Artwork Details
- Title
- The Principal Wife Goes On
- Artist
- Date
- 1969
- Location
- Dimensions
- part A: 185 1⁄4 x 19 x 4 in. (470.5 x 48.2 x 10.1 cm) part B: 187 1⁄4 x 9 1⁄4 x 3 1⁄8 in. (475.6 x 23.5 x 8 cm) part C: 186 x 11 1⁄8 x 3 5⁄8 in. (472.5 x 28.3 x 9.3 cm) part D: 184 7⁄8 x 9 7⁄8 x 3 7⁄8 in. (469.6 x 25 x 10 cm) part E: 185 5⁄8 x 10 x 3 5⁄8 in. (471.4 x 25.4 x 9.3 cm) part F: 189 5⁄8 x 10 1⁄8 x 4 1⁄4 in. (481.7 x 25.7 x 10.8 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- linen, silk, wool and synthetic fibers
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Abstract
- Object Number
- 1977.118.2A-F
Artwork Description
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.
Verbal Description
Fibrous cords drape over a twenty-inch-wide rod to create the suggestion of a waterfall, which cascades fifteen feet down and pools on the floor. The other side hangs three quarters of the way down. Stone-gray threads bunch together to create the cords or skeins, which vary in thickness and texture. They seem coarse, almost like horsehair. In some spots the cords are slick and taut, and in others they are loose and billowing. Sections of brightly colored and tightly wound thread bind together each cord at irregular intervals. These vary in length and range in color, from firetruck and wine red to bright lemon yellow, burnt orange, loud magenta, pearl white, bright gold, and flowery pink. The ends of the cords have been left unbound; they spread out in fanlike sprays of thread.
Exhibitions
