Sheila Hicks was born in Hastings, Nebraska in 1934. She is an American artist. She lives and works in Paris, France. She is known for her innovative and experimental weavings and sculptural textile art that incorporate distinctive colors, natural materials, and personal narratives.
Sheila Hicks received BFA (1957) and MFA (1959) degrees in painting from the Yale School of Art. While at Yale School of Art in Connecticut (1954-1959), she studied with Josef Albers[6], Rico Lebrun, Bernard Chaet, George Kubler.
Her thesis on pre-Incaic textiles was supervised by archaeologist Junius Bird of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and artist Anni Albers. In 1959, Henri Peyre, the Sterling Professor of French Emeritus at Yale University, selected Hicks for a grant to study in France (1959–60), which enabled her to meet the pre-Columbian textile scholar and ethnologist Raoul D'Harcourt.
From 1959 to 1964 she resided and worked in Mexico where she began weaving, painting, and teaching at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and also met some Architects. Hicks' art ranges from the minuscule to the monumental. Her materials vary as much as the size and shape of her work.
Having begun her career as a painter, she has remained close to color, using it as a language she builds, weaves and wraps to create her pieces.She incorporates various materials into her "minimes", miniature weavings made on a wooden loom. These include pieces of slate, razor clam shells, shirt collars, collected sample skeins of embroidery threads, rubber bands and shoelaces.
Her temporary installations have incorporated thousands of hospital "girdles" – birth bands for newborns – baby shirts, blue nurses' blouses and khaki army shirts, as well as the wool sheets darned by Carmelite nuns. In 2007, the publication Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor, designed by Irma Boom was named "Most Beautiful Book in the World" at the Leipzig Book Fair.
Hicks' work can be found in private and public collections, including: Ford Foundation, NY, 1967. Georg Jensen Center for Advanced Design, NY. TWA terminal at JFK Airport, NY, 1973. In 2017 Hicks had a solo exhibition at Alison Jacques Gallery in Paris. Hicks also participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale, Viva Arte Viva, May 13 – November 26, 2017.