The 2015 Mariposa County Fair and Homecoming is honored to present the Western Fairs Association Blue Ribbon Award to our own Julia Parker. Mrs. Parker has been part of the Mariposa County Fair for many years and is always a fixture in the Indian Area of the Fairgrounds, making baskets and talking with anyone who stops by to watch her. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of meeting Julia Parker, view this video to learn some of her background: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyL6NZ8bZBE.
"Take from the earth and give back to the earth, and don't forget to say please and thank you. It is the fiber and not the weaver who makes a beautiful basket." -Julia Parker
Over the last fifty years, Julia Parker has emerged as one of the preeminent Native American basket makers of California. Distinguished elder of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and longtime resident of Yosemite Valley, Parker is a prolific artist, teacher, and storyteller. She has worked as a cultural specialist at the Yosemite Museum since 1960, and as an artist and elder, she is respected as a carrier of indigenous thinking and making. Following in her footsteps are her daughter, Lucy Parker, granddaughter Ursula Min-ne-ah Jones, and great-granddaughter Naomi Kashaya Jones.
Julia Parker's work has been exhibited widely including in The Language of Native American Baskets at the National Museum of the American Indian (New York City) in 2003. In 2004 a retrospective of her work entitled, The Past in Present Tense: Four Decades of Baskets by Julia Parker was mounted at the Bedford Gallery (Walnut Creek, CA. Parker is also invited regularly to lecture on Native American basketry, including in 2011, at the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, DC); in 2009, at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California (Berkeley, CA); and in 2004, at the 27th Annual Society of Ethnobiology Conference, University of California (Davis, CA). Parker's work has been featured in numerous books, journals, and newspaper articles, including Tradition and Innovation: A Basket History of the Indians of the Yosemite-Mono Lake Area by Craig Bates and Barbara Lee. With anthropologist Bev Ortiz she co-authored It Will Live Forever: Traditional Yosemite Indian Acorn Preparation and Parker's work is the subject of Scrape the Willow Until it Sings: The Words and Work of Julia Parker by Deborah Valoma. (Courtesy of The Workshop Residence, San Francisco, CA)
