Deborah Copenhaver Fellows was ranch-raised in northern Idaho and grew up with a passion for horses and an avid interest in art. Both her father and brother won World Championships in professional rodeo, and Fellows herself traveled the professional circuit as a barrel racer. She won the title of Miss Rodeo Washington and runner-up for Miss Rodeo America.
Fellows earned her degree in fine arts and paid her way through professional education and independent studies in Italy where she learned the techniques of the European masters. In the post-Vietnam period, Fellows won competitions to create veteran memorials including the Inland Northwest Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Montana State Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington State Korean Memorial. Other monuments include Bing Crosby, Benny Binion, James Irvine, Henry Kaiser, and Boy Scouts of America as well as famous horse portraiture. She was elected to lifetime membership in the National Sculpture Society in 2009.
Fellows has long been inspired by pioneer women and ranch figures and has made important statements through her work about the unspoken heroes, the women of the West.
