Candace Hicks, Austin, Texas

Booklyn is thrilled to represent Candace Hicks' hand sewn books.

Common Threads, a series of ten (possibly more coming...) hand-embroidered canvas books, 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. Each book measures 7”x9”x1” and is 8 pages in length.

The inkjet edition of Common Threads is printed on lightweight cotton, and employs a printing process that has broken two inkjet printers. These copies-of-copies are huggable, smaller versions of the hand-embroidered originals. The look of the thread on canvas is reproduced with high-resolution scans. They measure 6”x7.5”x2”.

String Theory is a singular event (and a unique book) in the Common Threads series, it Hawkinsly goes where no seamstress bookmaker has gone before and currently exists in the collection of the Stanford University Art Library.

Biography
Formerly a house painter, bounty hunter, and au pair, Candace Hicks has spent most of her life in her home state of Texas (excepting three years in Paris…France, not Paris, Texas. She has never been to Paris, Texas, but she grew up in a small town named for another cultural seat: Athens, Texas!) She established a non-profit center for the arts in Athens, The Image Warehouse, in 2003. Trained as a print maker, she works primarily with books, but dabbles in video and installation.

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 trans-media hybrid.

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