Kyra E. Hicks (born October 1, 1965) is an American author, quilter[1] and quilt historian. She writes about African-American quilt history[2] and encouraging quilt documentation. She has created story quilts, such as Black Barbie, which is in the permanent collection of the Fenimore Art Museum[3] in New York City.[4]
Hicks specializes in creating narrative or story quilts. The themes include being a single black woman, politics, family, and religion. All of her quilts include words as well as designs.
Hicks created her Black Barbie quilt, which was displayed in the Fenimore Art Museum's exhibition Through the Eyes of Others: African Americans and Identity in American Art (2010). She addressed issues of body image, western society's obsession with beauty, and the neglect of the African American when creating toys and other ephemera for children. The illustration features the American Barbie doll depicted as a black woman, with the text "Barbie" above it, and below it the phrase: "Was never intended for me."[6] But Mattel sold the first black Barbie fashion doll in 1980.
Research
In her quilt history research, Hicks found only the second known photograph to exist of Harriet Powers, an African-American slave, folk artist and quilt maker from rural Georgia. Powers used traditional appliqué techniques to record local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events on her quilts. Two of her quilts have survived: Bible Quilt (1886) and Pictorial Quilt (1898).
Hicks was one of four African-American women quilters profiled in a PhD dissertation by Yolanda Woods, New World African Conjurers Who Edify and Heal the Community.[7]
Bibliography
Hicks, Kyra E. (2003). Black threads: an African American quilting sourcebook. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co. ISBN0786413743.
This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces (2009)[9]
1.6 Million African American Quilters: Survey, Sites, and a Half-Dozen Art Quilt Blocks (2010)
The Lord’s Supper Pattern Book: Imagining Harriet Powers’ Lost Bible Story Quilt (2011)
How to Self-Publish Your Own Quilt Catalog: A Workbook for Quilters, Guilds, Galleries and Textile Artists (2012)
Franklin Roosevelt’s Postage Stamp Quilt: The Story of Estella Weaver Nukes’ Presidential Gift (2012)
Liberia: A Visit Through Books (2008, co-author)
The Return of the Guinea Fowl: An Autobiographical Novel of a Liberian Doctor (2011, co-author) [10]
Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African American Quilters, Patricia A. Turner. University Press of Mississippi (2009). Kyra Hicks wrote the foreword
The Quilt: A History and Celebration of an American Art Form, by Elise Schebler Roberts, with contributions from Jennifer Chiaverini, Sandra Dallas, Kyra Hicks and Helen Kelley. Voyageur Press (2007). Hicks contributed the article "Black Women Have Always Quilted."
St. James Guide to Black Artists. Edited by Thomas Riggs. St. James Press (1997). Hicks contributed the profile of Sonia Boyce, British Painter and Mixed Media Artist.
^Woods, Yolanda. PhD Dissertation, "New World African Conjurers Who Edify and Heal the Community" . (AAT9974639). University of Missouri, Columbia (2000). Hood's paper attempted to "read" the quilts and quilting production of these four quilters from the Midwest within a Womanist theoretical framework. The other quilters profiled were NedRa Bonds, Sherry Whetstone-McCall, and Edna Patterson-Petty.
