ARTIST STATEMENT

Growing up as the youngest of four sisters in a chaotic household, hair always held significance. I noticed the ways my family navigated our genetic inheritance, often blaming mental health struggles and addiction on the color of our hair. These early dynamics and inherited superstitions led me to further examine societal and familial pressures surrounding femininity, identity, and the body. Hair carries deep cultural and historical meaning across societies, functioning as a marker of gender, class, sexuality, religion, and lineage. For women in particular, it becomes tied to expectations of beauty, desirability, control, and social value, while also acting as a physical record of memory and our genetic makeup.

Within my work, I transform the female body into furniture through the representation of hair as a symbol of inheritance. I examine how relationships reinforce rigid expectations of the female body as a site of labor, fecundity, and endurance. The familiarity and stagnant nature of furniture further situate the work within cycles of class, poverty, and generational trauma. In my paintings, hair functions as a recurring metaphor for these pressures. Figures are rendered in bold color and expressive brushwork, often balancing between abstraction and representation. Through these distorted domestic forms, I investigate how inherited narratives become embedded within both the body and the objects we inhabit.

BIOGRAPHY

Cascade Howe (b. 2001, Portland, OR) is an artist based in Savannah, GA. Working across painting, drawing, and sculpture, she explores rigid expectations surrounding the female body through figurative and material investigations of intimacy, vulnerability, and perception.

Her work has been exhibited in Live Wire at Camelon Gallery, the Fine Art Showcase at Alexander Gallery, and Les Nocturnes Light Projection in Lacoste. Howe will receive her BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2026.