Nativity by Sha Sha Higby

Wall Piece

enamel on steel Sgriffito kiln fired

power sgraffitto on steel

7 x6 x3 inches

The air surrounding us is also like many planes in space, On the surface of our skin there are multiple little theaters and stages. One inch away from our body is already the sky under which the drama of a tiny world unfolds
The peak boxes I used to make out of shoeboxes as children fascinated me. And these works remind me of what would be inside the peak boxes. You look into the peephole, and see cutout-layered landscapes portraying a silent wonderful paper world. I spent hours doing this. I still am also allured by the “theatrical” quality of flipping through ancient palm leaf drawings from India. They are visual line drawing clusters of symbolic journeys through love, emotions, battles, and life. I want eventually to make a pictorial theater that is slowly moving and freeze frames at the moment of departure into another scene. One of my goals has been to make theater like turning through pages of a book of paintings. The stylized turning of the pages makes the intricate detail of each individual picture as it comes to life.
I have been a performance artist for years with my sculptures and puppets. I dance with them, suspend them as sculptures. I change media and the feeling of the artwork changes. Enamels are a little heavy to use but they make nice sounds when they clink. The audience is like many strings of a tent; supporting and encapsulating the performance within its canvas billows. Everyone interoperates differently. My art seeks peace between beings through our differences in seeing.
California artist Sha Sha Higby sculptures are complex and layered, informed by her experiences in Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and India. Yet more than mere visual delights, these sculptures are made to move and perform with her living body as the driving force. Meticulously crafted over the course of years, her sculptural costumes use paper, wood, leaves, silk, Asian lacquer, enamel, ceramics, and gold leaf to make creatures somewhere between the natural and the divine. Higby combines visual art with puppetry, and dance to present an ephemeral but the timeless experience,
Sha Sha Higby received a BS in art from Skidmore College and spent five years in Indonesia under a Fulbright Scholarship. She also studied for more than a year in Japan, and six months in India under an Indo-American Fellowship. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a NEA Fellowship in solo theater, the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Japan Foundation for collaborative artistic work and Asian Lacquer
She has performed and exhibited internationally at the Festival International delle Marionnnette; Divaldo Korzo in Slovakia; the Festival of Sydney in Australia; Singapore Festival of the Arts; Hong Kong Fringe Festival; Tokyo National College of Art; the Tokyo Textile Institute: Puppet Theater Festival; and the Stara Zagora in Bulgaria. She has exhibited her work at the Portland Art Museum; Arizona State University; San Francisco Folk and Craft Art Museum in San Francisco; Honolulu Academy of Arts; University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Columbia College Inter-Arts Program in New York; San Francisco Asian Art Museum; The Glass Museum in Tacoma, Washington; and Baltimore College of Art