🪧 About the Event: Discover the life and work of Ruth Harwood, a Utah-born poet and artist whose spiritualist beliefs shaped a distinctive creative vision. Born in 1896 to artist James Taylor Harwood, she emerged from a non-Mormon household rooted in Utah’s pioneer past to build a career as both a commercial artist and an acclaimed poet.
Elizabeth Giraud will share her research from her 2023 Utah Historical Quarterly article. “Ruth Harwood: Utah's Spiritualist Prodigy” shares how Harwood used her art and writing to inspire others in the pursuit of higher spiritual truth. Though based for much of her life in Berkeley, she remained closely tied to Salt Lake City, teaching in the 1930s at the McCune School of the Arts and through the University of Utah extension program.
Harwood’s story reveals how a non-Mormon lesbian artist in the early twentieth century mobilized her talents to articulate a powerful vision of personal divinity and spiritual transformation.
🎙️ About the Speaker: Elizabeth Giraud has spent her career in historic preservation, working as a planner and architectural historian. She was the planner overseeing the historic districts in Salt Lake City, an architectural historian in the environmental section of the Utah Department of Transportation, and now works on an as-needed basis for a transportation consulting firm. She has a Master’s degree in Historic Preservation Planning from Cornell University and in 2022 finished a second Master’s degree in U.S. History at the University of Utah. She and her husband, Rich Giraud, live in Sugar House and enjoy volunteering at Red Butte Garden.
💻 Remote Attendance
Zoom link: https://utah.zoom.us/j/84739642507
Passcode: 470053
📚 Special thanks to Signature Books for allowing us to host this event in their space!
🌈 Past lectures can be accessed on our YouTube channel or on the Berryman Lecture Series page.