Women’s inspiring works from the state’s wide open spaces

Art of West Texas Women (paper, with flaps)

A Celebration

Kippra D. Hopper and Laurie J. Churchill, with introduction by Pamela Brink

“For all of these artists, rediscovering and celebrating the ordinary is a part of their creative mission. They have chosen to pursue their art in relative solitude, far away from big-city life and glamorous art marketplaces. Their independent ways seem to engender distinctive works rooted in memory, appreciation of what’s been discarded, a deep affection for other living things, and abiding confidence in their own ways of seeing. . . .Through their many and varied talents, they insist that who they are and where they live offer important understanding for the rest of the world.” ―Pamela Brink, from the introduction

Representing at once a diversity of style, medium, and scale and an intersection of inspiration and response, Art of West Texas Women celebrates twenty women visual artists living and working in an expansive, rugged landscape—the vast western half of Texas, far from the dynamics of urban art communities and large national markets.

Without attempting to serve as a comprehensive catalog—impossible considering the breadth of activity in a huge region—the book is a sampler of creative expression. The painters, photographers, installation artists, sculptors, fiber artists, and printmakers in these pages are as distinctive and independent as the solitary place that nurtures them. But they also share common threads: all of these artists came of age during the feminist movement of the 1970s and find the expansiveness and relative isolation of their landscapes an elemental influence.

As with Georgia O’Keeffe, herself an early interpreter of the West Texas Plains, the women featured here find that this land of wind and sky has liberated them and engendered a sense of expressive freedom and artistic strength.

Kippra D. Hopper holds degrees from Texas Tech University, where she is the Hutcheson Professor of Journalism. As author, editor, and photographer, Hopper focuses her work on the American Southwest. She is the author of A Meditation of Fire: The Art of James C. Watkins (TTUP, 1999).Laurie J. Churchill, a former professor of literature and women’s studies program coordinator, holds degrees from Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of articles on classical literature and feminist pedagogy and is the lead editor of Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe. Currently she is director of assessment in the College of Education at New Mexico State University.Pamela Brink holds degrees from the University of Kansas and the University of Washington and is the owner of Associated Authors & Editors, Inc., a writing, editing, and graphic design studio. She is an associate fellow of the Center for Great Plains Studies, a collector of West Texas art, and an avid student of West Texas music.

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