A walk with Sheila Hicks

A note as meandering as our wander around Saint Germain...

I’ve recently realized that texture has rippled like a current through my undergraduate studies (AIDS quilt and feminist subversive craft) and graduate research (Janine Antoni and 19th century models of sociality like hair works). The current has taken different names in my research including empathy, hauntedness, sentimentality, and probing tactile representations of presence and absence.

In my next letter, I will tell you more about how my thinking has evolved and why. For now, I want to share an encounter I had last May with the iconic, prolific fiber artist, Sheila Hicks, who was 90 years old at the time of my visit. I’ve turned over our conversation in my mind so much that it has become a smooth stone.

I was able to visit Sheila in Paris—and then later hop a Eurostar to London—due to a special research grant afforded to assistant and associate level staff who work within MoMA’s Curatorial Affairs departments. (I have worked in Learning & Engagement for four years this coming June.) I had designed a trip as a tour of textures—in textiles, mended garments, and sculpture.

I landed in Paris on May 20, and went straight to my hotel to make my arrangements for my studio visit with Sheila. Here, I will hit fast-forward on my arduous process of realizing that the phone number I had for her atelier was a landline, and that French phone numbers have 10 digits, with the first being a zero. I will also spare you a detailed account of trying to enter Sheila’s compound through the wrong gate.

When I eventually walked into the studio, it was pleasantly crowded with work.

A series of large roundels wound with thread and felt were waiting to be shipped to the St. Louis opera house. High shelves held stacks of spooled thread, and smaller framed works. Her assistants were working on a piece for Art Basel—winding bundles of thread around two pegs set at the length of the long wooden table, then carefully wrapping segments of the bundle with different colored threads. (I would later learn that this technique is called whipping.) They worked horizontally, but the bundles were hung vertically at Sheila’s specific direction.

Sheila invited me to peruse a couple fashion magazines before her assistant Louise supplied me with catalogues of Sheila’s work. I was then invited to participate in what seemed to be a daily ritual: sharing small cups of a lovely strong mint tea.

Sheila had handed me a card to write down my information, and another card to write down my questions. I eked out two: how long have you been in this studio space? How many studio assistants do you have? But before long our conversation really began. Having clarified that I was from MoMA, Sheila first asked what I did. I said that I oversee the Museum’s online courses; “Show me” she replied. I quickly learned Sheila is a direct person and over the course of the rest of the evening, I also found her incredibly kind and generous. (I also think my jet lag worked in my favor as some of my pauses or silences as I cast about for my next question encouraged her to elaborate.)

As her assistants prepared to leave, Sheila proposed a 15 minute neighborhood walk. I said that sounded lovely! We stepped out the door I had (mistakenly) come in and paused to observe the cafe across the way that had some related French Revolution/guillotine history—she noted the sign, the windows, the people sitting at the tables outside.

We then took a right through a short arcade.

First we stopped in the stationary store, where Sheila took her time paging through various books and chatting with the shopkeeper. Exiting the arcade, we crossed the street and she insisted we poke our heads into a pocket of a bookstore. We next looked in at a glasses and watches store, followed by a little deli-style takeaway shop and then a bakery whose cookies she said were good. She bought us two to eat! As we exited, biting off bits of our cookies, we ran into a couple friends of Sheila’s—she introduced me as being from out of town and one of the friends offered to show us her gallery that had just opened.

From there, we wandered over to what would have been her second studio-apartment in Paris. She’s lived in the neighborhood since 1964, and in three different spots. She said she found her current building en route to the post office. From the courtyard of this second studio we looked up at her former apartment, which she said offered a bounty of natural light.

We next stopped at a clothing store and we both appreciated the different textures in a pair of striped pants. I privately noticed the way the thread created a slight rippling effect in the fabric. We soon passed Picasso’s studio, which was under restoration. A little way down the block, we went into a Japanese shop that had truly beautiful things, including an example of Boro pants, that had a similar texture to the striped pants we had just seen.

Through all this, I wondered if Sheila was really interested in showing me her neighborhood or if she wasn’t sure how to entertain me. I think it was probably a little of both! But it must have seemed to her a good enough time because as we rounded the corner and her arcade was in sight—“See how we’ve walked a circle!”—she asked if I was planning to get dinner. I demurred, saying I would probably return to my hotel before going back out again. “Well why don’t we get a drink”–I acquiesced.

This is where our conversation took another, deeper turn.

Service was a little slow and Sheila flagged down a waiter to place an order of a Negroni and a glass of rose (for me). We discussed shared acquaintances and we talked a bit more about MoMA.

She then asked me to tell her more about the other stops on my Paris itinerary. I said I would be going to the Gobelins Manufactory the next day to see the tapestry and carpet weavers’ workshops. She recalled doing a project with them for Air France and the order became so large that they ended up going to the Carmelite nuns to complete the job. She noted that MoMA has one of the tapestries; I later realized it’s the sole surviving section.

I explained that my trip was dedicated to researching and thinking about textures, in particular textures that tell you how something has been made. Sheila said that texture and textiles would seem to be the obvious connection, I should really study more comprehensive interior design schemes. I said I would be going to the Emery Walker House in London and was interested in pattern—but she said pattern and texture are not equal. She also noted that the Gobelins wouldn’t be a very textured experience, unless you look at the back of the tapestries where the mass of thread ends are gathered, this is what had frustrated her about the Air France commission. She observed that our whole window shopping journey was one of textures—we both were drawn to objects that had some kind of texture. This meaning making surprised me, and she was right.

I said I was also really interested in the psychological, emotional, and affectual dimensions of texture–things you can feel without feeling, but also things more ephemeral like conversation. She mentioned a show she had experienced at the Pompidou in which visitors were blindfolded. To illustrate her points about the dimensions of touch she briefly touched my arm, and let her arms float out, almost touching the people on either side of her.

Towards the end of our conversation I confessed that I had started weaving on varying sizes of frame looms using yarn from my mom’s knitting projects. She told me I had to use linen thread and told me to come to her studio the next day to get some as they were getting a shipment the next day. I initially demurred, but she insisted so I said I would call her at lunchtime.

The next day, touring tapestry and carpetmaking workshops at Gobelins, I did have a chance to see the reverse of a tapestry in progress.

I saw what Sheila meant in terms of a literal, perceivable texture that contrasted the tidy weave of the design. I found I was more captivated by the makers’ brisk, fluid knotmaking and batting movements—as smooth and clipped as the textiles they produced. Their gestures mirrored those of Sheila’s assistants I had observed carefully bundling threads into segments like tying off a ponytail. The stretched threads and precisely wrapped sections required their understanding of tension, for their vision of the bundles hanging lengthwise. To me, this sense gave the piece a texture of intelligent precision. A texture with knowledge of its making.

As an epilogue: I returned the following day and made a ball from three spools in Sheila’s studio—their sandy color somewhat coordinated with my skirt and sweater, she observed. I made two paper sized weavings and three mini, pocket sized weavings that hold sacred space in my bedroom.