Sha Sha Higby

Sha Sha Higby is creativity unleashed. She makes elaborate, and wildly imaginative costumes, sculptures, and props. She is invited all over America, Asia, Europe, and Eastern Europe for her slow, haunting one-woman performances, wearing her astonishing costumes, and her work is featured in international exhibitions. Higby’s unique aesthetic floats between some ancient royal treasure and grand fantasy, with the true originality of her vision. Each of her creations takes hundreds of hours to complete. 

A long time Bolinas resident, Higby grew up in San Francisco and Marin County, and graduated from Skidmore College in 1974. She spent 5 years in Indonesia as a Fulbright Scholar under the Indo-American Fellowship Arts International then studied in Japan and India. She is the recipient of an NEA grant among many prestigious honors and awards. Informed by years of studying traditional techniques in Asia, her work combines such diverse mediums as lacquer, textiles, copper, paper, cut leather, beading, enamel, drawing, gold leaf, wood, stitching and much more. Her work is exhibited internationally in museums including a solo exhibition at Bolinas Museum.

This sculpture, Spirit, recently returned from an international exhibition of master urushi (lacquer) artworks in China. Higby explains the process of creating Spirit: “This particular sculpture has sections of the mask and arms made from ‘Dry lacquer’ urushi. Urushi is the sap of an Asian tree, Rus Verniciflua, a member of the sumac family, which includes poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. Through a painstaking process the sap is gathered drop by drop. When applied, it does not dry as shellac does in the West, it cures and hardens, forming a lustrous, impregnable surface. For this sculpture, a shell is formed over a mold made with alternating layers of lacquer, clay, and metal mesh under layers of hemp cloth, and sometimes washi paper or leather. The shell was given multiple coats of lacquer mixed with pulverized claystone, pumice, and diatomaceous earth, then finished with thin layers of black and colored lacquer and polished in successive layers with charcoal.