Sheila Hicks, born in 1934 in Nebraska, is a groundbreaking artist who has redefined textile art. Blending weaving, sculpture, and installation, she explores the expressive potential of fiber. Her works - vivid, tactile, and often monumental - challenge the traditional divide between craft and fine art.
Left: Portrait of Sheila Hicks Right: The Right of Entry, 2014-15
Trained under Josef Albers at Yale, Hicks developed a strong sense of color, structure, and abstraction. Her global travels, especially in Latin America and the Middle East, exposed her to indigenous weaving techniques, which deeply inform her process. With this traditional knowledge and skill, Hicks has built a unique visual language based on experimentation and materiality.
Infinite Potential, 2023
A core element of her practice is the “minimes” - small woven studies she’s made continuously for decades. These intimate pieces act as visual diaries, idea sketches, or finished works in their own right. From them, she often develops her large-scale installations, which transform entire museum spaces through cascading cords, wrapped bundles, and soft towers of color and texture.
Left: Twenty Years is Nothing, 1998 Right: Atterrissage, 2014
What really sets Hicks apart is her sensitivity to materials. She works with everything from silk and wool to bamboo, rubber bands, and found objects. Her handling of fiber is intuitive but intentional - responding to tension, density, light, and gravity. Consequently her art skillfully balances softness with structure, and tradition with innovation.
Left: Untitled, circa 1970 Right: Mirage in the Oasis, 2023
Hicks’s oeuvre is not only visually captivating but also deeply sensorial - inviting touch, evoking memory, and transforming architectural environments. Her decades-long dedication to fiber as an expressive medium has elevated textile-based art within contemporary discourse, establishing her as one of the most influential artists of her time.