The Lowcountry is a geographic and cultural region along South Carolina's coast, including the Sea Islands. The region includes significant salt marshes and other coastal waterways, making it an important source of biodiversity in South Carolina.
The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. It is a one-time only award and fellows must be living citizens or permanent residents of the United States. Each year, fellowships are presented to between nine and fifteen artists or groups at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
McLeod Plantation is a former slave plantation located on James Island, South Carolina, near the intersection of Folly and Maybank roads at Wappoo Creek, which flows into the Ashley River. The plantation is considered an important Gullah heritage site, preserved in recognition of its cultural and historical significance to African-American and European-American cultures.
Kelly Jean Church is a black ash basket maker, Woodlands style painter, birchbark biter, and educator.
Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.
Cynthia Schira is an American textile artist and former university professor. Her work is represented in the collections of many major public museums.
Shan Goshorn was an Eastern Band Cherokee artist, who lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her interdisciplinary artwork expresses human rights issues, especially those that affect Native American people today. Goshorn used different media to convey her message, including woven paper baskets, silversmithing, painting, and photography. She is best known for her baskets with Cherokee designs woven with archival paper reproductions of documents, maps, treaties, photographs and other materials that convey both the challenges and triumphs that Native Americans have experienced in the past and are still experiencing today.
Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.
Mary Jane Manigault was a sweetgrass basket maker from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. She began sweetgrass basket-weaving at a young age, and the tradition has been continued by her children and grandchildren. The art of sweetgrass basket-weaving is an important tradition in the Gullah culture and has been a prominent practice in communities brought over to the United States as early slaves.
Mary Kawennatakie Adams was a Mohawk First Nations textile artist and basket maker.
Mary Leaf (1925–2004) was an Akwesasne Mohawk basket maker, who lived on the border between Canada and the United States. Leaf specialized in basket making, having learned customary basketry techniques from her mother. Her work can be found in the collections of the Newark Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Theresa Secord is an artist, basketmaker, geologist and activist from Maine. She is a member of the Penobscot nation, and the great-granddaughter of the well-known weaver Philomene Saulis Nelson. She co-founded, and was the director of, the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA) in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Mary Holiday Black was a Navajo basket maker and textile weaver from Halchita, Utah. During the 1970s, in response to a long-term decline in Navajo basketry, Black played a key role in the revival of Navajo basket weaving by experimenting with new designs and techniques, pioneering a new style of Navajo baskets known as "story baskets."
Yvonne Walker Keshick is an Anishinaabe quillwork artist and basket maker.
Janie Hunter was an American singer and storyteller who worked to preserve Gullah culture and folkways in her home of Johns Island, South Carolina. She received a 1984 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in recognition of her contributions to folk art and traditions.
Molly Neptune Parker was an American basket weaver. She became well known for her artistry, with her works selling for thousands of dollars. As a co-founder and president of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, she tutored young people in the traditional craft and also educated four generations of her own family. She was also the first woman lieutenant governor of Indian Township, one of the two governing bodies of the Passamaquoddy tribe.
Christine Navarro Paul, a member of the Native American Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, was a celebrated basket maker and teacher.
Dorothy Gill Barnes was an American artist. She was known for her use of natural materials in woven and sculpted forms.
Margaret Mary Mitchell Gabriel was a Passamaquoddy basket maker from Maine. She was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship in 1994.
Elizabeth F. Kinlaw is a renowned basket weaver from South Carolina whose work has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, and Francis Marion University.
