Touring History

Australia: Festival of Sydney; Belgium: Ghent: Vooruit, Liege: Festival de Jeune Theatre; Canada: New Brunswick: Galerie Son Nom Coop Lleé; England: London: October Gallery; Holland: Amsterdam: Melkweg, Utrekt: Rosa; Hong Kong: Fringe Festival; Indonesia: Bali Arts Festival, Affandi Museum, Seniwati Gallery, Jakarta Academy of Music; Japan: Tokyo National Academy of Art; Korea: Seoul, World Dance Alliance; Singapore: Singapore Festival of the Arts; Switzerland: Zurich: Rote Fabrik Kulturzentrum, Locarno: Festival Internazionale delle Marionnette; United States: MTV: "Artbreak" (video); Alaska: Anchorage Museum of History & Art (exhibit); Arizona: Arizona State University; Colorado: Smokebrush; Maine: Haystack Mountain School of Art; Maryland: Maryland College of Art; Massachusetts: U. M. at Amherst; New Mexico: Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe; New York: New York, Franklin Furnace - Rutgers University, Skidmore College, Emma Willard School, Simon's Rock College; North Carolina: Duke Institute of the Arts; Oregon: Portland Art Museum (exhibit), Portland State University, Corvallis Art Center; Texas: Arts Resources, Carver Community Cultural Center; Washington: State University at Bellingham, Clatsop Community College - Astoria, Bellevue Art Museum; California: Arcata: Humbolt Sate University-Centerarts; Chico: University of California at Chico, Los Angeles: L.A.C.E.; Marysville: Yuba-Sutter Arts Council; Redding: Shasta Arts Council; Sacramento: California State Fair; San Diego: Lyceum Theatre, Sushi, University of California at San Diego; San Francisco Bay Area: S.F. Art Institute, S.F. Museum of Modern Art (video), Life on the Water, Zephyr Theatre, S. F. State University, S. F. Arts Festival, Goethe Institute, The Lab, New Langton Arts, Climate, Hatley Martin Cultural Forum, Intersection, Pt. Arena Renaissance Theatre, San Jose Museum of Art, Works Gallery, California College of Arts and Crafts, Kala Institute, Dominican College, Artisans, Marin Community Playhouse; Santa Barbara: University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz: University of California at Santa Cruz, Yreka: Yreka Community Theatre;

"Pendant discs (Keman),Konjiki-do Twelfth century.

Keman are believed to have originated as floral wreaths hung as offerings in Buddhist temples. In this particular image,elaborate openwork design in metal of leaves and flowers are two bird women bearing gifts for the Buddha: these are the Karyobingas,or cuckoo-like creatures with delicate voices.In shallow relief,the birds have a warmth and vivacity in contrast to the hardness of the metal..'

"Like a dream of something always known" (Independent Weekly, NC)

"Her art seems to flow from her soul." (Bali Post, Indonesia)

"The shimmering air makes one dream about dreaming... indescribably precious." (The Straits Times, Singapore)

"Higby's art is poetic and potent with hypnotic intensity." (San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, CA)

"Higby weaves a web of mystical fascination." (Het Laatste Nieuws, Belgium)

"Full of metaphors, fantasy and movement." (Smena, Slovakia)

"A Higby performance is a wondrous event_slight and shaded,the gestured movements revelatory,always in transition....They are works that demand attention...,her multiple metamorphosed are powerful testimony to the achievement of theater,of its metaphorical and ritual power,without peer to the arts....In mask andcostume evocative of Balinese dance -theater. Higby punctuates her movements,her choreographic abstractions accenting the formal ambiance,grounding her work in a miraculous authentic universe...humour weaves its way through the performance....each performance is a discovery for Higby and the audience..
the costume"s complexity is balanced by the performance's mystical simplicity,which has no dialog."-(Ornament Magazine)

"Weaving a web of metaphorical fascination,Higby's art seems to flow from her soul: approaching dance through the medium of sculptural costume, she stages poetic haunting dramas-enlightening and stirring our spirits,to appreciate the timeless eternity..."(San Jose Mercury News)

"Last,and painfully far from the least,are the cumbersome,yet metaphorically hyperfunctional outfits of Bolinas,California artist Sha Sha Higby. Think Dark Crystal meets H.R.Geiger on the set of a Brothers Quay movie produced in Tibet. Combining elements of sculpture,puppetry and windchimes. Higby's work has that "just got back from Hades" look sure to keep away those courtiers who just aren't deep enough..." (Pueblo Independent)

Performance

Sha Sha Higby has studied for 1 year in Japan, 5 years in Indonesia under a Fulbright Scholarship, and 6 months in India. She has received numerous awards and grants, including grants from the Zellerbach Family Fund, the Marin Arts Council, Inter-Arts, New Langton Arts and LACE (Interdisciplinary N.E.A.), California Arts Council, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Inc. (Brooklyn, NY), Fulbright and Indo-American Fellowships to India, the U.S. Travel Fund for Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts in Solo Theater Fellowship, the N.E.A. RIARP program, U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions, the Flow Fund, California Arts Council Artists Fellowship Program, and the Japan -United States Friendship Commission (6 months: 1995).

Workshops

Sha Sha Higby offers several participatory workshops plus a longer residency program. Please request the additional class descriptions.

Movement - Using movement and simple and delightful paper sculptures the participants build themselves, they charge and magnify whichever part of the body chosen to come alive and perform. The body becomes its own sculpture that we can watch magically grow in any direction possible!

Mask-making - Participants learn traditional costume construction and structural techniques for masks and textiles used in Sha Sha's work. The masks are made musical and are brought to play at performances.

Slide Lecture-Performance - Sha Sha shows slides and videos of the history of her costumes and performances and develops mini-performances vignettes with students and children.

WHITE BIRD ON A STICK by Sha Sha Higby the sands blow ... blanketing dancing patterns in the landscape Fog rests in corners of the sky Folds of white.... envelope the ocean floor dropping in the distance below a lady serves buttered sand in a lace chamber A hand passes over a cup in candlelight.   I saw my birth as a narrow string of light. SHA SHA HIGBY-COSTUMER AND PERFORMER All is changing, passing through us, flowing inside of us, enduring , traveling somewhere: phenomena that we cannot stop sweeps continuously on, like a musical lace work, gathering and dispersing again endlessly as it goes, as water does in a stream. International performance/sculptural artist, Sha Sha Higby is known for her evocative and haunting performances using the exquisite and ephemeral body sculpture she meticulously creates herself and moves within. Elaborate sculptural costume, dance , and puppetry explore magic and emotion, creating atmospheric world within the borders between death and an Higby started out making dolls and pursued the art of puppetry and sculpture in her early years. Ms. Higby has performed her unique body of work throughout the United States, and internationally in Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Slovak, Bulgaria, Singapore, Australia, Switzerland, England, Belgium, Germany and Holland. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Theater Artist Fellowship, The Zellerbach Family Fund, the California Arts Council New Genre Individual Artist Fellowship. She studied for one year in Japan in 1971, observing the art of Noh Mask and theater and then received a Fulbright-Hayes Scholarship to study dance & shadow puppet making and performance arts in Indonesia for 5 years at the Academy of Music, Central Java, Indonesia. In addition to traveling throughout Southeast Asia to Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), she received an Indo-American Fellowship to study the textile arts of India, and a Travel Grants Fund from Arts International to study in Bhutan.She has also recently studied lacquer arts in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan through the auspices of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission. This particular costume has some dark sections of the mask and arms made from a material I deeply appreciate : urushi, a sap, of Rus Verniciflua, a member of the sumac family, which includes poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac.It grows as a tree in Asia , and is still used primarily in Japan , China, Korea, Viet Nam, and Burma It is a very painstaking process to remove the sap from the trees, drop by drop. It does not just dry as shellac does in the West, but urushi cures and hardens, forming a lustrous, impregnable surface. It hardens the best in damp, warm, humid atmospheres A shell, or core is formed over a mold made with alternating layers of lacquer, clay, and layers of hemp cloth . Sometimes washi paper or leather is also used.The shell, or core, is given multiple coats of lacquer mixed with pulverized claystone, pumice, diatomonous earth, then finished with black lacquer, or red lacquer, and polished in successive layers with charcoal. Or it is coated in successive layers in a plaster mold and submersed in water to release. My technique is coarse compared to what it should be each piece only involves 15 layers of lacquer and hemp components, although it should involve up to 50 layers. Contemporary artists in Asia use it in many ways as a binder, painting medium and hardener, yet soft because it is pure nature and never becoming brittle as plastics do. It is a mysterious medium of rich depth. In its raw uncured state, It can cause extreme reactions to the skin, to which practitioners of the art form develop an immunity after working with it for sometime. It is also a healing sap in China. taken orally.The tree and its family of shrubs grow in areas of land that have been disturbed as a healing process to restore the ecosystem to its original state. This is all a part of its profound lure and paradoxical bond to its artists. It is extremely durable, impervious to water, and heat, and some early pieces have been found to survive under the ocean for 2000 years. There will be an exhibition of contemporary urushi organic forms at the Craft and Folk Art Museum in San Francisco in 2004. Magnificent Doll & Mask & Sculpture Workshops Participants will explore the mysteries of creativity and performance in this hands-on mask making and mask ond flying fingertips workshop. Masks give you an endless source of pleasure in their creation, theatrical imagery, and ability to transform into puppet characters that come alive. Using your intuition, movement, and poetry, you will be lead through a myriad of techniques that Sha Sha uses in her work. Create your own performance temple with an iconic image as a puppet like structure, an archetypal spirit that you move within in a performance-like ritual . Learn to cast and mold, and recast, add extensions,decorate,and move to bring it to life.. During the workshops in June this year, we will have a stage in the city so people can perform what they have been making.. . be they poignant, wild, powerful, and humorous. This class is for the beginner as well as artist, and you can perform what you have made   Many thanks to Albert Hollander

Fee Range

workshops may require a lesser fee

$1800 U.S. (simple, low tech, local performance/workshop)

$3600 U.S. (single full performance, 2 persons traveling)

$4600 U.S. (single performance, one workshop,2 persons)

$5700 U.S. (half week, = 2 performances,one workshop,-2 persons)

$6800 U.S. (2 performances,2 workshops,one lecture ,2 persons)
($1000 each additional event after this)

$12,000 U.S. (one week run, with live music,3 persons and 3 workshops.

All rates are on tour in California. Additional travel expenses required out of state. A touring subsidy of 10&endash;50% may be available in California from the California Arts Council. and W.E.S.T.A.F.

Current Repertoire

"The Yellow Cup (2001-2)"

"Sleeping in a Sandstorm (2000)"

"The Spider & the Buddha" (1995-96)

Journey through memory and experience, a fantastic mystery woven into a timeless trancelike dance of a spider's adventures into a wooden Buddha.

"Passage into a Paper Sea" (1993-94)

As they examined the fluffy marrow of the lower backbone, they found encrustation's of tiny prismatic jewels and chips of gold arranged in fanciful decorative patterns within the hairline cracks of the spine. They puzzled what quests in life did these creatures have, if in death their jewels continue to grow?

Imagine you float onto a tiny island in the sea. The island is filled with a lacy network of intricate vines, organic passageways, brocaded arches. You become lost and come to a soft clearing, and as if hidden in a forest painting, something emerges to full dimensional life.

"

Pineapple Tent Under a Pink Moon" (1992)

Two works emerging into one. The feathered body of a thousand sweet faces, clothed in textured adventures through a forest of marbled heads casting beams of pastel sunlight onto obstacles of delight that cross into its pathway. Unloading fluffy boxes filled with miniature beaded shoes enlace a spinning fan that clicks out rhythms for a tiny corset that dances. It is the urn of life. Bicycles and spinning creatures coated with patterns of milleflore run about the stage, like the madness and entertainment of cities.

"Pineapple Sunset" (1991)

Our costume is back from its journeys in India now tattered and dusty, with a string of painted flowered heads suspended and swinging into the sky. Folded amongst thousands of pounded silken tussah ikat feathers stitched by 8 Indian tailors and painted by the miniaturists of Jaipur, the same body rusts in the sun, and the heads change their color, letting each visage revolve slowly into a dance of focus and life.

"The Tin Twin" (1989)

While hidden in an accordion mansion of black and white pavilions the Tin Duck approaches hesitantly and spreads its feathers in glory embraced by a circle of wind. To the song of the rocking of tiny wooden horses and stuffed bicycle men, Higby transforms into a glass cloud, and disappears into a rock to begin again.

Past Repertoire

"A Tin Duck in a Box of Wind" (1988)

A rock spirals up slowly from the earth and unwraps itself. Donning a cloak of miniature white fences, wrists spin out into tiny white striped trampolines that wind up and curl. Folded paper buttons open up a chest of yellow clouds. Buried in a neck of smocked feathers, a face splits into fire.

"A Bee on the Beach" (1987)

Shred pleated tissue in a branch, skins of snake in sand rattling, the costume emerges into its full armour of spiraled silk of a dance with forty wriggling fingers, fans and flags. A felted automobile spins in the sky.

"Cows Under a Pepper Tree" (1986)

The cycles of birth, death, and rebirth are created in a tiny town constructed of carved wood gates, flaming houses, mechanical birds, spindles & mirrors.

"Through a Gold Window" (1985)

Within a suspended crystal window set, the crouched dancer elastically controls miniature golden puppets.

"Moon Puppets" (1984)

In two parts, Sha Sha begins in a black costume with delicate yellow puppets and then breaks into a whimsical, lacy costume, surrounded by a set of small chairs which are knocked over in a dance with spiraled sticks.

"Sasadahara" (1983)

In a costume conceived and made by the artist in Java, the dancer sits in a glassed shrine, and emerges from a costume carved from water buffalo hide by Indonesian village puppet makers.

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