I'm Mary Lee Fulkerson, a fourth generation Nevadan with a natural love for the wildness of Nevada and the people who live here. (If you raise a family amid slot machines and sagebrush, gallop your horse across the open range, and purify in a Shoshone sweat lodge, you are going to feel wild!) I express that in my non-traditional basket sculptures.

My father’s family came west before the Gold Rush of 1849, and I spent a childhood listening to stories of cattle rustlers, Irish lumberjacks, boarding house mistresses, midwives, and teamsters that really drove mule teams. Later, when writing “Weavers of Tradition and Beauty”, I met Washoe elder and storyteller Joann Martinez, and once again I dove deep into the land of imagination, where magic makes anything possible.

Lately I've returned to sculpting fragrant willow, a spirited little twig that has, like baskets, nearly 10,000 years of history in the Great Basin. Handling it, I feel both ancient  and contemporary, because I join other American basketmakers in blazing a trail to create a new art form that nurtures an old, old memory--one without words-- that lies deep within all of us.