Ella Buchanan

Ella Buchanan was Canadian by birth, but grew up in the U.S. She was known for her sculptures, representing the social rights of minorities and corresponding issues such as slavery, women’s rights, poverty, early settlement in California and other frontier themes. In 1908, she became the first librarian in Pittsburgh, Kansas. Not before she was in her 30s did she study in Chicago at the Art Institute and also taught there until 1915. In Chicago, her sculpture included studies of Native Americans and buffalo, and suffragette, tax and slavery issues. In California, where she eventually settled, one of her earliest sculptures was of a prospector, The Desert Man.