Taxco, ca. 1970s

Wool, cotton, and metallic thread
© Sheila Hicks. Photo by Ian Reeves.

Describing herself as “thread conscious” from an early age, Sheila Hicks is well known for working with textiles. Her innovative approach to materials placed her at the center of the burgeoning fiber art movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1959 she moved to rural Mexico, where she set up a weaving studio in Taxco el Viejo, Guerrero, and forged relationships with local craftspeople. Produced in the 1970s and titled after Hicks’s hometown of the time, this example was fabricated from wool and cotton, materials readily available in Mexico, and dyed a deep, electric blue; tight wrappings of red thread in a few dozen places pulsate against the blue, illustrating the importance of color to the artist. Irresistibly tactile, the work expresses Hicks’s fundamental philosophy: “Hands, eyes, brain: it’s the magic triangulation.”