Sandra Chanis '68 has long been known to her Western friends as an accomplished sculptress. She has had more than 18 one-person exhibitions, been in dozens of group shows throughout the U.S. and her native Panama, won several major awards for both her paintings and sculpture, is represented in the permanent collections of major museums, and has had her writings published. No "ivory tower" artist, Sandy is active in her Oceanside, California, community -- serving as a juror and curator for many exhibits,  contributing to regional art organizations, lecturing and participating in panel discussions. Formerly a fully tenured professor of art at the University of Panama -- where she taught not only ceramics, but everything from figure drawing to art history -- she continues her teaching part-time as an "artist-teacher" for the University of Vermont's M.F.A. program (in California). 

Last year Sandy's work was included in an exhibition at the prestigious Fallbrook Art Center -- the "jewel in the crown" of this community in northern San Diego county, nationally known as an "art and cultural haven And Western alums may remember her work from the 1996 Alumnae Weekend exhibition, "Art from the World of Western." Two striking pieces were shown: Father and Child in white Carrara marble and Kneeling Woman in pink alabaster. She described her desire to "get the spirit out of the rock."

Sheila Curran '78 is a writer whose first novel, Diana Lively Is Falling Down, came out in July to rave notices and is already in a second printing. Reviewers universally praise the originality and sharp depiction of her characters, as well as the elegance of her language. All readers agree that it is laugh-out-loud funny. Sheila herself call it "a comedy of manners set in the American West. It is also, in some ways, a contemporary fairy tale that follows the conventions of medieval Romances." A self-described "Air Force Brat" growing up (her family moved eight times in 18 years) and "Trailing Spouse" when she married (her husband's an academic whose teaching jobs have taken them all over the U.S. and to England), Sheila didn't realize her "fantasy of staying put," but no doubt did collect experiences galore as fodder for her writing. And she believes the book "owes a lot to my education at Western."

Recalling her Western experience "both fondly and gratefully," Sheila says, "... the adventure of going off to college just happened to land me in a magical place where ideas were taken seriously and where a community of thinkers were both inspired and inspiring." She has special praise for WCP dean Mike Lunine, and professors Curt Ellison, Gene Metcalf and Terry Purlin -- the latter three still teaching at Western. And although her novel "has as much to do with having gained that broad-yet-thick view of the world, as having yearned ever after for the sort of community I enjoyed at Western," she is careful to mention that the less-than-admirable character of the "professor husband" in her book is "not at all based on the open, warm and self-deprecating professors at Western." www.sheilacurran.com.