Artists

HENRIETTE MUNANUI was born in Tahiti, where she learned to make traditional textiles, tifaifai , from her mother. She has lived in Utah since 1969 and has continued her craft, often sending to Tahiti for the right type and color of cotton fabric for her appliqued textiles. Her work was featured in a traveling exhibit of Polynesian quilts, and she has frequently demonstrated her skills.

Sisters MELVA EMRAZIAN and ROSE PETERSON come from a family that endured fifty years of exile in Syria before immigrating in the mid-1960s to rejoin earlier Armenian-Mormon immigrants in Utah. During their exile, the family earned a living by weaving rugs. The girls learned to knit, crochet, make lace using only a needle and thread, and reproduce an item simply by looking at it. Both sisters create textiles, and Rose works as a professional tailor.

HAZEL and WALLACE ZUNDEL were born and raised in the small Shoshone settlement of Washakie, just south of the Utah-Idaho border. Both learned their crafts in their traditional community, which fostered age-old skills like basketmaking, hide tanning, and beadwork. The Zundels have displayed their bead and leather work in numerous galleries, art shows, and fairs and have taught their skills in both schools and festivals.

Sisters M ELVA EM RAZI AN and ROSE PETERSON come from a family that endured fifty years of exile in Syria before immigrating in the mid-1960s to rejoin earlier Armenian-Mormon immigrants in Utah. During their exile, the family earned a living by weaving rugs. The girls learned to knit, crochet, make lace using only a needle and thread, and reproduce an item simply by looking at it. Both sisters create textiles, and Rose works as a professional tailor.

GLEN THOMPSON of Huntsville has constructed more than five thousand saddles in Utah during his career. Known for their made-to-order, leather ground seats, artistic tooling, and overall quality construction, each requires between eighteen and thirty hours of labor. Thompson’s Beehive saddle has been displayed throughout Utah and at the Renwich Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 1984 he received the Utah Governor’s Folk Art Award.

Like the Zundels, MAE PARRY was born and raised in Washakie and grew up observing and imitating the arts of her Shoshone heritage. She has demonstrated and displayed her art work at numerous festivals, art shows, and schools and has devoted many hours to speaking and writing about her people.

VON ALLEN, a resident of Provo, Utah, holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Edinboro State College in Pennsylvania, and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University in New York. She is currently an assistant professor and head of the ceramics program at BYU, where she was recently named “Teacher of the Year” in the art department. Her work has been featured in Studio Potter Magazine (Dec. 1988) and has been exhibited widely in such places as Texas, Utah, California, Georgia, Montana, Arizona, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. She is represented by Pierpont Gallery in Salt Lake

LAURA LEE STAY, born in 1958, lives in Provo, Utah, where she is currently working on an M.F.A. at Brigham Young University. She has exhibited in Utah and California and has major collections in the Utah Arts Council, Springville Art Museum, and the LDS Church Museum of History and Art. Old Town Gallery, Park City, Utah, and Garden Gallery, Los Olivos, California, represent her work.