Texas Talks: Light T. Cummins - "From Denton to All of Texas: Women in Early Texas Art"

Name: Texas Talks: Light T. Cummins - "From Denton to All of Texas: Women in Early Texas Art"
Start: 2026-03-25T18:00:00-05:00
Location: 110 W Hickory St, Denton, TX, United States, Texas 76201

Schedule

Wed, 25 Mar, 2026 at 06:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

110 W Hickory St, Denton, TX, United States, Texas 76201 | Denton, TX

Join the Denton County Office of History and Culture for the Texas Talks Speaker Series!
On Wednesday, March 25 at 6 PM, Light T. Cummins will present “From Denton to All of Texas: Women in Early Texas Art” in the Commissioners Courtroom at the Courthouse-on-the-Square.
This presentation will highlight the important group of female artists at the College of Industrial Arts (now TWU) and the role they played as important artists and educators in the first half of the 20th century. These Denton artists included Coreen Mary Spellman, Tony LaSelle, Mary Marshall, Carlotta Corporon, and others. They are representative of a larger group of women artists who helped create a significant arts community across Texas in the years prior to World War II. This presentation will also include discussion of other Texas women artists as well, concentrating on those who lived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. This presentation is based on Cummins’ recent book "Making the Unknown Known, Women in Early Texas Art, 1860-1960" and will provide an assessment of the role women artists have played in interpreting the meaning, history, heritage, and unique character of Texas. It places these women artists within the larger social and cultural contexts in which they lived. In that regard, it contains an analysis of their varied styles of art, the media they employed, and the subject matter contained in their art. It thus evaluates the contributions made by women artists to defining the nature of the wider Texas experience as an American region.
About the Speaker:
LIGHT TOWNSEND CUMMINS, former State Historian of Texas (2009-2012), is the author of many books, including Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas. He is the emeritus Guy M. Bryan Jr. Chair of History at Austin College in Sherman, Texas.