Early Work

Sculpture Schedule Biography Interview
Performances Workshops Press Room Mailing List
　 Shop Membership 日本語 Cottage

Sha Sha Higby: I would like to dedicate this cabinet to my Mum who has given me years of encouragement. Every year for her birthday and the holidays, she requested something made by hand. There was also a book of poems for her wedding to my very special stepfather who taught me all about tools when I was young. She also saved all my letters from my travels.

Dancing Man
1971  Canvas & acrylic

There is a note in
the pocket of this man. 

Dinky Doodle
1962 Book    Sha Sha Higby: At 10 years old, I imagined myself as a poet and author but mostly I enjoyed binding the books and making the drawings. Of course first I would bind all the 400 pages by hand and then every day fill them with stories, reworking them. 
Quote from letter from Indonesia in 1981 
“All the ladies were crowding together waiting in a hunched position for the arrival of the Sultan. I was there for hours and stared at the ladies powdered backs. There were the intricate forms of the old ladies wearing head “samir”, too. The Sultan passed and we all moved together in a hunched position crawling on the floor. Everyone was to be lower that the Sultan. They were all wearing exquisite Batiks, all of them. I’d stare at their backs during those hours, the smell of old cupboards and chests, perfumes, and incense in their hair. Some of the ladies were wrinkled like elegant wooden puppets and some were so heavy that their skin poured over the folds of the tight Batiks, flushed aging skin against the Batik. Their faces were powdered, there were jewels in their ears, pale artificial flush on the cheeks, an ancient flush of a time long gone, an aging form, an era passing. I imagined the skin and blood vessels encased in the archaic symbols of the Batiks, the ancient Hindu motifs. The Batiks were vessels in which to hold the body and protect it. The slow interlacing climb of the gamelan wove through those dark designs. Weaving upward and around. My consciousness moved into the mystical garden of their design. I was stunned as we moved forward into a huge 17th century room filled golden carvings throughout the ceiling. It was a carved room. The cool marble clapping floors, the echoing glass chamber, colored Christmas tree lighted palms, magenta oriental rugs. Catching a glimpse of the “Pustaka Room”(sacred library), a glimpse of a long arm moving round and round in all the rich and red purpleness holding a string of melati flowers. Dark Batik forms moved across the marble through narrow passageways. I felt like an invisible bird. It was transformative.”   
That is what I would wish my costumes to be, vessels in which to hold the body.

Untitled 1970 - 1971 Felt doll Untitled 1970 - 1971 Felt doll         

 

Man in Box
1975 Silk chiffon     

The Stretcher 2000

Wind Box 1976

Chiffon and Twigs       

Man with Trampolines 1999 Raku fired, mixed media   Sha Sha Higby: Some of these were made with lights in them as props for a performance.

Bird
1974
Sculpture

 

  

Tamago
Chiffon &Wood (1974)

Sculpture Schedule Biography Interview
Performances Workshops Press Room Mailing List
　 Shop Membership 日本語 Cottage