Sarah Sense "Cowgirls and Indians"

SARAH SENSE

SHERRY LEEDY CONTEMPORARY ART

SARAH SENSE COWGIRLS AND INDIANS SHERRY LEEDY CONTEMPORARY ART 2004 Baltimore Ave. Kansas City, MO 64108 816.221.2626 sherryleedy.com Front Image: Grandparent’s Stories Catalog Design: Allison king

“Cowboy and Indian iconography are deeply rooted in America without recognition of the real history or the consequences of stereotypes. These generalizations are detrimental to the collective community and to the individual. Cowgirls and Indians explores these questions of identity and the influence of imagery.”

-Sarah Sense

Sarah Sense’s woven photographs layer images from her Chitimacha and Choctaw heritage with photographs from Hollywood and pop culture, the Chitimacha landscape of Bayou Teche, her Coctaw grandmother’s writings, and her two personas: Cowgirl and Indian Princess. The weaving together of strips of paper echoes a traditional Chitimacha basket technique and creates patterning that shifts the imagery between abstraction and recognition. The physicality of the weaving pushes the imagery forward and backward, creating a dialogue between the timelessness of the landscape and the temporal quality of everything else.

Like photographs, stories are a recorded history, merging time and memory. Sense weaves together images of struggle, landscape, and pop culture that pose questions about what we have been told. These stories about stereotypes of Native North America, guns and women being taken, are transformed by Sense and revealed as new stories relevant for our time.

Artist Biography Sarah Sense is an artist from Sacramento, California (1980). She received a BFA from California State University Chico (2003), and a MFA from Parsons the New School for Design, New York (2005). Sense was the curator/director of the American Indian Community House Gallery (2005-07) where she catalogued the gallery’s thirty-year history. Sense has been practicing photo-weaving with traditional basket techniques from her Chitimacha and Choctaw family since 2004. Early works are based on Chitimacha landscape in Louisiana and Hollywood interpretations of Native North America. When Sense moved to South America in 2010 for research, her work changed to include travels journals, landscape photography and family archives, telling stories to reveal Indigenous histories, most notably her field search of Native art from twelve countries in the Western Hemisphere, for the book and exhibition, Weaving the Americas, premiering in Valdivia and Santiago, Chile (2011). Indigenous art search continued while traveling through Southeast Asia and the Caribbean for the exhibition, Weaving Water, premiering in Bristol, England (2013). While living in Ireland she collaborated with her Choctaw grandmother for the series, Grandmother’s Stories, premiering in Tulsa, Oklahoma (2015), followed by works about family lines and motherhood with Remember, premiering in Frankfurt, Germany (2016). Sense continues her research as a British Library Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow (2019-20) and recently installed a sculpture at the National Marine Aquarium (2019) Plymouth, England.

This Cowgirls Gunna Make It woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Stillness on the Bayou woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

Grandparent’s Stories woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, pen and ink, wax 32” x 48”

Cowgirls and Cowboys with Ronald Reagan woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo paper, found imagery, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Cowboys and Indian Princesses woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Lone Ranger and Tonto with Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo paper, found imagery, wax 32� x 48�

Custer and the Cowgirl with Her Gun woven archival inkjet prints on rice paper, pen and ink, wax 32� x 48�

Cowgirl, Custer and Young Impressions woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Cowgirl with Boots woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Into the Bayuo woven archival inkjet prints on rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

Cowgirl and Client Eastwood with Guns woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

Cowgirls and Cowboys with Ronald Reagan, Kevin Costner and Gary Cooper woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Cowgirls and Their Guns woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax 32� x 48�

detail

Sarah Sense CV 2020 Education Parsons The New School for Design, New York, NY Master of Fine Arts, Fine Art, May 2005; Dean’s List California State University Chico, Chico, CA Bachelor of Fine Arts, Studio Art, May 2003; Dean’s List University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada; University Study Abroad Consortium Santiago, Chile, 2010 Puntarenas, Costa Rica, 2010 San Sebastian, Spain, 2001

Exhibition List Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions 2020

Cowgirls and Indians Sherry Leedy Contemporary Kansas City, MO, September

2019

Cowgirls and Indians Curator, Nicole Herden Boise Museum of Art, Boise, Idaho, May - November

Cowgirls and Indians Curator, Daina Warren Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg, Canada, February – March

2018

Cowgirls and Indians Curator, Doug Sink Duhesa Gallery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, July - December

2017

cypress Curator, Ranelle Knight-Lueth COE College, Rapid City, Iowa, September

2016

Her Story Our Legacy Curator, Mike Patten Atrium artwork in conjunction with Culture Shift Contemporary Native Art Biennial McCord Museum, Montreal, Canada, April - June

2015

INTERTWINED, Stories of Splintered Pasts: Sarah Sense and Shan Goshorn Curator, heather ahtone Hardesty Arts Center, Tulsa, Oklahoma, May – July

2014

Weaving Water Curator, Jo Prince with scholarship by Max Caroccci Legends Santa Fe, New Mexico, December - January

Catalogues, Books Radio and Reviews 2020

Forbes, Spotlight Continues Shining on Female Native American Artists, January 19, 2020,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chaddscott/2020/01/19/spotlight-continues-shining-on-fe male-native-american-artists/#4c6a004b588b

2019

British Library, Visiting Fellow, Eccles Centre, London, England, 2019-2020 Monument Valley, exhibition catalogue, Des Moines Art Center Proud, Resilient and Native American, Ramblings, Clare Balding, BBC Radio 4, June 8

Stories to Tell: Boise Art Museum Exhibits Native American Art, Boise Weekly, review of Cowgirls and Indians by Lex Nelson, May 21, 2019

Indigenous Conference, artist Princeton University

Cowgirls and Indians, American artist, Sarah Sense challenges myths and stereotypes about Indigenous women in popular culture, Galleries West, review by Stacey Abramson, February

23

Weaving A New History, Winnipeg Free Press, review by Jill Wilson, February 15

Sarah Sense’s scintillating new mixed media exhibition, Cowgirls and Indians is being show cased at the Urban Shaman Gallery, The Manitoban, University of Manitoba Newspaper, review by Amin Montazeri Pour Agha, February 6, 2019 USI Radio Interview, Winnipeg, Canada, January 31

NCI FM Radio, The Spirit of Manitoba, Interview, Winnipeg, Canada, January 30

Collections

Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, North Carolina Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana Museum, Charenton, Louisiana Choctaw Headquarters, Oklahoma Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado Cypress Bayou Casino, Chitimacha, Charenton, Louisiana Eaton, Corporate Collection, Cleveland, Ohio Harvard University, Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares, Mexico City, Mexico Smithsonian National Museum of the America Indian, New York, New York Schingoethe Center of Aurora University, Aurora, Illinois Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota University of Kansas Hospital, Kansas City, Kansas Weltkulturen Museum (World Cultures Museum), Frankfurt, Germany Santa Clara University, de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, California Private collections: Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, England, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, United States of America

2004 Baltimore Ave. Kansas City, MO 64108 816.221.2626 sherryleedy.com