New York: An artist’s Studio –
Suzanne Tick. Artist and textile designer Suzanne Tick, heads
up Suzanne Tick Inc., specializing in material development for commercial and
residential interiors, including textiles, hard surfacing, glass, carpet, woven
metal screens, and lighting. Her clients include Knoll Textiles, Tandus
Flooring for which she is design director and she is also creative director for
Teknion Textiles. She is also an artist who weaves recycled materials and
debris into beautiful art. She creates works that harnesses the struggles of
life, resulting in textiles that are both delicate and strong. She investigates
materials, pairing the thick with the thin, the dull with the brilliant, and
the colorful with the neutral. As Tick states, “weaving holds everything
together, materials and life, successes and failures”.
Suzanne Tick. – Art. She is a fourth generation recycler. From the
beginning, Tick spent summers in her fathers scrap metal yard recycling plant
weighing and sorting metals, exploring the possibilities in the cast-offs of
rural life. At the University of Iowa, Tick began as a printmaker, etching
fabric and texture into copper. She left as a weaver, combining materials both
hard and soft. Tick’s life and work have
always been a narration of balance.
Above. A detail of Refuse DC, 2011,
is made from 3,470 recycled dry cleaning hangers, which took four months to
collect and hangs between Bill and Melinda Gates offices at The Gates Foundation
Collection.
Below. A detail of Counterbalance, 2011, made from
the leftovers of the Refuse DC piece. “This was the most difficult piece I have
worked on, because the shuttle had to go across less than half an inch and the
tension had to stay the same. In reality
the piece represents by dad, because he was frail and whimsical at the same
time.”
Psyche
Suzanne Tick. – Art. The Fire Island Series triptych, which her
dealer the Cristina Grajales Gallery will show at Art Basel in June. The work
is based on three years of collecting hurricane debris on Fire Island, where
Tick has a house. Going for long walks she saw seagulls eating Mylar Balloons
in the ocean, so she started collecting them.
She cuts them like peeling an apple, to achieve long threads and uses
the silver lining side, “The beauty is
the patina beaten in by the ocean and when weaving it nobody knows what it
was.”
Suzanne Tick. – Art. The Stainless Steel hanging has been
exhibited at MoMa, it is made from recycled stainless steel from the inside
of tires from the tire company Bridgestone Metalpha in Japan, the fiber was
spun into yarn by experimental
textile designer Junichi Arai. Tick imported the fiber and wove it into flameproof
drapery ideal for a theater. On the wall a painting by Gloria Graham.
The table in the sitting room.
Suzanne Tick. – Art. A work in progress with found objects from
the streets of New Orleans. The canvas is recycled from the Pink Tents
installation wanted by Brad Pitt for his NO housing project.
Suzanne
Tick. – Art. Moon Charts, “I have always been interested in Astrology,
Cancer is my Sun sign and the Moon is by rising sign. The woven piece charts the last three years
of my life; from a series of losses comes creativity and causes you to pause
and weaving becomes my meditation.”
Cupid
– Tick’s two cats are known as “The cool cats of design.”
Suzanne
Tick. – Design. The red/orange fabric is a hybrid between a honeycomb and a basket
weave. The upholstery fabric was
designed for Teknion Textiles where Tick is creative director; it is strong a upholstery
fabric for the corporate environment, an action fabric ideal for desk
chairs. On the left, the carpet was
designed for Tandus Flooring where Suzanne acts as design director; the carpet
is woven for the commercial market in one of the three factories left in the
United States where they still weave carpets.
Suzanne
Tick – The studio. The townhouse, where
Tick works and lives, was in the late fifties and early sixties, the site of
the Reuben Gallery in the East Village. It was Anita Reuben who invented art Happenings
and where many artists such as Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Robert Whitman,
Claes Oldenburg, Red Groom, and many more exhibited their work.
