Marjorie K. Schick

The hands of a quiet giant in art have finally come to rest. MARJORIE SCHICK, a major force in creating sculptures to wear, died on December 17 from complications following a stroke that occurred on December 2, 2017.   From her first explorations under master ALMA EIKERMAN at Indiana University (1963-1966) to the creations so beautifully explored and documented in Sculpture Transformed (Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, 2007), MARJORIE SCHICK produced rings, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, and head sculptures that are at once distinctive, challenging, and aesthetically involving. It was her vision to create sculpture to wear, pieces that when not being worn functioned as sculptures to be displayed, not tucked away in a box or drawer. And as she had been taught by Miss EIKERMAN, every piece was finished on the back with designs that imaginatively played with themes visible when being worn. It might be that only the wearer would know these secrets, and for MARJORIE that was sufficient.   After graduating from Indiana University with a 60-credit Master of Fine Arts degree, she taught a year at the University of Kansas with pioneer CARLYLE SMITH before accepting a teaching job at Pittsburg State University (then Kansas State College of Pittsburg) in the Art Department at the same time as her husband, JAMES B. M. SCHICK, joined the History faculty there. Both rose to the rank of full Professor, both became University Professors, and both retired in May 2017 after 50 years of service to their students and their disciplines.   In May as well MARJORIE gave a valedictory lecture that explored her career and life, an address that one faculty member described as the finest public lecture she had ever seen. A recording of that talk interspersed with examples of her hundreds of pieces (many of which required hundreds of hours of inspired hard work) is soon to be available on YouTube (produced by Chicago-based videographer BILL YOUMANS, a cousin with whom she shared a childhood). An edited version of that talk will play at a memorial service planned for June in Kansas City to coincide with the first showing of a work of hers at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in the "Unexpected Encounters" exhibition.   For those wishing to know more about this amazing artist, her book Sculpture to Wear, provides an enlightening revelation. MARJORIE SCHICK is represented in museums across the globe, including England, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Greece, Japan, and Australia, as well as museums in Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Los Angeles, among many others. Her papers are destined to be included in The NANETTE L. LAITMAN Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts In America at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., as well as her archive at Axe Library at Pittsburg State. Her oral interview for the Laitman Project is available online at https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-marjorie-schick-11818.   MARJORIE was born in Taylorville, Illinois, in 1941, daughter of ELEANOR KRASK, a single mother who worked herself up from a two-room schoolhouse to become Assistant Art Supervisor in the Evanston, Illinois, Township School District.   MARJORIE leaves behind her husband of 54 years and son ROBERT, who serves in the City Clerk's office in Mission Viejo, California, and is Executive Producer of that city's television station.

There are no services scheduled at this time.