SARAH SENSE
SHERRY LEEDY CONTEMPORARY ART
“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”
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”
Cowboys and Indian Princesses woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax
32” x 48”
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”
Cowgirl with Boots woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax
32” x 48”
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”
Cowgirls and Their Guns woven archival inkjet prints on bamboo and rice paper, wax
32” x 48”
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
