Sheila Hicks

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'Linen Lean-to', linen work by Sheila Hicks, 1967-1968, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sheila Hicks is an American fiber artist (born in Hastings, Nebraska in 1934) who presents textile art as an experience situated between sculpture and performance.

From 1954 to 1959 she studied at Yale University, New Haven under Josef Albers and Rico Lebrun. Her first interest was in Pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles and traditional techniques of Mexican hand-weaving, which inspired her miniature woven pieces of the early 1960s. Towards the mid-1960s she studied a variety of industrial methods to enlarge the scale of her productions; heavy, woven fabrics were embedded with cotton to add sculptural density. Since 1963 she lives and works in Paris, New York and Tokyo .

Her works are in the permanent collections of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Nebraska Art, the Museo de Bellas Artes, Chile, and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Nantes.