The Principal Wife Goes On

It would be ideal if you can just become conscious of how the environment nourishes you and to find your own way with your own voice, your own material, and your own method of speaking.

--Sheila Hicks

The Principal Wife Goes On is one of the artist's earliest modular "ponytail" works. It comprises eleven ponytails--coils of wrapped and grafted threads--that can be arranged for installation in response to the surrounding environment. Here, Sheila Hicks shows off the boundless possibilities of threads. The title alludes to her experience at rug workshops in Morocco, working with women who were engaged in polygamous marriages, in which multiple wives navigate complex relationships with one man.

Hicks's curiosity for the world has led her across the globe. As a child in Hastings, Nebraska, she learned needle arts from her mother and grandmother. When she began studying painting at Yale University, a lecture on Peruvian textiles piqued her interest in weaving. On a Fulbright award in 1957 and 1958, she studied Andean weaving in Chile. She then established a workshop in Mexico in the late 1950s, where she began to shape her weavings into sculptures. Her continued exploration of color and texture were fueled by trips to South America, North Africa, Asia, and her eventual home in Paris.