Sheila Hicks (born 1934 in Nebraska, lives in Paris) is an American artist and a pioneering figure in fibre art. Working across six decades, she expanded the scale and ambition of textile art from small hand woven works to monumental hangings.
"Hicks has lived in Paris since 1964, always on the Left Bank. Leaving the studio we stroll around the neighbourhood while she points out former homes and studios, reflecting on how the steets have changed – or not changed. Compared to most major cities, Paris is a museum. It’s as if Baron Haussmann’s sweeping makeover in the late 19th century exhausted the Parisians’ appetite for urban renovation.
For Hicks, who was born in Hastings, Nebraska, and spent her childhood roaming around the mid-west, Paris is her ideal city. it’s long been the only place she ever wanted to live, although in 1959 she had thought to settle in Mexico, where she married a beekeeper and worked on a farm. It was an impulsive union, and after five years the rural idyll had lost its appeal. She took her infant daughter – “kidnapped” is her word – fled to Paris and has never left. A second marriage followed, to Enrique Zanartu, a Chilean painter born in France. Her son, Cristobal, who does much of her photography was born in 1965."
"The stories of Hicks’s early life have been told many times: how she became one of the few women admitted to the Yale School of Art in 1954, on the authority of Josef Albers, the renowned colour theorist of the Bauhaus, who had migrated to America.
“I met Albers when I was a student at Syracuse University and had to change schools,” she recalls. “A fellow student said she was going to apply for Yale, for both of us, and asked me to give her something she could carry. She went and interviewed, and Albers accepted us. When he saw my painting, he said: “Take her on and give her advanced standing.” He was very sure of himself. When he made pronouncements, everyone knew that was the way it was going to be. Later on he would send me to Chile in the same commanding fashion.”
