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.

Vol. 102, 2019: This volume starts with Candace experiencing the word “Rumplestiltskin” as it’s used on the TV show, The Closer, and in a podcast simultaneously. Also mentioned is the temperature required to burn a human body, bucket lists, and women sucking their thumbs (and the male novelists that write these fictional female characters). Mentioned: the Payne Lindsay podcast, Sex, Death and Money podcast, The Daily Show podcast, the novel Despair, and The Fall of Kelvin.

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.