LIA COOK
USA
born in 1942, studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and received her MA in Art and Design in 1973. From 1976 to date she has worked as a Professor of Art at the California College of Arts in Oakland, USA. Lia Cook has been represented in many exhibitions, to name but a few: Lausanne Biennial (1989 and 1992), Kyoto International Textile Competition (1989 and 1992), Craft Today USA (travelling exhibition, 1992); “Design Life Now, National Design Triennial”, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York, 2006; “From Lausanne to Beijing” International Fiber Art Biennial, Gold Award, Beijing, China, 2008.
Crossing the borders of craft, design and fine art, Lia Cook has become a role model for young textile artists in Europe, especially jacquard weavers. She wrote about her work:
“My practice explores the sensuality of the woven image and the embodied emotional connection to memories of touch and cloth. I use the detail, an intimate moment in time, often woven in oversize scale to intensify a shared emotional and sensual experience. I use a digital loom to weave images that are embedded in the structure of cloth. The digital pixel becomes a thread that when interlaced with another becomes both cloth and image at the same time. I am particularly interested in the threshold at which the image dissolves into pattern and structure, the point at which the tactile can be sensed. This woven image then brings with it many of the sensual experiences and memories that we associate with cloth. My practice involves research into new technologies and new ways to translate my images that make the structure visible and physically felt, attempting to create the image as a physical object.”
Her current work explores the nature of the emotional response to woven faces in collaboration with neuroscientists and uses the laboratory experience both with process and tools to stimulate new work in response to these investigations.
In Kaunas Lia Cook will show works from her latest research project in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine including jacquard weavings and a video.
Beatrijs Sterk
