Photo by T. Scott Williams/NPS

Illustration by Amy Henderson, COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

While in the park in late July, Amy Henderson used her artistic skills to produce detailed illustrations of archeological artifacts found in the park's museum collections.

All images used on this page are copyrighted by the artist and may not be copied, reproduced, or otherwise used without permission of the artist.

I grew up in Oklahoma where I received fine art training from Katherine Manescou, a graduate of the Beaux Arts Academy of Paris (a woman who measured less than five feet high, but who had been a resistance fighter during WWII).  I also took my first archaeology class there: a joint venture of my high school and the Gilcrease museum, which included classroom instruction, excavation, and a “road trip” through the greater southwest.

Photo by T. Scott Williams/NPS

Illustration by Amy Henderson, COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

At Pomona College I chose the more academic path and majored in anthropology, spending summers in the field in Oklahoma and New Mexico. I also studied photography. It was taught out of the fine arts division, but I was interested in it as a skill useful to an archaeologist.

I attended the University of Arizona for graduate training in archaeology. It was there that I also received training in scientific illustration. While my fellow students were keypunching computer cards to support themselves, I was drafting figures for publications and dissertations. Ironically, I did most of my work for physicists since they had more generous grant monies than archaeologists. The first book I illustrated was an “intermediate-level” astrophysics text -- which made no sense to me beyond the first paragraph when it began speaking in calculus formulas. I did a fair amount of “pro bono” work for archaeologists, coaching fellow graduate students in how to do their own illustrations.

Photo by T. Scott Williams/NPS

Illustration by Amy Henderson, COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

Life happened.  I left graduate school and had a family.  I was able to be a stay-at-home mom and stay active in archaeology by continuing to illustrate part-time.  Life in the Pueblo by Katherine Kamp is one of the publications I contributed to.

More recently, I began to work intermittently as an archaeologist, working for the Forest Service and instructing field and lab classes at Great Basin College.  Last year, after we moved to Holbrook, I worked as a seasonal archaeologist at Petrified Forest National Park.