Californians earn art fellowships

Three California artists are among the dozen recipients of $20,000 National Heritage Fellowships, the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts, announced this week by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Agustin Lira of Fresno, who helped found El Teatro Campesino, was recognized for songwriting and musical performances blending Mexican traditional forms with other folk and pop styles; poet Violet de Cristoforo of Salinas, who grew up in Hawaii, Japan and Fresno before being sent to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, was honored for her work as a writer, collector and translator of haiku, and for editing “May Sky: There Is Always Tomorrow,” an anthology of haiku from the internment camps; and Julia Parker of Midpines won for her basketmaking in the tradition of the Kashia Pomo tribe.

-- Mike Boehm