For nearly seven decades, Sheila Hicks has created groundbreaking works that redefine the expressive possibilities of fiber as a sculptural form. Based in Paris since 1964, she incorporates natural and synthetic materials at a range of scales from intimate weavings made on handheld frames to monumental installations that inhabit architecture.

Hicks’s first solo exhibition at SFMOMA features a site-specific installation in the museum’s New work gallery. The works are inspired by objects, textures, and patterns observed in her adopted city or in her migratory life. Each draws from places with personal significance, from the cobblestones of her courtyard to the towering lighthouses of the rocky island of Ouessant, France and its treacherous and rugged landscape.

The SFMOMA presentation includes the artist’s beacon-like comets of vivid intersecting and multilayered lines, a selection of small works that reflect her daily experiments with new structures and materials, and a towering central phare [Lighthouse] of suspended twisting cords that anchors the installation. Reconfigured installations of the artist’s signature wrapped bâtons, and massive mounds of fiber in vibrant colors show how Hicks continually evolves materials and forms in a process she describes as “walking the tightrope into the future.”

The exhibition in SFMOMA’s New work gallery continues with an expansive outdoor commission in the museum’s Floor 5 sculpture garden.