UNT Press

About Duncan's Illustrators and Illustrations of Texas Folklore Society Publications

Illustrators and Illustrations of Texas Folklore Society Publications contains thirty-five biographies and photographic portraits of illustrators who have created art for the Texas Folklore Society. It also includes color and black-and-white illustrations from previous TFS publications by those artists, along with covers of dozens of conference programs.

Several years ago Frances Brannen Vick served as the interim secretary-editor of the now 117-year-old Texas Folklore Society organization. Fran is a fellow of the society and a retired director of UNT Press. She suggested the idea of a book on this topic to author Robert J. “Jack” Duncan, and—as the saying goes—the rest is history (or at least folklore).

As an active member of the organization since 1970, the author has missed only one annual meeting in the past fifty-five years; during that span he accrued a large library of both the annual volumes and the printed programs. In addition, he obtained many of the earlier books and scans of the printed program covers (the latter from the rare book and Texana archives of several universities).

Duncan has been privileged to enjoy personal connections with several of the artists, and he appreciates and values their works. He has written elsewhere about the following Southwestern artists included in this text: Ben Carlton Mead, Jose Cisneros, and Bill Wittliff.