My God, I needed to see Sheila Hicks’ exhibition at the Textile Museum. The day, the week, the month had been shitty and I craved respite. I needed the deliverance from daily stress I can sometime find in a gallery. I needed art that puts things in perspective, that takes the long view, that reveals my petty woes to be the insignificant hang-ups they are. What I didn’t need was criticality or textual analysis or lame and lazy art by lame and lazy artists who think their every poop is poetry. I wanted a heavy duty claim to beauty and big ideas and life experience and material mastery. I was hoping for something greater than me, something that would take me out of myself – but without any cheap tricks or deception, just the truth. 
Sheila Hicks, Predestined Color Wave I & II, 2015, linen
I must admit that a smidgen of Hick’s appeal lies in her biography: a young artist from Nebraska who studied at Yale in the late fifties, travelled to Chile and worked in Mexico before settling in Paris by the mid sixties to bring the craft skills she learned globe trotting to bear on the abstraction she absorbed from her colleagues at university. The authority of her work lies in those formative experiences, her fearless spirit, and the decades of monkish dedication to art reduced to its basics while still evoking a response. She found inspiration in the light and colour of landscape and created miniature weavings on a portable loom, but also works on large scale installations that run ceiling to floor. One portion of her creations cleaves close to geometry and the hard edges that are familiar when painted on canvas but have a subtly different result when made with string. Her wall-mounted rectangular frames strung with thread resemble abstractions by Gerhard Richter, but maintain an independence that frees them from the artist’s hand. They are held together by their own tension, but left open to the possibility of unravelling. In the remarkable fact of their existence is the gift of uncertainty. They are objects of wonder. 
Sheila Hicks, Grand Boules, 2009, linen, cotton, synthetic raffia, metallic fibre
On the flipside, Hicks allows for disorder and chaos in bundles that reminded me of Judith Scott’s sculptures at Oakville Galleries and provided an alternative salve to my woes. These hectic assemblages burst at the seams with colour and noise. They are energetic messes that replicate the ecstatic frenzy of the world out there, be it in the scramble to keep domestic order under control (some spheres were inspired by clothes compressed for the purpose of travel) and in the delirious rush of a busy marketplace. Held together in the moment in the gallery, they allow for the possibility of stillness. Pausing there that afternoon, I was thankful for the opportunity to breathe in the silence and take in the colours. (The Textile Museum is the perfect spot for this, by the way, nestled in the innards of a condo tower right in the heart of the city, because it insulates you from that awful world, at least for a time.) I am reminded that art has and might and maybe even can transcend the here and now to give us a glimpse of the infinite. And that experience can be edifying, not crushing. I’m not a religious man, but I have my moments of torment, so getting saved is something I willingly embrace.
The Textile Museum: https://www.textilemuseum.ca/home
Sheila Hicks: Material Voices continues until February 5.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Sheila Hicks at the Textile Museum
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