High Fiber

edited by Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

As a fiber sculptor, Sheila Hicks spends life up to her elbows in yarn. Even when she leaves her Paris studio, she packs a travel-size loom to weave miniature prototypes while on the road. Together, they make up a "kind of sketchbook or personal diary," says Nina Stritzler-Levine, curator at New York's Bard Graduate Center. Stritzler-Levine has now assembled 180 of the wovens—9 to 51 inches in length—from museums and private collections. "Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor" pairs those pieces with a handful of her small sculptures made from shoelaces, newspaper, and Chinese noodles among other materials.

Educated at Yale University under Josef Albers, Hicks likes to juxtapose pink, soft blue, fuchsia, yellow, and green. She also mixes mediums, employing not only cotton, linen, and wool yarn but also steel filaments. And although she sees herself primarily as an artist, she says that the miniatures "build bridges between design, architecture, and the decorative arts." The Bard show includes four swatches for her cushions for Eero Saarinen's Tulip chair; she also consulted for Knoll, the chair's manufacturer, on color palettes. July 12–October 15; 212-501-3000; bgc.bard.edu.