The Artist:
Shayna Sutton is a Texas-based multidisciplinary artist, mother, and veteran. She earned her BFA from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2023. Art has always been an outlet for her, a way to build her own world and play like the little Black girl she once was, with her coke bottle glasses and big imagination. Through her work, Sutton creates not only for herself, but for people who look like her, and for anyone who can see themselves reflected in what she creates.
Artist Statement:
My art begins with my hands and with the women who taught me how to create something from almost nothing. I grew up in the South, where stories were shared in the kitchen, hair was braided between knees, and beauty was found in what we could piece together. From an early age, I learned that creativity was not separate from survival. It was how we remembered, endured, and loved.
I am inspired by memory, and everyday objects that carry history. My work preserves the stories I come from and honors the resourcefulness I witnessed growing up. Black hair is central to my practice. It is versatile, carrying history, rituals, identity, and imagination. It defies gravity and expectation, holding both personal and collective stories.
Through sculptures, installations, photography, and hairstyling, I explore womanhood and girlhood, nostalgia, and play. I examine beauty standards, motherhood, Southern heritage, spirituality, and liberation, creating spaces where memory and creativity coexist and the ordinary becomes extraordinary.