Craig Sheppard

University of Nevada Reno: Department of Art

The first art instructor at the University of Nevada in Reno was Katherine Lewers (1868–1945), who began teaching freehand drawing in 1905. For the most part, the program served the specialized needs of teaching, engineering, and home economics majors until 1939 when Lewers retired. Her successor was Helen Joslin, a traditional painter whose methods of instruction seemed to overlook the major trends in modern art outside Nevada.

Edward W. Yates

After accepting an offer to join the faculty of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada (UNR) in 1952, Edward W. Yates left his native Oklahoma and, for the next seventeen years, offered instruction in a variety of disciplines including sculpture, jewelry, and art history.

Yolande Jacobson Sheppard

Yolande Jacobson Sheppard (1921-1998) often worked in the shadow of husband/painter and University of Nevada, Reno, art professor, Craig Sheppard (1913-1978). Born in 1921, she received a degree in art from the University of Oklahoma at Norman. She arrived in Nevada in 1947, and over the next fifty years, created an impressive number of ceramic and bronze portraits of notable Nevadans, including a statue of Nevada U.S. Senator Pat McCarran.

Zoray Andrus

Zoray Andrus is often identified with the artistic fortunes of Virginia City. A native of Alameda, California, she attended California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and studied with a number of influential artists including Hans Hoffman at the University of California–Berkeley. Andrus arrived on the Comstock in 1935.

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