Nicola Hicks, Sculpture and Drawings, 14 January – 13 February 1994

This book is about the artist, Nicola Hicks. Hicks is a contemporary sculptor who also has a passion for drawing. The book describes her series of animal sculptures and drawings, her move to human figures and then an interview with the artist.

Several questions are put to the artist, one being about how sculpture could be a drawing. Hicks (1994, pg. 71) states that:

‘The excitement is in the form and the only thing you have to work with when you make a sculpture is light. You draw with light.’

She is saying that with sculpture you always have to think about how line is affected by light, and using the light to draw the line. When you look back at some of her sculptures that are created using plaster and straw, you can see how she has used the light to shape her piece. She thinks that sculpture is the closest to drawing out of all the fine arts because of this.

Bibliography

HELLER, R. HUBBARD, S. (1994) Nicola Hicks Sculpture and Drawings. London: Flowers East.

The first task we did on the course was making a passport, we were asked to show our feelings through our work.

I chose to fold acetate to gave me 8 pages for the passport, then stick tracing paper onto it. I wanted to use acetate because it acts as a metaphor that I am quite an open person, but the use of tracing paper symbolises that there are some things that I am not as open about.

I started with a self-portrait as this is the traditional way of describing yourself. I used my phone to trace a picture of myself so I had an almost perfect representation. The photo I used was a passport style image. I decided to keep it simple and monochrome with block areas of black colour, this is because I see things quite straightforward and in ‘black and white’. On the next page I wrote a few pieces of information like; my name, date of birth and hometown.I then traced images of; TV shows, bands, hobbies and animals that I have interests in. I used the same style as the  throughout this passport to keep it unison.

The last thing I added was fingerprints. I drew on a few fingers with a black marker pen and pressed down onto some cartridge paper (I couldn’t use tracing paper as the pen didn’t absorb into it).

I stuck the images inside the acetate so they were framed by it. This made it appear like it was behind glass which is quite fragile, linking back to the feelings and emotions part of the task.

I am happy with how it turned out, but if I were to develop it further I would think about how I could write words on the back of the tracing paper. They would be hidden to the viewer’s eyes so only I would know what was written down.