Sheila Hicks

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Sheila Hicks

• Sheila Hicks is an internationally recognized
  artist. She was born in Hastings, Nebraska and
  received her BFA and MFA degrees from Yale
  University. Upon completing her studies at Yale
  Hicks received a Fulbright scholarship in 1957 to
  paint in Chile.

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• While studying painting under the Bauhaus
  professor Josef Albers, but when a pre-Columbian
  textile course captured her attention, he took
  her home to meet his wife, Anni, a noted weaver.
  At his suggestion, she applied for a Fulbright
  scholarship to South America and spent the first
  few years of her weaving life journeying through
  Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Chile, and back
  north to Mexico. It was in Chile where she began
  her passion for working with fibers. In India she
  worked in a handloom factory producing commercial
  textiles.

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• Since then, Hicks has founded several production
  facilities which use traditional methods in
  Mexico, Chile and South Africa and has set up a
  studio in Paris, the Ateliers des Grand
  Augustins. She divides her time between Paris and
  New York while teaching and working worldwide.
  Over the past fifty years, she has produced a
  number of large art commissions
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vSTX5tdW6A4ofeature
  related

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Sheila Hicks, Saint-Jean-de-Dieu. 1973.
Wrapping of linen with cotton and silk, 5 x
63.
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Sheila Hicks The Silk Rainforest ca. 1975 silk,
linen, and cotton 96 x 270 x 3 in. (243.8 x 685.8
x 7.6 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum
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Sheila Hicks. Macro-Tissage. 1974. White linen
9 x 9
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• Although she is best known for her role in the
  international fiber revolution that transformed
  textiles into a 3D art during the 1960s and 1970s
  Sheila Hicks contribution extends far beyond
  that historical moment. The book, Weaving as a
  Metaphor, examines a singular aspect of her
  practice, situating her small weavings in the
  context of philosophy and of contemporary art and
  design, explain the authors in the books
  foreword. With their distinctive colors,
  thoughtful compositions and narrative, Hicks
  miniature creations reveal the emergence and
  continuity of the artists approach to her work.

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• For 50 years Ms. Hicks has taken a small wooden
  frame around the globe to create notebook size
  weavings of the intimate kind. These pieces
  started when she was an art student at Yale. By
  her own estimate she has made more than 1000 of
  them. Ms. Hicks has referred to the miniatures as
  personal expressions, private investigations
  and also to lighten matters, ramblings. These
  pieces have informed her conceptual ideas,
  material explorations and large scale
  commissions. Sheila Hicks, 2004

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Rue des Marronniers, Made in Paris, 1973Alpaca
and Silk, Collection of Monique Levi-Strauss

• "I found my voice and my footing in my small
  work. It enabled me to build bridges between art,
  design, architecture, and decorative arts." -
  Sheila Hicks

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What at first glance appears to be a simple woven
sample, is anything but. There a number of
different weaving strategies and scales at work
in these misleadingly small pieces.

• Sheila Hicks Cicatrices 1968
• Silk, mohair

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Much of her work deals with weaving inspiration
that she has accrued from a number of different
cultures around the world. This does not mean
that she merely copies the traditional work of
these cultures. She uses the style and
construction of a particular culture as a
starting point in which to pursue her own
individual and personally creative work.

• Sheila Hicks Olympic Bravery 1979

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• Grand Portal
• Cotton, Linen SIZE  h 9.5 x w 8.5 in / h
  24.1 x w 21.6 cm 1945-present) Made in morocco
  1972

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• Nina Nina,
• Made in Cour de Rohan, Paris, 2005Cotton and Wool

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• In Weaving as a Medaphor, Arthur Danto discusses
  the kingly art of weaving and what one might
  call the art of justice, as discussed by Plato in
  The Republic, there aim was to find what kind of
  virtue justice was harmonizing the other virtues
  in the interest of producing unity.

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Now we have reached the appointed end of weaving
of the web of the state. It is fashioned by the
statesman's weaving the strand run true, and
these strands are the genital and the brave. Here
these strands are woven into a unified character.
For this unity is won where the kingly art draws
the life or both types into a true fellowship by
mutual concord and by ties of friendship. It is
the finest and best fabric.

• Sheila Hicks, Phare dAcier
• Made in Brittany, France 2003
• Linen, cotton , stainless steel

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• Linen Lean-To', Sheila Hicks, tapestry
  bas-relief, 196768.The artist conceived the work
  in 196768 after a winter trip to Normandy,
  France, where she saw houses with snow piled high
  on the roofs. She successfully re-creates the
  effect of this compelling sight with a totally
  unsuspected material.

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• Sheila Hicks was one of the early artist to
  introduce the idea of using masses of clothing to
  stand in for human counter parts. Hicks laid out
  her work in in an orderly configuration creating
  a social wall of cloth, a social commentary. The
  unit of cloth are her building block, the
  commonality of the human experience.

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Shelia Hicks, Street Environment, 1978.
Montreuil, France, Shirts and rope.

• Hicks began her environments installations in
  1974 using mended sheets and darned socks.
• Hicks used emotional charged, ready-made items of
  daily use hospital gowns, cotton army shirts,
  old womens blouses.
• She used recycled material to suggest recycled
  lives.

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Shelia Hicks with Khaki Uniforms Immobilized
(United States, Europe, and Middle East),
1985-86. Cotton army shirts, 252 x252. Installed
at the Milwaukee art Museum, Wisconsin. These
uniforms suggest the ordered world of
multinational forces- or the world made orderly
by multinational forces.
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The Four Seasons of Fuji 1999Fuji City
Cultural Center, Japan2.60 x 103 meters, five
tons of linen thread
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• Known for her use of distinctive colors,
  experimental and natural materials, and personal
  narratives, these intriguing weavings reveal the
  emergence and continuity of the artists
  inventive approach to textile media, and aunique
  connection between the artistic and design
  aspects of textiles. Her work is diverse,
  switching between miniatures and gigantic. Using
  a portable frame loom of her own design, Hicks
  employs a remarkably broad range of materials as
  well, such as cotton, wool, linen, silk, goat
  hair, alpaca, paper, leather, stainless steel,
  and found objects. All of which she turns into
  woven works of considerable beauty and intricate
  detail.

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