Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This intriguing book examines the small woven and wrought works artist Sheila Hicks has produced for the past fifty years. With their distinctive colors, thoughtful compositions, and narrative, these miniature creations reveal the emergence and continuity of the artist's approach to her work. Internationally recognized for her mastery of a textile vocabulary of extremely different scales--sculpture, tapestry, site specific commissions for public spaces, environments of recuperated clothing and uniforms, and more--Hicks has thoughtfully crafted miniatures throughout her nomadic career. The palm-sized works present a record of her remarkable and personal journeys.
Focusing on some one hundred miniatures from public and private collections, the book demonstrates the breadth of Hicks's concerns: her persistent inquiry into the mysteries of color, her playful yet reverential subversions of weaving traditions, her surprising range of materials, and her exploration of new technology. From initial experiments based on pre-Columbian weaving structures to a 2005 sculptural project using ninety colors of synthetic filaments, these small works offer a unique opportunity to access and examine the artist's conceptual and technical forays. The volume includes informative essays by Arthur C. Danto, Joan Simon, and Nina Stritzler-Levine as well as illustrations of the artist's working tools, related drawings, photographs, and chronology.



Published in association with the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture

Exhibition Schedule:

Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (July 13 - October 8, 2006)

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. 9)
• Sponsor's Foreword (p. 15)
• Introduction (p. 17)
• 1 Weaving as Metaphor (p. 22)
• 2 Frames of Reference (p. 40)
• 3 Catalogue of the Exhibition (p. 78)
• 4 A Design Identity (p. 344)
• Notes to the Text (p. 384)
• Chronology (p. 390)
• Selected Exhibition History (p. 391)
• Selected Bibliography (p. 394)
• Checklist of the Exhibition (p. 402)
• Illustrated Checklist of the Exhibition (p. 412)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Hicks, an artist of international stature, had a role in the 1960s groundbreaking movement that brought three-dimensional form to textile art. Here, Stritzler-Levine, curator at the Bard Graduate Center, documents 195 small pieces from the artist's oeuvre over the past 40 years, gathered from private and museum collections in the US and Europe. The small pieces (12 x 10 inches on average), woven on a frame, are unique, expressive, and pieces of art in their own right, but they have also served as seeds for industrially produced interior fabrics or for Hicks's large-scale commissioned pieces for corporate and public spaces. Stritzler-Levine's thoroughly researched essay lucidly discusses Hicks's identity as an artist, craftsperson, and designer in light of the small works and the material and conceptual exploration they reflect. The annotated volume that serves as a catalog for the exhibition includes high-quality color plates of the pieces with scholarly and descriptive entries, period photographs, chronology, exhibition history, bibliography, and a checklist of the exhibition. This beautifully designed and edited book will interest laypersons and art and design professionals alike. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through professionals. M. Tulokas Rhode Island School of Design

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Nina Stritzler-Levine , curator of the exhibition that accompanies this publication, is director of exhibitions and executive editor of exhibition catalogues at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture.