Inspiration: Sha Sha Higby

A good friend of mine has asked me who inspired me, so I thought it would be fun to explore this, being that I have a wide range of interests that make my imagination spark. I do wish I knew how to put their images here, but for lack of that, I will put links to their sites/work.

Just off the top of my head comes Sha Sha Higby. http://www.shashahigby.com/
She makes the most amazing life size and larger sculptures/puppets which she uses in performance art and dance. Her pieces are multi-media and nearly impossible to describe, using paper and gold leaf with ceramic masks. Definitely worth a look. Check out her Movies section to get a glimpse of what she does. I was fortunate enough to see her work, though not her performance in Washington D.C. several years back. If I could be reborn as another artist, it would be her. The child in me who has always loved marionettes is absolutely awed into silence and wonder at the sight of her work. It is magical. Her masks are split in the middle revealing more inside and within the "being" she creates are other entities. It all seems so fragile, like gossamer wings of a strange undiscovered insect life morphed with human, like "The Fly" but much more beautiful. There's almost too much information there, but instead of being overwhelming, it makes you want to look closer and see what makes it tick. That these sculptures can be worn and move is even more amazing and she brings them to life in an eerie, surreal dance of sorts, combined with music of the same tone that makes you feel that you are witnessing a chrysalis. To experience an actual performance must be something beyond supernatural. That's just one of the many artist to whom I am thankful for the inspiration.