Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

For our latest “site-specific” episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer meets Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, where she has called home for more than 60 years. The 91-year-old Nebraska-born artist—widely known for her vibrant, sculptural textile and fiber works—resists any firm classification of what she does, as her multifarious output reflects. Currently, Hicks’s work is on view in a solo exhibition at SFMOMA through Aug. 9, and a two-person exhibition, “Material Matters: Sheila Hicks & Shi Hui,” at Shanghai’s West Bund Museum through Aug. 2. Last year, Knoll Textiles reissued her classic Altiplano collection from 1966 in an updated palette, and a major Milan retrospective, her first in Italy, will open on Nov. 16 at the Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea.

On the episode, Hicks discusses her lifelong relationship with textiles, weaving, and perception through materials and environments; her formative travels in South America, Morocco, India, and Japan; and how chance encounters can shape one’s life.

Show notes: 

Sheila Hicks

[0:44] Cour de Rohan

[3:04] Altiplano (1966) for Knoll Textiles

[08:15] Edward Steichen

[14:40] Josef Albers

[13:19] Yohji Yamamoto

[17:13] George Kubler

[17:34] Trevor Paglen

[26:15] Ford Foundation

[26:15] Darren Walker

[30:18] Raoul d’Harcourt

[34:43] Rue de Seine

[34:50] May Day

[38:41] Jantar Mantar

[52:03] Florence Knoll

[55:00] Cristobal Zañartu

[55:00] Opening the Archives

[55:00] Hanging by a Thread

[59:12] “Calder: Rêver en équilibre”

[1:00:16] Monique Lévi-Strauss

[1:02:30] Thaddeus Mosley

Pierre Horay