Press Release
Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor
JULY 12 – OCTOBER 15, 2006
" 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
Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor, the BGC’s first exhibition devoted
to a contemporary artist, examines the small woven and wrought works that
Hicks has produced for 50 years. With their distinctive colors, experimental
and natural materials, and personal narratives, these intriguing weavings
reveal the emergence and continuity of the artist’s inventive approach
to textile media, and a unique connection between the artistic and design
aspects of textiles.
The small woven forms are an essential means of creative expression for the
artist. In addition, they provide a format for mastering approaches to materials
and techniques that she then frequently applies to works of differing scales,
including monumental site-specific commissions for public spaces and handwoven
and industrially produced fabrics. Using a portable frame loom of her own
design, Hicks employs a remarkably broad range of materials, such as cotton,
wool, linen, silk, goat hair, alpaca, paper, leather, stainless steel, and
found objects. These woven works, of considerable beauty and intricate detail,
document and reveal Hicks’s artistic and personal journeys; they are
simultaneously essays in design, intimate recollections, aesthetic forays,
and tactile metaphors for language and human connection.
The Bard Graduate Center exhibition provides a unique opportunity to examine
the ways in which Hicks’s conceptual and technical ideas resonate in
the small format. They evoke the persistent necessity and meaning of creating
and designing with textiles by hand. In today’s global world, increasingly
dominated by technology, such an approach remains essential to the design
process even as it disappears. Nina Stritzler-Levine, director of exhibitions
at the Bard Graduate Center, is curator of the exhibition.
BACKGROUND
Sheila Hicks was born in Hastings, Nebraska, in 1934. She received B.F.A.
(1957) and M.F.A. (1959) degrees from Yale University, where she studied with
Bauhaus instructor Josef Albers, Swiss photographer Herbert Matter, and art
and architecture historian George Kubler, among others. In 1957–58 Hicks
traveled on a Fulbright painting scholarship through Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru,
Bolivia, and Chile. Since 1964 she has lived in Paris and maintained her studio
there. One of Hicks’s earliest and most important commissions was a
pair of tapestry bas-reliefs for the Ford Foundation in 1966. In 1967 she
participated in the Lausanne Biennale and contributed substantially to revolutionizing
and redefining tapestry art, moving it off the wall and into space. Her inclusion
in the Wall Hangings exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1969 solidified
her recognition as a leading figure in textile art. Today Hicks is sought
by architects and other patrons to execute “woven walls” that
bring a human element to government and corporate offices. Among her recent
commissions are two bas-reliefs for the U.S. Courthouse in Foley Square and
a monumental hanging for the Target corporate headquarters in Minneapolis.
EXHIBITION
Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor consists of approximately 150 works from
private and public collections in this country and abroad. The exhibition
is arranged both chronologically and thematically to reveal the metaphorical
and personal narratives, the diverse geographical areas where the weavings
were made, and the artist’s specific material and technical concerns.
Beginning with Hicks’s early years in Chile and Mexico, the exhibition
presents her initial experiments with the small format, using mainly cotton
and wool and pre-Columbian structures. This section includes the “hieroglyph”
works that were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, her first institutional
patron. After moving to Paris, she introduced so-called objets trouvés
and fabricated whimsical commentaries about her professional and family life.
The show continues by evoking the rich cultural diversity Hicks embraces in
her work, using materials found or created in locations such as India, the
Brittany coast, Morocco, Japan, and South Africa. The exhibition also considers
the artist’s fascinating technological innovations. Her stainless-steel,
fiber-slit tapestries, for example, emphasize the material’s aesthetic
potential and its strength and immutability. The exhibition also includes
the artist’s notebooks, drawings, photographs, and handmade loom.
CATALOGUE
Published by the Bard Graduate Center in conjunction with Yale University
Press, the catalogue includes three essays: Arthur C. Danto, Emeritus Johnsonian
Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, analyzes the metaphorical
uses Plato makes of weaving; Joan Simon, Curator-at-Large for the Whitney
Museum of American Art, examines the small format and its function as an essential
aspect of Hicks’s artistic production; and Nina Stritzler-Levine considers
the specific design connections between the weavings and the larger architectural
works. The catalogue also features entries by the artist about the individual
weavings, color photographs of all work in the exhibition, and photographs,
drawings, and sketches that document this unique artistic and design practice.
RELATED PROGRAMS
An array of lectures, panels, and other offerings will be presented in conjunction
with the exhibition. For further information, please call 212-501-3011 or
e-mail programs@bgc.bard.edu.
EXHIBITION TOURS
Group tours of the exhibition may be scheduled Tuesday through Friday between
11:15 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., and on Thursdays until 7:00 p.m. Reservations are
required for all groups. For further information, please call the Bard Graduate
Center Gallery at 212-501-3013 or TTY 212-501-3012, or e-mail gallery@bgc.bard.edu.
GENERAL INFORMATION
The Bard Graduate Center is located at 18 West 86th Street, between Central
Park West and Columbus Avenue, in New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday
through Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday from 11:00 a.m. to
8:00 p.m. Admission is $3 general, $2 seniors and students (with valid ID),
and free on Thursday evening after 5:00 p.m.
Support for Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor has been generously
provided by
Target and the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc., the Coby Foundation, Ltd., and anonymous donors.
For further information, please call 212-501-3000 or e-mail generalinfo@bgc.bard.edu.
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