shea gordon

SG02 21" x 8" (including stand)

As the finished dolls make their way to me, I am thrilled to see that each one truly does have the “signature” of the artist who has worked on it. I’m also pleased that the project is giving me a chance to meet some artists for the first time and reconnect with some I haven’t seen for a while.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending time with my fascinating friend and amazing artist/thinker, Shea Gordon. Her studio is one of the most beautiful in town; her work is layered, complex, spiritual, gorgeous and thought provoking. Her paintings, drawing and sculptures have been shown worldwide.


Shea has long been interested in the Dead Sea. I was so happy to see the gold shape of the sea spreading all around the doll and especially the gold earrings that frame her face! (The earrings are actually made from folded gum wrappers.)

The following is an excerpt from a 2004 article entitled “Reweaving the World" written by Jan Schall, Sanders Sosland Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Nelson-Atkins Musuem:

“Symbolism is the warp and weft of Shea Gordon’s work. Together, the delicate threads of synchronicity, numerology, alchemy, androgyny, complementarity, politics, ecofeminism, prophecy, morality, energy, magnetism, biography, and beauty form a fabric of conceptual intricacy and visual simplicity. Pull one strand and the pattern unravels. Stretch the cloth tautly and sail.

Gordon believes that a masterful design informs and unites everything in the universe, that purpose and meaning are revealed to those who seek them. Her work conveys the nuances of that design, extricating the codes written into and onto all things: life, death, rebirth; space and time; the immanent and the transcendent.

Her drawings, paintings, and sculptures represent milestones in Gordon’s search for meaning, a search that led to the Dead Sea and, paradoxically, to the life that it signifies. Human life. The gold standard. For Gordon, the Dead Sea is more than a body of saline water geographically situated in the country of Israel. It is the theory of everything. It is water that dehydrates. It is a sea within a desert. It lies within a holy land shattered by unholy conflict. Its waters evaporate, then fall as rain upon distant continents. It denies life, yet takes the form of a human embryo – head down, ready for emergence from a womblike hollow in the land, the lowest point on the earth at 1,340 feet below sea level.”

Being with Shea, I am always reminded that there is so much about life to consider and so much lovely art to take in. Do yourself a favor and check out Shea’s website here.