American folk masters: the National Heritage Fellows By Steve Siporin, Michel Monteaux, Museum of International Folk Art (N.M.)

On Pages 128, 234, 245

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American Folk Masters: The National Heritage Fellows

American Folk Masters celebrates the lives and work of nearly 150 National Heritage Fellows, named since 1982 as exemplary practitioners of traditional folk arts. Sometimes likened to Japan's Living National Treasures, the Fellows are selected each year by the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts for their achievements in a wide variety of visual and performing folk arts. The National Heritage Fellows come from Maine and Hawaii, from Alaska and Puerto Rico, and from most states in between. A random roll call of even a few of their names - Duff Severe, Periklis Halkias, Canray Fontenot, Alice New Holy Blue Legs - reflects America's rich ethnic diversity. And the same diversity characterizes the arts the Fellows practice, which range from blues music, pottery, tap dancing, and lace making to Lakota quillwork, Sicilian marionette theater, African-American story-telling, and Hawaiian quiltmaking. Published on the tenth anniversary of the National Heritage Fellowships, this volume was inspired by an exhibition organized by the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. Its fifty full-page color photographs show the compelling, beautifully crafted objects made by the visual artists among the Fellows, while its black-and-white portraits and personal quotations capture the fascinating backgrounds and personalities of these people. Steve Siporin, folklorist and Associate Professor at Utah State University, has written a lively yet thoughtful essay that considers the Fellows as inheritors, innovators, and conservers of tradition. There are contributions by Bess Lomax Hawes, Director of the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts (1977-92), and BarreToelken, Professor of Folklore at Utah State University. A comprehensive illustrated Directory of all the Fellows from the last ten years includes an invaluable bibliography, discography, and filmography. The first full-length study of a groundbreaking program, American Folk Masters has much to offer anyone who values our national heritage. Whether descendants of the original Native peoples or members of the newest immigrant group, we can all learn from these consummate artists who are keeping our folk traditions alive today.

From Publishers Weekly

The melting-pot image of America belies the crazy-quilt ethnic diversity that continues to flourish, as revealed in this folk sampler, the catalogue of a recent exhibition at Santa Fe's Museum of International Folk Art. A Pueblo potter, Creole and Appalachian fiddlers, a Czech American egg painter, African American tap dancers and singers, a Finnish-American accordionist, cowboy poets, Latino muralists and a Laotian-born shamanic dancer are among the nearly 150 folk artists and performers profiled. All of them were selected since 1982 as grant recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts' Folk Arts Program. In his celebration of multiculturalism, accompanied by 160 plates (50 in color), Siporin, a folklorist at Utah State University, interprets these vernacular artists as both innovators and conservers of tradition. The artists' own modest, moving statements reflect their commitment to forging a community-based aesthetic.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Title
American folk masters: the National Heritage Fellows

Authors
Steve Siporin, Michel Monteaux, Museum of International Folk Art (N.M.)

Photographs by
Michel Monteaux

Illustrated by
Michel Monteaux

Edition
illustrated

Publisher
H.N. Abrams, 1992

Original from
Indiana University

Digitized
3 Jul 2009

ISBN
0810919176, 9780810919174

Length
256 pages