Shashari Kiburi is a visual artist and educator working primarily in textiles. As a child she felt a deep connection to creating. Growing up in a sewing household, she sat by her mom’s sewing machine often, pulling the pins out of fabric as her mother made many of the clothes she and her siblings wore. While studying Anthropology at UC Berkeley, she had the opportunity to learn printmaking from painter Mary O’Neal. This work inspired a deep passion for abstract art and eventually led to using fiber as medium for storytelling. Shashari’s work in quilting came about when her children were young. It was a medium that she could fit into her busy life as a mother of four children. She was able to seamlessly apply her practice in drawing and photography with textiles. Drawing upon her ancestry she also dyes indigo fabrics as a foundation for her quiltmaking. Indigo puts her voice into each of the quilts and helps to close the gaps between her ancestors’ past and her present.

Originally from the Bay Area, she has shown her work at the Marin Museum of Contemporary art, the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, Ca, the Ontario Museum, the Monterey Museum, and Medicine for Nightmares in San Francisco. Her work was recently published in Patchwork Deutschland, a quarterly fiber arts magazine and she recently contributed to the Modern Quilt Guild’s education resource library. Shashari is currently completing an MFA at VCFA and she teaches ceramics in Sacramento where she lives with her four children. Follow her current creative work on Instagram @ulaludie.