Project Statements 2011- 2015

 

Grandmother's Stories (2015)  Like photographs, stories are a recorded history, merging time and memory repeatedly both orally and visually. These works from "Grandmother's Stories"  focus on history of family and the placement of self in a community and as an outsider. An architect once told me, “always be an outsider,” I thought that this was his way of understanding international socio-political circumstance when creating community dwellings. I understand it now as a way to think differently, to understand something that may not be within reach emotionally. My journey in the last five years has lead me through thirty-five counties, originating as a means to learn of international Indigenous arts. It was a bold and at times lonely path, but as my steady determination to meet Native artists and learn though my own “field-search” about constructs of colonization in the Americas, I began to live the art. Life changed constantly and the one thing that remained the most consistent was family and land. Going home was unlike any other joy in my life, except for engaging with nature. Trekking and diving became an inspiration for creating and living, and photography became a record of beauty in the landscapes that I encountered. My weaving practice which begun with Chitimacha reservation landscapes (2004), evolved into interpretations of Hollywood appropriation of the Native experience, most simply explained, the real with the fake, most accurately explored with my personas of the Cowgirl and Indian Princess. Such images were also intermixed with familial archives and movie poster, commenting on reality and misconceptions of idealizing culture. As my travels began, landscapes grew into my work beginning with the Weaving the Americas series (2011), mostly landscapes of deserts, mountains and jungles; then with Weaving Water (2013), underwater scenes, the sun and the moon. While meeting with Indigenous communities I became intrigued with my own family again; in many ways, being that outsider encouraged me to grow closer to my origins. As travel and life merged into one, making connections between family, research, and landscape became more natural.

 

In 2013 I was invited to have an exhibition in Bristol and stayed. Stories were unfolding to me while circumstance created new realities. When I realized that Europe would hold me for longer than I would want, I begun to consider various relevant research, the most exciting was an old story that my Grandma Chilie told me long ago about the Choctaw Irish relationship and the Choctaw community gifting money to the Irish during the famine in the 1840s.

 

My Grandma Chilie is Choctaw and grew up in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. She is a nurse, storyteller, photographer, world traveler, basket collector and writer. She told me a few years ago, “Sarah, you are living the life that I always wanted.” I told her a few weeks ago, “Grandma, I am more like you than any one I have ever known.” She agreed. Just then she pulled out a document that she had written in August 2014, called “The Choctaw Irish Relation.” I moved to Ireland in November 2014.  At ninety-one she is recording her stories of family, traveling, love, and disappointment. The text that you see in this series is her words, re-written by me. I recount history in two different countries and different communities to bring perspective to an old story, turned legend which still holds social relevance with compassion and empathy. The story goes: shortly after the Choctaw were removed and displaced in Oklahoma on the  Trail of Tears,  word reached the community that there was starvation in Ireland. The Choctaw gathered funds and sent the money to Ireland as a gift to help. This gift had such a profound impact that the story lives strong in Ireland today. In telling one Irishman that I was Choctaw he got tears in his eyes. It is a recent past and still remembered.   Learning of this story from my Grandmother, and to then move to Ireland feels like a closed circle. To re-write and re-record her experience is like breathing her life into her old home of Oklahoma. The Choctaw basket patterns are from the two baskets that she gifted to me in the summer of 2012 and the Chitimacha basket weave is consistent to the one that I bought from renowned basket maker, John Paul Darden. Weaving has been my most natural process of communication. While my grandmother was never a weaver, and I never knew my Grandfather, I am grateful that my Chitimacha community has given me the blessing to weave. In this series of work I am showing my gratitude to my ancestors for guiding my journey, bringing me to Oklahoma and for giving my grandmother an opportunity to share her stories. 

 

Weaving Water (2013)  Weaving photographs is a way of connecting with a familial tradition that has dissolved into a hand-full of talent. Through photographic processes, cut paper and physical weaving, I have taught myself how to carry on the tradition of weaving Chitimacha patterns, bringing me into a life of meeting and knowing other traditional artists. Weaving Water was first explored in the Caribbean Islands with the intention of transitioning to Southeast Asia. I entered the twenty-eighth country in twenty-four months while in Asia and realized that I had lost touch with definition of self that had been labeled by society. All had been adjusted or removed, leaving me raw and open. In Northern Thailand I was weaving a basket with bamboo, and realized that for the first time I was making a Chitimacha basket with the same source material from my Native family in another continent. The next night I slipped into a deep dream during shallow sleep and saw bamboo reed sprout from the earth and weave itself into a basket while growing. Life transformed rapidly with flowers budding to full bloom in seconds. Two days later I was meeting with the Master Paper Maker, Mr. Supan of Lampang, Thailand and was conversing about quantum physics and the instability of all things in life and how like life, the paper has two sides. I stood in his studio, surrounded by a bamboo forest and learned of his paper making process. I took with me paper that reminded me of the moon, both the front and the back, one side lit by the sun and the other in the shadow. I gathered my images from the recent journey through the islands of America and Asia, then considered the repeat of patters in my work and how I had seen them in Asia and the Caribbean. I thought of the Caribbean’s African culture, slave routes, and of Indigenous slaves from North America into the Islands. I learned of my ancestors being traded by colonizers and plantation owners, relocating them to the French Islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, coming to realize why Guadeloupe had in some way been frightening to me. Later I learned that the island was a grave of distant relatives who had been taken from Louisiana and sent as slaves to Guadeloupe. Weaving Water is about losing everything that is comfortable so that I may understand how things like religion, culture and people moved from one land mass to another; realizing that despite the cluttered clash, people can return to a source to bring them back to the ground, returning them to a home that maybe can only be felt inside, because perhaps home has been removed. And maybe many didn’t learn how to continue the art, but somehow some of us have taught ourselves because the source will find its way back to us through water, though earth, through something working in the interior of the self. 

 

Weaving the Americas (2011)  is a continuation of my search project on the contemporary Indigenous culture of the Americas, which has pleasantly brought me closer to my weaving practice and understanding community as a contemporary continuation of tradition, reflecting cultural evolution. Searching is my primary conceptual resource for creating narratives in my art that communicate connections; my visual image collection is a record of the search while the process of weaving the images with original basket patterns from my Chitimacha ancestry is my effort to continue a familial tradition. As my career has positioned me to live in unique Native art communities of North America, I have developed a curiosity for Native art south of the United States border. In the past couple of years I have dedicated my research to learning about Latin American culture by living and traveling throughout Central and South America, bringing me to my current project, Weaving the Americas, a seven-month journey concentrating on the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The histories are there in my weavings with the colors of land matching the palettes of Indigenous weavers and painters, carrying with it my family history which I believe stretches around the Gulf of Mexico and into the Yucatán Peninsula, reaching beyond the blue-green Caribbean Sea, across the rolling hills of Ecuador until lifting up to the sun in the tips of mountains of Peru’s lost city and deep into the crevices and valleys of the Andes down to the icy blue glaciers of Chile and Argentina. This is America; this is the palette of our people, the patterns that have been woven into the lives of the communities and reaching out from the veins of our ancestors into our own blood that moves our bodies into dance and our hands into weaving; sometime a natural progression without a teacher, because it is in our blood. This is Weaving the Americas; it is a search for the heart of these lands and a presentation of the artist’s perspective. 

 

My Basket Story (2013)  is a piece that weaves together a hand-written story of how I came to my weaving practice, beginning fifteen years ago. The bamboo paper becomes my journal of experiences since I first engaged with the Chitimacha baskets as a teenager, until now, where I am on the cusp of learning how to do the traditional basket weaving. The piece is a part of the Weaving Water series and includes photographs from the Caribbean search project of November 2012 and Southeast Asia of January and February this year. All of the bamboo paper interwoven into the work is from northern Thailand, replacing the natural material of river cane, which is the material for traditional Chitimacha baskets. While my story of weaving is woven into the piece, the text can only be deciphered on two of the sixteen panels. The lost language is covered and in places laid over it self and covering my story.  

 

Paper Mermaids (2013)  is an installation of underwater photographs woven together with landscapes of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia and includes a video showing text on bamboo paper being woven into the piece along with segments of the female figure swimming. The photos are woven through pen and ink drawings and occasional charcoal on bamboo paper. The organic nature of the fine, curvy line drawings are reminiscent of the coral and swirls of air underwater. The female figure is a prominent image in the piece, which is occasionally laid over macro imagery of underwater seascapes. The figures float through space, giving effects of falling or floating, and in moments suspended in the sea. Paper Mermaids plays with subtle parallels between emotion and the sensibilities of air and gravity underwater.

 

Weaving the Bayou (2013)   is a commission for the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana. The piece is based on Bayou Teche at the Chitimacha Reservation in Charenton, Louisiana. In this piece there are fifteen different photographs of one sunset over the Bayou. I photographed these images in November 2008 and wove them together in 2013 with traditional Chitimacha basket weaving patterns. Traditional Chitimacha baskets are made from river cane, an indigenous plant to Bayou Teche. 

 

Sarah Sense, Chitimacha/Choctaw

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Artist Statements 2004 - 2018

Project Statements 2011- 2015

 

Grandmother's Stories (2015)  Like photographs, stories are a recorded history, merging time and memory repeatedly both orally and visually. These works from "Grandmother's Stories"  focus on history of family and the placement of self in a community and as an outsider. An architect once told me, “always be an outsider,” I thought that this was his way of understanding international socio-political circumstance when creating community dwellings. I understand it now as a way to think differently, to understand something that may not be within reach emotionally. My journey in the last five years has lead me through thirty-five counties, originating as a means to learn of international Indigenous arts. It was a bold and at times lonely path, but as my steady determination to meet Native artists and learn though my own “field-search” about constructs of colonization in the Americas, I began to live the art. Life changed constantly and the one thing that remained the most consistent was family and land. Going home was unlike any other joy in my life, except for engaging with nature. Trekking and diving became an inspiration for creating and living, and photography became a record of beauty in the landscapes that I encountered. My weaving practice which begun with Chitimacha reservation landscapes (2004), evolved into interpretations of Hollywood appropriation of the Native experience, most simply explained, the real with the fake, most accurately explored with my personas of the Cowgirl and Indian Princess. Such images were also intermixed with familial archives and movie poster, commenting on reality and misconceptions of idealizing culture. As my travels began, landscapes grew into my work beginning with the Weaving the Americas series (2011), mostly landscapes of deserts, mountains and jungles; then with Weaving Water (2013), underwater scenes, the sun and the moon. While meeting with Indigenous communities I became intrigued with my own family again; in many ways, being that outsider encouraged me to grow closer to my origins. As travel and life merged into one, making connections between family, research, and landscape became more natural.

 

In 2013 I was invited to have an exhibition in Bristol and stayed. Stories were unfolding to me while circumstance created new realities. When I realized that Europe would hold me for longer than I would want, I begun to consider various relevant research, the most exciting was an old story that my Grandma Chilie told me long ago about the Choctaw Irish relationship and the Choctaw community gifting money to the Irish during the famine in the 1840s.

 

My Grandma Chilie is Choctaw and grew up in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. She is a nurse, storyteller, photographer, world traveler, basket collector and writer. She told me a few years ago, “Sarah, you are living the life that I always wanted.” I told her a few weeks ago, “Grandma, I am more like you than any one I have ever known.” She agreed. Just then she pulled out a document that she had written in August 2014, called “The Choctaw Irish Relation.” I moved to Ireland in November 2014.  At ninety-one she is recording her stories of family, traveling, love, and disappointment. The text that you see in this series is her words, re-written by me. I recount history in two different countries and different communities to bring perspective to an old story, turned legend which still holds social relevance with compassion and empathy. The story goes: shortly after the Choctaw were removed and displaced in Oklahoma on the  Trail of Tears,  word reached the community that there was starvation in Ireland. The Choctaw gathered funds and sent the money to Ireland as a gift to help. This gift had such a profound impact that the story lives strong in Ireland today. In telling one Irishman that I was Choctaw he got tears in his eyes. It is a recent past and still remembered.   Learning of this story from my Grandmother, and to then move to Ireland feels like a closed circle. To re-write and re-record her experience is like breathing her life into her old home of Oklahoma. The Choctaw basket patterns are from the two baskets that she gifted to me in the summer of 2012 and the Chitimacha basket weave is consistent to the one that I bought from renowned basket maker, John Paul Darden. Weaving has been my most natural process of communication. While my grandmother was never a weaver, and I never knew my Grandfather, I am grateful that my Chitimacha community has given me the blessing to weave. In this series of work I am showing my gratitude to my ancestors for guiding my journey, bringing me to Oklahoma and for giving my grandmother an opportunity to share her stories. 

 

Weaving Water (2013)  Weaving photographs is a way of connecting with a familial tradition that has dissolved into a hand-full of talent. Through photographic processes, cut paper and physical weaving, I have taught myself how to carry on the tradition of weaving Chitimacha patterns, bringing me into a life of meeting and knowing other traditional artists. Weaving Water was first explored in the Caribbean Islands with the intention of transitioning to Southeast Asia. I entered the twenty-eighth country in twenty-four months while in Asia and realized that I had lost touch with definition of self that had been labeled by society. All had been adjusted or removed, leaving me raw and open. In Northern Thailand I was weaving a basket with bamboo, and realized that for the first time I was making a Chitimacha basket with the same source material from my Native family in another continent. The next night I slipped into a deep dream during shallow sleep and saw bamboo reed sprout from the earth and weave itself into a basket while growing. Life transformed rapidly with flowers budding to full bloom in seconds. Two days later I was meeting with the Master Paper Maker, Mr. Supan of Lampang, Thailand and was conversing about quantum physics and the instability of all things in life and how like life, the paper has two sides. I stood in his studio, surrounded by a bamboo forest and learned of his paper making process. I took with me paper that reminded me of the moon, both the front and the back, one side lit by the sun and the other in the shadow. I gathered my images from the recent journey through the islands of America and Asia, then considered the repeat of patters in my work and how I had seen them in Asia and the Caribbean. I thought of the Caribbean’s African culture, slave routes, and of Indigenous slaves from North America into the Islands. I learned of my ancestors being traded by colonizers and plantation owners, relocating them to the French Islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, coming to realize why Guadeloupe had in some way been frightening to me. Later I learned that the island was a grave of distant relatives who had been taken from Louisiana and sent as slaves to Guadeloupe. Weaving Water is about losing everything that is comfortable so that I may understand how things like religion, culture and people moved from one land mass to another; realizing that despite the cluttered clash, people can return to a source to bring them back to the ground, returning them to a home that maybe can only be felt inside, because perhaps home has been removed. And maybe many didn’t learn how to continue the art, but somehow some of us have taught ourselves because the source will find its way back to us through water, though earth, through something working in the interior of the self. 

 

Weaving the Americas (2011)  is a continuation of my search project on the contemporary Indigenous culture of the Americas, which has pleasantly brought me closer to my weaving practice and understanding community as a contemporary continuation of tradition, reflecting cultural evolution. Searching is my primary conceptual resource for creating narratives in my art that communicate connections; my visual image collection is a record of the search while the process of weaving the images with original basket patterns from my Chitimacha ancestry is my effort to continue a familial tradition. As my career has positioned me to live in unique Native art communities of North America, I have developed a curiosity for Native art south of the United States border. In the past couple of years I have dedicated my research to learning about Latin American culture by living and traveling throughout Central and South America, bringing me to my current project, Weaving the Americas, a seven-month journey concentrating on the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The histories are there in my weavings with the colors of land matching the palettes of Indigenous weavers and painters, carrying with it my family history which I believe stretches around the Gulf of Mexico and into the Yucatán Peninsula, reaching beyond the blue-green Caribbean Sea, across the rolling hills of Ecuador until lifting up to the sun in the tips of mountains of Peru’s lost city and deep into the crevices and valleys of the Andes down to the icy blue glaciers of Chile and Argentina. This is America; this is the palette of our people, the patterns that have been woven into the lives of the communities and reaching out from the veins of our ancestors into our own blood that moves our bodies into dance and our hands into weaving; sometime a natural progression without a teacher, because it is in our blood. This is Weaving the Americas; it is a search for the heart of these lands and a presentation of the artist’s perspective. 

 

My Basket Story (2013)  is a piece that weaves together a hand-written story of how I came to my weaving practice, beginning fifteen years ago. The bamboo paper becomes my journal of experiences since I first engaged with the Chitimacha baskets as a teenager, until now, where I am on the cusp of learning how to do the traditional basket weaving. The piece is a part of the Weaving Water series and includes photographs from the Caribbean search project of November 2012 and Southeast Asia of January and February this year. All of the bamboo paper interwoven into the work is from northern Thailand, replacing the natural material of river cane, which is the material for traditional Chitimacha baskets. While my story of weaving is woven into the piece, the text can only be deciphered on two of the sixteen panels. The lost language is covered and in places laid over it self and covering my story.  

 

Paper Mermaids (2013)  is an installation of underwater photographs woven together with landscapes of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia and includes a video showing text on bamboo paper being woven into the piece along with segments of the female figure swimming. The photos are woven through pen and ink drawings and occasional charcoal on bamboo paper. The organic nature of the fine, curvy line drawings are reminiscent of the coral and swirls of air underwater. The female figure is a prominent image in the piece, which is occasionally laid over macro imagery of underwater seascapes. The figures float through space, giving effects of falling or floating, and in moments suspended in the sea. Paper Mermaids plays with subtle parallels between emotion and the sensibilities of air and gravity underwater.

 

Weaving the Bayou (2013)   is a commission for the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana. The piece is based on Bayou Teche at the Chitimacha Reservation in Charenton, Louisiana. In this piece there are fifteen different photographs of one sunset over the Bayou. I photographed these images in November 2008 and wove them together in 2013 with traditional Chitimacha basket weaving patterns. Traditional Chitimacha baskets are made from river cane, an indigenous plant to Bayou Teche. 

 

Sarah Sense, Chitimacha/Choctaw

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