18 Facts About Shan Goshorn

Shan Goshorn was an Eastern Band Cherokee artist, who lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Shan Goshorn 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.

Shan Goshorn was born on July 3,1957, and raised in Baltimore, Maryland.

Shan Goshorn spent summers on the Qualla Boundary with her grandmother.

Shan Goshorn 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.

Shan Goshorn attended the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio because of their silversmithing department.

Shan Goshorn was the only Native American student in the program and did not find support in exploring Native American customary arts.

Shan Goshorn left the Cleveland Institute of Art and went to the Atlanta College of Art where she finished her Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Shan Goshorn wove more than 200 baskets from 2009 to 2018.

Shan Goshorn modeled some of her baskets after those that would have had specific uses in the tribal community.

Shan Goshorn told the American Indian Magazine, that it could take six months to weave a basket.

Shan Goshorn's work is in the collection of the Renwick Gallery and was included in their 50th Anniversary show This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World.

Shan Goshorn chose a multitude of hand-tinted, black-and-white images of brands that use Indian images and names to sell their product.

In 2017, Shan Goshorn created the work, Resisting the Mission: Filling the Silence, consisting of 14 cylindrical paper baskets discussing the period of US history when Native children were removed from their families to attend government-run residential schools.

Shan Goshorn belonged to the art collective, the Urban Indian Five, along with Gerald Cournoyer, Brent Greenwood, Thomas Poolaw, and Holly Wilson.

Shan Goshorn received a 2013 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, 2013 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, 2013 SWAIA Discovery Fellowship, the 2014 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship and the 2015 United States Artists Fellowship.

Shan Goshorn died on December 1,2018, from cancer at the age of 61.

Shan Goshorn 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.