We are honored to offer the 2013 Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts to Lydia Ruyle. Lydia is an artist scholar emeritus of the Visual Arts faculty, University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado, where The Lydia Ruyle Room for Women Artists was dedicated in 2010. In April 2013, the University presented Lydia with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Few artists can claim to have profoundly expanded and improved contemporary images of women. Lydia is beloved around the globe for her stunning presentation of multicultural goddesses and symbols of divinity. Her Goddess Icon Banner Project began in 1995 with 18 banners created for exhibit in Ephesus, and has grown to include representations of over 295 goddesses. The Brigit Award recognizes not only this great body of work but also Lydia’s dedicated scholarship in researching these diverse, inspiring images.
Sid Reger and Dawn Work-Makinne present the Brigit Award to Lydia in St. Paul, while Lydia’s Gobekli Tepe Sheela banner dances in the background.
The 2012 Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology has been award to Dr. Shannan Palma, a recent graduate of Emory University in Atlanta. Her dissertation, “Tales as Old as Time: Myth, Gender and the Fairy Tale in Popular Culture” takes the reader on a surprising journey through the theory of myth and an analysis of three very familiar fairy tales.
She chooses for analysis “Sleeping Beauty,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Cinderella,” but instead of the typical analysis of the texts as a folklorist might do, Palma leads us on a journey through the tales in popular culture: novels, poetry, television series, advertising, photography, graphic arts and film. And her conclusions are surprising. She finds in “Sleeping Beauty” the working through of trauma narratives; in “Beauty and the Beast,” issues of visibility and community, and in “Cinderella,” thinking about fairy tales themselves, and the possibility of happily ever after.