ARTIST STATEMENT
My weavings are tender, data-rich records of early motherhood. Rooted in my background as a social scientist, I measure both my child’s and my own growth through numbers, colors, and textures. I count fetal kicks, log sleep, and track developmental milestones through double stitches and coiled forms. These metrics move beyond baby tracker apps and first-year scrapbooks. They now live within hand-coiled shapes of naturally dyed cotton, becoming visual documents of my caregiving.
Each coil begins with plant-based dyeing, a process that resists immediacy. I juxtapose textures by pairing soft and rough fibers and use contrasting natural dye colors to reflect the complexity of our evolving relationship. These material choices mirror parenting, from moments of ease and tenderness to periods of resistance, stretching, and transformation. The cotton absorbs pigments from plants, preserving traces of the earth and the patient labor the process demands. The dyeing itself becomes a metaphor for caregiving. It is physical, repetitive, and unique each time it begins again.
The act of weaving helps me stay present while attempting to hold fleeting time still. Each coil transforms data into something embodied, offering a tactile record of nurture and protection. The softness and sturdiness of the materials contrast with the often chaotic nature of documentation, yet together they build a portrait of maternal connections.
These works do not aim to idealize motherhood but to materialize its cyclical nature. They are meditations on the beauty of measuring life not only in milestones, but in moments held in my hands.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Veronica Hicks is a fiber and natural dye artist whose work explores motherhood, data tracking, and life cycles through the slow processes of natural dyeing and coiled weaving. With a background as a women’s, gender, and sexuality social scientist, she documents the intimate details of early motherhood by translating collected data into tactile, visual forms. Her work draws from labor-intensive traditions of dyeing with plants, roots, and earth pigments, resisting speed in favor of presence and embodied making. Each coil in her woven works serves as an archive derived from nature, with materials dyed by hand, wrapped with intention, and grounded in the rhythms of her maternal life. Veronica works with natural materials she grows, gathers, or sustainably procures, with attention to avoiding synthetic fiber and dye materials. Named the 2025 Dow Scholar and Artist of the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, Veronica has exhibited nationally and leads workshops on the using natural materials in art making. As an African American basket weaver and educator, her work honors traditions of intergenerational knowledge-sharing and creative resistance, offering viewers a space to consider how care, data, and craft coexist. She currently lives and works in Virginia, weaving together her roles as artist and mother to create work that is personal, political, and deeply rooted in the land.
© Veronica Hicks