Lianes nantaises, detail, 1973

Sheila Hicks was born in Hasting, Nebraska, studied at Yale University with Josef Albers and spent years in Mexico where she collaborated with Luis Barragan and befriended Leonora Carrington. Her medium is wool and linen and she is showing over a hundred pieces at Centre Pompidou in the show called “Life lines”, until April 30.

La Sentinelle de safran is a monumental hill of wool balls, 2018

Exhibited in Galerie 3, the ground floor gallery at Centre Pompidou where you can see works from the street, Sheila Hicks has definitely found a public and in these times of school vacations, the room was filled with happy very young kids screaming at the red and pink wool columns. The artist was recognized very early on as a “textile artist”  where threads replace paint.

As early as 1963, when she had a show in La Jolla, California. But after touring Latin America, she decided to settle in Paris in the sixties, where she showed at the American center first and then at Grand Palais in “Douze ans d’art contemporain en France, 1960-1972” along César, Ben, Tinguely and Nikki de Saint Phalle, in 1972.,

Pêcher dans la rivière (fishing in the river)

In Nantes in 1973 she shows a hundred pieces at Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, these “lianas” hang down and cover the ground. She has been celebrated at MoMA and at the Whitney Biennale in 2014, the Hayward gallery in London in 2015 and more recently in the gardens of Musée Carnavalet and at Chaumont sur Loire.

Pris dans le même filet (caught in the same net), Minime, 2014

This exhibition curated by Michel Gauthier, is very diverse in colors and in sizes. While throughout the hall large lianas fall down on the left wall, hang a hundred little Minimes which show the detail of the threading. Most visitors were passionately looking at these. “Caught in the same net” shows two scizor shells interwoven in red wool. A souvenir from Brittany where the artists ahas often staid.

IM/SH Ouessant, 2016

The show is truly impressive and so novel in style. It is for all publics including seamstresses and young children. (Until April 30, Centre Pompidou)