Shan Goshorn was an Eastern Band Cherokee artist, who lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her multi-media artwork expresses human rights issues, especially those that affect Native American people today. Goshorn used different media to convey her message, including woven paper baskets, silversmithing, painting, and photography. She is best known for her baskets with Cherokee designs woven with archival paper reproductions of documents, maps, treaties, photographs and other materials that convey both the challenges and triumphs that Native Americans have experienced in the past and are still experiencing today.
Early life
Goshorn was born on July 3, 1957 and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She found most of her artistic inspiration in her teenage years when she worked for a summer at her tribe's Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual cooperative in Cherokee, North Carolina. There, she became familiar with leading Eastern Band Cherokee artists and art forms. This experience led to a job with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, where she helped organize Native art exhibitions and photographed the harvesting and preparation raw materials for Cherokee basket-making, carving, and other cultural art forms. After Goshorn graduated from college, the Department of the Interior's Indian Arts and Crafts Board commissioned her to illustrate 20 Cherokee basket patterns in pen and ink. These drawings taught her the math and rhythm of basket weaving and convinced her that she could weave a basket but she did not try until 2008, when she wove her first basket from paper splints.
Education
Goshorn attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio because of their silversmithing department. She was the only Native American student and did not find support in exploring Native American customary arts. Goshorn left the Cleveland Institute of Art and went to the Atlanta College of Art where she finished her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She found inspiration upon discovering American Indian Art Magazine and artists such as Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon. After these discoveries, Goshorn moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1981 to start her career.
Collections
Baskets
Goshorn has woven over 200 baskets since 2009. She has been identified by the Museum of the Cherokee Indian as the 14th living Eastern Band Cherokee to master the difficult double-weave technique. A few examples of her double-weave baskets include Sealed Fate, , and A few examples of her single-weave baskets include and Goshorn also modeled some of her baskets after those that would have had specific uses in the tribal community. Examples include her modeled after a Southeastern Woodlands fishing basket, modeled after a basket that would have been used to carry wood, corn or other heavy burdens and modeled after a sifting or winnowing basket. In her later work, Shan Goshorn experimented with novel shapes, moving more in a direction of sculpture. was woven in a way to mimic the flames of a fire, was woven in the shape of the Cherokee seven-sided star, and was woven as a three-dimensional representation of the weaving pattern called "Water." Before her focus on baskets, Goshorn's work consisted largely of drawings, paintings, photography and hand-tinted photography. With her work, Goshorn presented historical and current issues with the portrayal of Native American people. Molly McGlennen writes of Goshorn's baskets that they "reveal Indigenous versions of history, which necessarily uncover – rather than enshroud -- the chasms of division between Native and non-Native peoples."
''Honest Injun''
Honest Injun is one of Goshorn's series that addresses human rights issues specific to Native Americans. She chose a multitude of hand-tinted, black-and-white images of brands that use Indian images and names to sell their product. This collection was made in response to America's quincentennial celebration of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Americas.
''Reclaiming Cultural Ownership; Challenging Indian Stereotypes''
This collection consisted of 36 black-and-white documentary style images of Native American people living every day life. This series worked to challenge the way that Indian people are portrayed by the media.
''Kituwah Motherland''
This double-exposed, hand-tinted black-and-white photograph helped to raise awareness of Duke Power's plan to build a power plant overlooking the Kituwa mound, one of the most sacred locations to the Cherokee people.
Shan Goshorn died on December 1, 2018, from cancer at the age of 61. She is survived by her husband Tom Pendergraft; her mother, Edna Goshorn; two sisters; her son, Loma Pendergraft; daughter, Neosha Pendergraft; and three stepdaughters, Natalee, Carolee, and Sommer. After her death, SWAIA issued the statement: "The Native art world has lost a giant. Shan Goshorn was one of a kind, much like her art."
