Weaving History, Lives, Justice, and Beauty into Art with Something to Say
Multifaceted and Nuanced Art Statements Shan Goshorn is a brilliant, wise, and beloved woman—brave, caring, passionate, and compassionate. A truth seeker, she is a stronghearted, good-humored activist for the rights of Native Peoples, women, artists, the environment, and more. A mixed-media, concept-based artist of great renown, she utilizes photography, painting, basket making, silversmithing, and collage and montage artistry to make her two-dimensional and three-dimensional works. Her many series make fulsome, cohesive statements, and she masters each subject in a manner worthy of acknowledgment as a scholarly dissertation. As both a friend and curator, I have long been a “Shan fan,” and I am privileged to offer these words about her as a sister in arts and activism. A daughter, citizen, and honored artist of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina (Wolf Clan), she was given the name of Yellow Moon. She has lived and worked in Oklahoma for over half of her life in Tulsa, a city that grew from the convergence of lands and peoples of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Osage Nations. Oklahoma boasts thirty-nine Native Nations, with distinct cultures and histories, and whose citizens include an astonishingly high ratio and variety of artists. Shan is recognized as a courageous artist-activist, a champion of fairness and justice in our time, for the ancestors, and for the coming generations. Public descriptions of her often say that Goshorn is “best known for her baskets,” but she considers herself an artist who uses the “medium that best expresses a statement.” I have curated her work in exhibitions and have known her over the decades as one of the best artists in whatever medium she was working at the time. She is also a captivating storyteller and a most effective advocate. In making art or otherwise imparting knowledge, she is clear and unflinching about treaty violations, grave robbing, violence against women, torture of children, harm to Mother Earth, mascoting and stereotyping, and damage to Native languages and sacred places. Her statements give heart to those searching for ways to present issues and to reach for solutions to our myriad emergency situations. The impact of her work is incalculable. In our Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) way, we are instructed to choose our friends as we would choose people to take into battle and to make peace, after or even without fighting. Goshorn is such a person. For years, I have considered my friendship with her as one of my defining features, but it is not necessary for the visitor or reader to meet her in person to know the multifaceted and nuanced Shan Goshorn through her body of work. I would like to introduce or reintroduce her, in some leaps through time, with a few examples of her art and advocacy periods and pieces that led to this magnificent exhibition of her multimedia basketry work.
Suzan Shown Harjo
OPPOSITE
Shan Goshorn, High Stakes: Tribes Choice #2, 2011. Digital photograph: archival pigments and glitter on paper.
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