Lia Cook http://www.liacook.com http://www.liacook.blogspot.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TRACES: INTENT 2002 72" x 54" Cotton/ Jacquard woven DIGITAL COMFORT: PRESS 2001 42" x 41" Rayon/Handwoven BIG GIRL WITH ELEPHANT 2002 240" x 54" Cotton/ Jacquard woven prices available on request |
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
ARTIST STATEMENT Lia Cook is currently Professor of Art at California College of Arts and Crafts and Chair of the Textile Department. She works in a variety of media; usually combining weaving and painting, photography and digital technology. Her recent work explores the sensuality of fabric and the human response of touch. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally for over 25 years, including a retrospective organized by the French government in 1983 and a traveling survey exhibition organized by the Oakland Museum and exhibited at the Renwick, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. She has received several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She has received a Distinguished Faculty Award and Exhibition from CCAC and a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley. Her works are in the permanent collection of the MOMA NY, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Museum, Washington DC, National Collection, France, De Young Museum, San Francisco, Oakland Museum, Musee Bellerieve, Switzerland among others. Concurrent with the exploration of the cultural, political and human meaning of cloth, Lia has explored the technology of cloth making, and in particular the jacquard process and its application to contemporary art. She received an NEA grant in 1981 to study historic examples of Jacquard weaving in France and England. Since that time she has participated in a number of artist-residencies and jacquard projects which have ranged from the re-creation of old silk techniques at Lisio's in Florence, Italy, to state-of-the-art computer Jacquard technology in Germany. This technology allows for potentially infinite complexity, detail and scale of image, an image that is actually part of and embedded in the physical structure of cloth itself. Each thread can now be operated independently and immediately without the use of punch cards. This technological development allows the artist ultimate flexibility, immediacy and control of the imagery in the creation of cloth. The pieces in her most recent series Presence/Absence are woven by hand on TC-l Loom from Norway. Many of the hand and portrait images are self-studies using video capture and emphasizing the rough quality of the particles forming the image. The images are translated pixel by pixel into a weave structure that resembles a damask tablecloth. Much of the work is light and physically draped. The subsequent distortion of the images gives them a sense of being a live and emphasizes the immediacy of touch. Sometimes they seem like old photographs that have captured a fleeting instant of a sensual experience.
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