Candace Hicks

Common Threads: One Reader’s Observations of Literary Coincidence (series)

Candace Hicks

Common Threads: One Reader’s Observations of Literary Coincidence (series)

Date

2017

Media

Embroidery

Binding

Hand-sewn

Collection

Related

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Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Chapman University

Colorado College

Dartmouth College, Rauner Library

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Franklin and Marshall College

Grinnell College

Hampshire College

Harvard University, Fine Arts Library

Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MASSART)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries

Middlebury College

Multnomah County Public Library

New York University (NYU)

Northwestern University

Oberlin College

Ohio University

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)

Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD)

School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts

St. Lawrence University

St. Olaf College

Stanford University

Swarthmore College

Temple University

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

The Ohio State University (OSU)

The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State)

The University of Iowa (UI)

University of Applied Arts, Vienna

University of California, Irvine (UCI)

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library

University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC)

University of Central Florida (UCF)

University of Colorado at Boulder

University of Connecticut (UCONN)

University of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art

University of Miami

University of Michigan, Special Collections

University of Pennsylvania (UPENN)

University of Pittsburgh

University of Vermont

University of Virginia (UVA)

University of Washington Libraries

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Special Collections

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)

Wesleyan University, Olin Library

Yale University, Beinecke Library

Common Threads is a series of hand-embroidered unique canvas books which copy the form and design of dime-store “composition” books.  The books themselves, self-consciously hand-made objects, are a record of coincidental occurrences generally gleaned from reading or mundane events.  The use of embroidery thread allows for the production of the text and image with the same mark and material, to make the text, image, and substance of the book inseparable.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT—Storytelling is key to Candace Hicks’ artistic practice. There is an implied narrative in everything, even, as Hicks addresses with her work, in the seemingly pointless mental wheel spinning that is a part of daily life.  Her work acknowledges the unavoidability of simulation and the impossibility of originality.  Her choice of the book as a principle medium is due to the phenomenon of the book as authoritative.  Books provide an arena in which fiction can be accepted as fact and observations can take on a mythic narrative quality.  Her interest in books also stems from their inherent unity of text and image, which lends books continued relevance as a transmedia hybrid.

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