extensive fieldwork by folklorists in Cannon County has since put the region on the map and ensured that basket makers can earn a fair price and show their work in galleries near and far.

A dear friend who knew of my interest in the sweetgrass baskets of Low Country South Carolina, spied the basket on the left at a yard sale in Alexandria, Virginia, in 2002. She got the impression that a young couple were selling some of their wedding gifts. She bought this basket for $10. It’s a double loop fruit basket that would have easily cost the giver a couple of hundred dollars. The history of tourism and sweetgrass baskets is long and complicated. The research of folklorists has helped make this a revered tradition that can sustain basket makers economically, put their work in fine art museums, and enrich understanding of this nation’s complex race relations history through material culture.

On the left is a Gullah sweetgrass basket, the only African basket type made in the U.S., and on the right a split white oak basket, common among Anglo basket makers in many parts of the U.S. Both types were working baskets in the 18th and 19th century and have evolved into collectibles that have found their way into scholarly publications and museums. I came by both baskets through serendipity.

Mariah Chase