Color. Theory. & (b/w)

The color red does not exist in Paris-based artist Sheila Hicks’ (b. 1934) work. In fact, neither do blue, green, or yellow. Yet, oxblood is there, as are teal, lime, and ochre. You may also find dusty rose, lavender, or honey, but never simply pink, purple, or gold. The artist’s skill for identifying the precise shade of orange (tangerine? amber?) that consumes the Seine River at sunset is not just about demonstrating her mastery of chromatic vocabulary. For Hicks, color is more than something your eye perceives. It is something you feel viscerally. It leaves an imprint. And it is evocative. Just like scent and sound—sensorial experiences that have the power to conjure a particular time and place—color, too, can elicit intense emotion.

Hicks’ training followed a traditional path, culminating in a Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious Yale University School of Art in the 1950s. Under the tutelage of German color theorist and artist Josef Albers, Hicks developed her aptitude for chromatics, while a friendship with renowned American architect Louis Kahn helped sharpen her eye to architectonic space. Hicks also began to explore textile during her time in New Haven, although she was not yet comfortable calling herself a “fiber artist,” a term that she still resists more than sixty years later. During extensive travels early in her career, Hicks was exposed to global weaving traditions and saw that perhaps her work did not need to be confined by the four sides of a painting stretcher. Her later large-scale projects for architectural sites would become the most resounding manifestations of this notion. With her many commissions over the last five decades, Hicks has consistently been guided by the principle of integration—she conceives installations with the understanding that site informs artwork as much as artwork defines and transforms site.

In recent years, Hicks has been collaborating with the textile company Sunbrella™ to produce raw material for her work. Known for their outdoor and marine fabrics, Sunbrella™ employs a process called solution dyeing. Rather than dipping pre-fabricated textiles into dyes, Sunbrella™ mixes pure pigment with liquid acrylic. Once dried and extruded, color and material become one or, as Hicks has suggested, the result is “color made manifest.” While discovering Sunbrella™ was thrilling for the artist, as with any new material, she had to be patient as she allowed its unique voice to emerge. Hicks explains:

At the beginning, you work with materials; you don’t know them very well, and try to get them to do what you think you want them to do. As time goes on, you understand the way to make them do what they want to do, but your way.

In its earliest state, Sunbrella™ fiber resembles vibrant cotton candy. Hicks’ first engagement with the material involved gathering it into great, cloud-like bales that, when piled high, destabilize the perceived solidity of the built environment. Continued experimentation revealed Sunbrella™’s strength and malleability, characteristics the artist exploits by having a fabricator wind the downy fiber into tight cords. Joined together in larger bundles, the cords retain the seeming lightness of a tapestry—that most-revered weaving tradition—while achieving the weight and stability associated with monumental sculpture. This dual personality resonates with Hicks’ long-held belief that the lines dividing media are disappearing vestiges of the art historical canon. She further resists these boundaries by liberating some of the cords from their bundles, creating loops and squiggles that call upon the language of line drawing.

Originally designed to surround a massive column at the front entrance of the Art Gallery of New South Wales during the 2016 Sydney Biennial, The Questioning Column has been installed in multiple venues, each time in direct response to the architectural realities of a given space. For the Tower Gallery, Hicks was moved by the elevation—the room’s most distinguishing feature—as well as the central skylight, which expands the already soaring space. Suspended from a ring twenty-two feet above the gallery floor, The Questioning Column coaxes the viewer to look up and continue looking—beyond the heavy I-beams, through the skylight, and past the museum’s roof plane. For Hicks, the simple act of gazing skyward is essential in our current historical moment. When life on Earth feels increasingly frantic and confounding with each passing day, considering the cosmos may be just what we need to feel grounded.

Essay by guest curator, Karin Campbell, Phil Willson Curator of Contemporary Art, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska