Jessi Sands

Artist Biography

Jessi “Sands” Sharp is a multidisciplinary artist who uses different mediums such as painting, ceramics, and mixed media to explore how the intersectionality of their multiracial identity influences their roles as an Indigenous parent, queer person, and land steward. Jessi grew up in Oklahoma on the Cherokee reservation and on their Mvskoke reservation where they currently live in Tulsa, OK. They received their Associates of Arts Degree from Tulsa Community College in 2021. They received their Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with minors in American Indian Studies, Pre-Art Therapy, and Art History from Oklahoma State University in 2024. While attending OSU they received several scholarships, the most notable being the Dana, Lisa, and Chris Tiger Scholarship and the Jackson Narcomey Rising Artist Scholarship. Currently, Jessi is working towards receiving their MA in Art Therapy and Ecotherapy from Southwestern College and New Earth Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their career goal is to continue as a studio artist while creating spaces for healing as an art therapist.

Artist Statement

In Indigenous communities it only takes three generations to lose culture, language, and identity due to forced assimilation and the trauma that follows. I am changing that narrative. I understand the influence of my role as a queer matriarch and by passing on my traditional knowledge I want to focus on healing that intergenerational cycle by not passing on my ancestral wounds to my children.

It has taken three generations from my grandma to my mother then to me, for me to begin to recognize and face the intergenerational trauma that has haunted my family since our removal to Oklahoma in the 1840s. The battered squash forms represent my wounded matriarchal lineage, personifying the slow cycle of destruction and covering up of ancestral wounds that get passed down. The squash at the bottom of the cycle represents myself, the vessel is standing tall and confronting this flooding of generational wounds that has been passed down, but I am refusing to pass on.

The distressed cotton fiber is dyed with beets and red onion skins to represent bloodied wounds and a physical manifestation of trauma. The hue isn’t stable, meaning it will fade from a red blush into a warm magenta then finally after a few weeks into a soft sandy hue. This fading process of the fiber mirrors the subtle ways the body heals itself.