Idaho – The Idaho Commission on the Arts announces the recipients of the inaugural Folk and Traditional Arts Fellowship:

  • Norma Pintar (Meridian), Mexican Folk Dance
  • Cary Schwarz (Salmon), Saddlemaking
  • Jenny Williams (Lapwai), Nez Perce Weaving

Fellowship recipients will each receive $5,000.

The Folk and Traditional Arts Fellowship was created to honor our state’s tradition bearers and recognize the exemplary quality and commitment to community that each maintain through their creative expressions. These individuals demonstrate and reflect our state’s living cultural heritage and the efforts of these artists to share their knowledge with subsequent generations. The awards, given every two years, recognize outstanding artists, honoring work deemed to exhibit the highest artistic merit during peer review.

The depth, breadth, and range of both geographic and cultural diversity represented in the recipients and their art forms characterize Idaho’s historic and living traditions. Each recipient embodies a lifetime of dedication and mastery of skills, techniques, and adaptation that are highly valued within their community. Furthermore, their commitment to teaching and sharing their knowledge ensures that traditions maintain and evolve, and that a vision of Idaho’s cultural legacy is perpetuated.