Chelsea Bighorn
Chelsea Bighorn was born and raised in Tempe, Arizona, and is Lakota, Dakota and Shoshone-Paiute. Bighorns work is the result of her combining traditional Native American design with elements from her Irish American heritage. Using this process, she tells her personal history through her art. Bighorn has shown her work at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, SITE Santa Fe, Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, and The Center for Native Futures in Chicago, IL. She graduated from The Institute of American Indian Arts in 2021 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Arts. Bighorn received her Master of Fine Arts in Fiber and Material Studies from School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. She currently resides in Chicago, IL.
Starting Out
Chelsea’s winning proposal centers on a new body of sculptural work that pushes her pleated canvas and bead practice into a more architectural form, drawing equally from Native garments and the cityscape she encounters on her daily train commute in Chicago.
Continuing to work with canvas and beadwork, she will transform pleating into dimensional form, with beads functioning as a visual language that traces structure, movement, and process.
“Chelsea’s work stood out for its formal clarity and ambition. She’s using material and structure to think seriously about place: how it’s remembered, inhabited, and rebuilt.”
In the Studio
On my train rides I found myself drawn to the extremely detailed stone carvings of the buildings I was passing by. I knew that I wanted to try and incorporate those 3-dimensional elements into my work. Previously I have been working with a lot of sculptural pleating, but I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and try something new. I landed on a beaded cord because it could offer a new to me 3D element to my textile work.
Through much trial and error of different kinds of cord, beading techniques and a piece that wasn’t quite working, I eventually ended up starting over. While the decision to completely restart was difficult and frustrating, it ended up being the right choice and I am at a point where the work has become fun and exciting again. The combination of the eight point start and celtic knot was something that I was working with while at the Penland Winter Residency (papermaking), and knew that it would translate well into what I was envisioning. I am excited to keep on beading and embellishing this star knot.
Follow Chelsea's work
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