Dana Driver - Mendocino Art Center

y Peggy Templer
Sha Sha Higby could easily be the poster child for
the single-child family. An only child until the age of
eleven, this amazingly imaginative artist can trace her
creative development back to the hours she spent alone
in her upstairs bedroom as a child. She was constantly
drawing, making up stories, creating dolls and puppets,
imagining and producing entire travelogues with
forests and trails and other destinations, all within the
confines of her room. Her mother always encouraged
her to indulge her imagination, and had endless
patience for a creatively messy room. Her stepfather
taught her to sew and was handy with tools, so that she
began making things for their home and friends, dolls
with long skinny legs, 100 mice finger puppets, eggs
with scenes inside, stories embellished with costume
and fabric. She also wrote stories and bound the books.
Her mother opened a retail clothing store, but Sha Sha
still made all of her own clothes.
Sha Sha majored in art at Skidmore College, from
which, during her junior year, she participated in an
exchange program to Japan and wound up staying
for one year instead of three weeks. In Japan she was
introduced to many of the elements that would become
features of her own life’s work – Kabuki theater, Noh
mask carving, dance and movement, tea ceremony, calligraphy,
elaborate Shinto and Buddhist rituals and rich
costuming. According to Sha Sha, “Japanese crafts and
Noh Theater, with its elaborate costuming and poetic
structure, were the major influence on my work.”
After returning from Japan, “on her own” as an artist,
Sha Sha began making installation pieces for galleries,
primarily small objects that were a cross between sculpture
and puppetry strung on threads which “involved a
lot of sewing,” as well as the use of carved wood which
she learned from Noh Mask Carving. It was during this
time that she became particularly intrigued with Butoh
Dance performances. “The dancers’ bodies were like
Above: Photo by Albert Hollander from Folds of Gold by Sha Sha Higby. Japanese urushi lacquer, gold leaf, embroidery, silver filigree leaves
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