Shan Goshorn, photograph by Rosalie Favell

The contemporary art world lost an important artist over the weekend to cancer and many people lost a good friend. Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee) was an exceptional person deeply loved by many. Shan 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. To learn more about Shan and her important work, please visit her website.

On a personal note, I’ve known Shan my entire career from my early days at Atlatl where she served on the national board in the mid-1990s. She has consistently been a kind, thoughtful and loving person to me and to everyone she meets. I have never met a person who didn’t love her for who she is as an individual and as an artist.

Shan’s services are tentatively scheduled for December 29, 2018 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

—Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation), IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Director