|
:
Click a link below to learn
more:
Home
Page
Schedule
Interview,
Photos
Resumé,
Tech Info
Movies
Workshops
& Urushi
Artist
Statement
& Movie
Membership
& Shop
Artist
Cottage
Links
Mailing
List
|
 
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Sha Sha Higby
I approach dance through the medium of sculpture. I
interweave painterly manipulation of physical materials and
textures I make one by one from wood, paper, silk, ceramic
and gold leaf with a labyrinth of delicate props. My work
strives to create a path where movement and stillness meet.
Shreds of memory lace into a drama of a thousand intricate
pieces, slowly moving, stirring our memory toward a sense of
patience and timelessness.
The air surrounding us is like many planes in space,
assorted canvases of images. Every time we move about, the
space around us is filled with drawings, colorful sketches
and complex patterns. Our thoughts blend into the air and
space about us. With these "costume sculptures" I want to
show how we are the elegant complexity of the atmospheres
about us. Emotions and thoughts cluster on the surface of
our bodies and then break away, fly and float off. Each
bundle of emotion becomes yet another entity in itself,
splitting into many facets again, gathering and returning to
its source.
On the surface of our skin there are multiple little
theaters and stages. One inch away from our body is the sky
under which the drama of this tiny world unfolds. As the
costume stirs itself, it is as if every movement is filled
with thousands of adventures.
As a child, I was fascinated by the peek boxes we used to
make out of shoe boxes. You looked into the peephole and saw
cutout layered landscapes portraying a silent wonderful
paper world. I seek to do this today. I am allured by the
"theatrical" quality of flipping through ancient palm leaf
drawings from India. They are visual line clusters of
symbolic journeys through love, emotions, battles, and life.
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 come to life. The slow shivery movements of each
scene make the potential of the next scene even greater. A
shattered piece of a story seems even richer alone because
it has the potential of being inserted into the whole.
Performance is the discovery of things as they happen at
that moment for the first time. Nothing is rehearsed. The
variable elements that are brought to each performance are
painstakingly assembled. When these new things are
discovered on stage, it is as if the audience and myself for
one moment actually feel like the same being, momentarily
fascinated by the same thing. Yet each person's
interpretation is different from the other, one of the parts
comprising the whole. The audience is like the many strings
of a tent, supporting and encapsulating the environment
within the canvas billows.
To assemble the parts of a performance, I make things
with my hands out of many materials. The handmade parts of
the costume are my door into performance. The costume, along
with its set and props, takes nearly two years to develop. I
develop the costume and performance together so that at any
point during the two year period, it' development could be
seen, and could be considered complete. But the longer I
work on the costume/sculptures they become fuller with more
environment around them. I love making beautiful objects, as
well as taking them into movement and life.
e-mail: shasha@shashahigby.com
PLAY ME NOW
MOVIE:
[ SHA SHA'S
PAGE ]
|