Sienna Shields
The Alaskan-born artist, Sienna Shields (1976–), studied history at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and works in paint, collage, quilting, performance, and multiple media including video. While at school, she became interested in vintage fire-insurance maps in which, as buildings and lots were altered, new images of modified constructions and street schemes were layered on top of existing maps to save on costs for the municipality. Archival collages seem to be the root of Shields’ 6-foot-high, imposing works such as Untitled, with its shimmering collaged surface of paper painted with acrylics and oils. The technique involves glazing bits of paper with various types of pigments and treating them as froissage elements—crumpling them up and overlaying randomly splattered paint onto the wrinkled forms.
Shields was the chief organizer of the HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican? artist collective and the director of its digital work. Shields’s work has been exhibited at the Kruger Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; Superfront Gallery, Brooklyn, New York; Kuma-Galerie, Berlin, Germany; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
