USA

Sheila Hicks was born in Hastings, Nebraska and received her BFA and MFA degrees from Yale University. She received a Fulbright scholarship in 1957-58 to paint in Chile. While in South America she developed her interest in working with fibers. After founding workshops in Mexico, Chile, and South Africa, and working in Morocco and India, she now divides her time between her Paris studio and New York.

In many ways, Sheila Hicks’s work is about raveling and unraveling. In both a material and conceptual sense, she constantly challenges the possibilities of what fiber can be and how it can be perceived.  Whether natural cotton or high tech threads, multi-colored or monochrome, her free-standing sculptures, wall-hangings and works on paper transcend categories of art, design, or craft, letting her be at once, painter, sculptor, weaver, colorist, and poet.

Sheila Hicks makes work that is highly sensory, often with the intention that it be touched or walked through, and this once again challenges the status of what art in a museum or gallery context can be. Atterrissage, 2014 begs to be brushed up against and even sat upon if we dare. Long twisted, colorful cords tumble from above, landing on the floor in a puff of colorful, fiber clouds. The title is a French word referring to the landing of an airplane and there is a strong sense of movement in this piece that visually anchors the exhibition space, drawing our eye up and across the room.

Several of the works in the exhibition exude a spiritual, if not a shaman-like presence. There is a powerful sense of connection within Sheila Hicks’s body of work. A certain color, a piece of yarn or textile, a memory or a souvenir from a trip all feed into the relationships between the small, spontaneous gestures, or the large-scale architectural installations. For many, Sheila Hicks is herself a mythic being. A force of inspiration and creativity and as Unknown Data coincides with her 80th birthday it seems all the more important to mark her singular career as artist, designer, and visionary.