Everything Changes
Pat Hickman

Buster Levi Gallery is pleased to present Everything Changes, works by Pat Hickman at 121 Main Street in Cold Spring, New York. The exhibition will run from May 3 through June 2, 2019.  The opening for the show will be on Friday May 3, 2019 from 6-8:30 pm.

Pat Hickman is an artist working in the Fiber medium. This exhibition consists of new and older work, some of which has never been shown in New York. Although she trained in traditional textile techniques, she thinks of fiber as “long linear elements used sometimes as structure, other times as skin”.  She works with materials that seem appropriate for the ideas she is expressing.

“Everything Changes” has multiple meanings for Hickman. She responds to what is going on around her, both inside and outside, to the times in which we live.  Her artwork draws on her environment and makes reference to place. All these things change. We move. We experience loss. We start over. Hickman says, “I take a natural plant material, like a palm sheath, patch and mend it so it appears to be an old used cloth bag. It is transformed. I apply wet gut onto rusted metal and tracking appears as the gut dries, making something wholly new.” What worked in Hawaii where she had access to palm sheaths isn’t possible in New York. She still reflects creatively, translating her ideas into three-dimensional forms. Working in this way, light brings life to her work and she leaves space for another’s imagination.

Hickman’s process is both direct and incremental, either layering or adding one unit to another. The ideas she’s visually expressing determine the shape, form and intention of the piece. The process is less important than the conceptual idea and the materials she works with. All of the work is filtered through Hickman’s imagination and her hands. “If over time my work doesn’t change, it isn’t alive.”

Hickman trained at the University of California Berkeley with faculty who had a deep appreciation of textile history and world textiles. While spending time in Alaska, she discovered Yup’ik waterproof parkas made of the gut (intestines) of seal or walrus. She responded to the beauty of an inner membrane and the idea of it being used as an outer protective garment. This led to her exploration with related skin membrane (hog casings). Living in Turkey and Hawaii had an impact on Hickman as she absorbed other ways of seeing.  Hickman considers her work “part of an ongoing tradition, that moves in new directions, full of experimentation and exploration.”

Pat Hickman is Professor Emerita of the Art Department, University of Hawaii. Her studio is at the Garnerville Arts and Industrial Center, NY and she lives in Haverstraw on the Lower Hudson River. Hickman’s work is in major collections, including the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, the Oakland Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Denver Art Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and the Hawaii State Art Museum, among others. In Hawaii, Hickman’s commission, Nets of Makali’i–Nets of the Pleiades, stands as monumental entrance gates for the Maui Arts and Cultural Center. Hickman twice received NEA Individual Artist’s Grants. In 2005, she was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council, and she served as President of the Textile Society of America (2008-2010). She continues to serve on the National Basketry Organization Board. Hickman curated two traveling exhibits: Innerskins/Outerskins: Gut and Fishskin (1987) and Baskets: Redefining Volume and Meaning (1993).

Buster Levi Gallery is open Friday through Sunday from 12-6 pm.

For more information: busterlevigallery.com