A multimedia presentation by four regional ranching women, Sophie Sheppard, Carolyn Dufurrena, Linda Dufurrena and Linda Hussa, who will share their stories of the high desert and ranching through word and image, will be featured at an event hosted by the Lassen County Cattlewomen, Lassen Community College and Lassen Land and Trails Trust. The presentation will be held on Tuesday, November 5th, at 7:00 p.m. in Middleton Hall at Lassen College.
Accomplished authors, painters, and photographers, these four women will share the beauty and hardships of their ranching heritage and the joys and struggles of building a life in the rugged, rural Great Basin desert through their art, photos, and essays.
Carolyn Dufurrena is an author, film-maker and award-winning journalist from rural northwestern Nevada. She is a regular writer for Range Magazine, and was Outside Editor for C.J. Hadley’s Brushstrokes and Balladeers: Painters and Poets of the American West, which received the Wrangler Award for Best Poetry Book of 2014 from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and the 2014 Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Poetry.
She is the author of the award-winning Fifty Miles from Home: Riding the Long Circle on a Nevada Family Ranch, with photographer Linda Dufurrena, and Sharing Fencelines: Three Friends Write from Nevada’s Sagebrush Corner with Linda Hussa and Sophie Sheppard.
Linda Dufurrena photographs all aspects of life in her desert corner of Nevada. She finds her subject matter in the landscape, and in the ever-changing patterns of the desert atmosphere. She photographs the creatures who inhabit the wild spaces and the men and women who live and work there. Her vision of the world is translated into photographic image in her workshop at the Dufurrena ranch northwest of Winnemucca, Nevada. Her work has been widely exhibited and published in Fifty Miles from Home: Riding the Long Circle on a Nevada Family Ranch, and Range Magazine.
Sophie Sheppard’s paintings of the Great Basin have been exhibited throughout the West. Her work is published in Brushstrokes and Balladeers: Painters and Poets of the American West, Sharing Fencelines: Three Friends Write from Nevada’s Sagebrush Corner with Linda Hussa and Carolyn Dufurrena, Range Magazine, and many other publications.
She is a third-generation painter who grew up in the Reno area with her parents, J. Craig Sheppard and Yolande Jacobson, well-known as artists and sculptors.
She moved to her ranch in Surprise Valley, California, where she raises sheep with her husband and continues to celebrate and protect the land through her artwork and environmental awareness. Sheppard won the 30th annual Earl A. Chiles Award, administered by the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon. The award recognizes individuals for their accomplishments in promoting thoughtful management, or successful resolution of conflicts, involving the High Desert’s natural resources.
Limited space is available. Registration is free and is first come, first served. To register, call Lassen Land and Trails Trust at (530) 257-3252 or e-mail [email protected].
For more information, friend the Trust at www.facebook/LassenLandTrust or visit www.lassenlandandtrailstrust.org.
