Texas Masters Series: Cindy Hickok

March 31 – June 17, 2007

Artist Talk with Cindy Hickok
Sunday, April 15, 2:00pm

Machine Embroidery Workshop
with Cindy Hickok
Saturday, April 28, 10:00am – 4:00pm

The Texas Masters Series was created by HCCC to celebrate Texas artists who have earned significant national or international acclaim and deserve to be recognized by their local communities. In the case of Houstonian Cindy Hickok, that local recognition is long overdue.

Hickok is an internationally acclaimed fiber artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Europe, Asia, and North America—including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She creates narrative art in thread and portrays what she sees and hears with her tongue planted firmly in cheek. Her subjects are diverse, ranging from women’s issues to daily frustrations to news events and beyond.

In the Texas Masters Series exhibition, Cindy Hickok ingeniously borrows from the “Old Masters” to guide viewers through an amusing and delightful tour of art history. The focus of the show is the Culinary Art Series, which Hickok describes as “an imaginary museum visit at lunchtime, when works of art inspire thoughts of food.” In 22 small-scale pieces created over a span of four years, Hickok pokes lighthearted fun at herself and master works such as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Manet’s Olympia and Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by fancifully pairing classic subjects with contemporary comfort foods. The warm, tactile quality of the thread and tiny stitches in Hickok’s work reveal her passion for detail and storytelling. The subjects reveal her wicked sense of humor.

Hickok works entirely at a freehand sewing machine, stitching detailed works that draw the viewer in for closer examination. She renders incredibly precise images using her needle as a paintbrush and thread as paint. Each figure in her pieces takes between two and four hours to complete. Hickok’s career began in mosaic, where she learned to place two colors next to each other to allow the viewer’s eye to blend them. In fiber art, she continues this practice by using many colors of thread, adjusting the lightness or darkness by using contrasting bobbin colors.

To commemorate this special exhibition, HCCC has created a DVD catalog that includes all of the works in the show and an interview with Cindy Hickok. The DVD is currently available for sale in the Craft Center’s Asher Gallery.