User:Blombera/Lia Cook

Early Life and Education
Lia Cook is an American multimedia artist noted for her works which feature a combination of the craftsmanship necessary for weaving and textiles with modern technologies, transcending the boundaries of textile art. Born on November 24, 1942 in Ventura, California. Cook attended Menlo Atherton High from 1956 to 1960 with an emphasis in theater which lead her to attending a summer program at the San Francisco State University. Cook continued her studies at the San Francisco State University from 1960, prior to receiving her Bachelors of Arts in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 and later her Masters of Arts in 1973. Along with studying Political Science, she also took up Ceramics. In 1965, Cook traveled to Mexico and encounters weaving in Chiapas and Oaxaca. During her time in Mexico, Cook is inspired by the craftsmanship of the textiles which then sets fourth her interest for weaving as an artistic practice. In 1967, Cook marries her first husband: David Cook. The couple traveled to Sweden together where she studies weaving from Northern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Career
Cook was the received five National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and numerous other awards. Since 1975, she has taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. In 1976, Cook was commissioned by the Art in Architecture Program Fine Arts in the collection of the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA) to create "Spatial Ikat III" located in the Frank Hagel Federal Building in Richmond, California. During the 1980s, Cook was creating textile crafts ranging from curtains, pockets and quilts. In 1983, Cook was honored with what was then the biggest show by an American at the Galerie Nationale de la Tapisserie et d’Art Textile in Beauvais, France. In the 1990s, Cook created works showing images of fabrics and patterns which were often painted after Renaissance fabric studies. Cook was also an artist-in-residence at the University of Pittsburgh, where she worked with TREND (Transdisciplinary Research in Emotion, Neuroscience, and Development) to create a body of work that researched Diffusion Spectrum Imaging. During this period, Cook had her brain scanned using Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI); these scans would later be incorporated into her textiles which went on display at Perimeter Gallery in 2014. Cook's interest in the human mind lead her to use DSI to create photorealistic weavings of human faces. Cook has since been interested with sensory sagacity and discovered that woven imagery activated brain activity most affected by touch. In 2006, Cook was once again commissioned by the U.S. General Service Administration to produce "Sons and Daughters" at the Joseph F. Weis, Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Cook is known for her use of the electronic Jacquard handloom in the 1980's and 1990's for her pieces, along with painting, weaving and creating woven pieces where the media is both "subject and object." Cook also states that the different mediums in which the use of textiles is employed throughout various cultures around the globe inspired her work and subjects.

Exhibitions

 * Galerie Nationale de la Tapisserie et d’Art Textile, Beauvais, France.
 * Material Allusions, March 12, 1996 - July 7, 1996 Smithsonian American Art Museum
 * Embedded Portraiture, 2004 Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
 * Re-Embodied, 2006 Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York

Commissions

 * "Spatial Ikat III" 1976, Art in Architecture Program Fine Arts Collection U.S. General Service Administration, located at Frank Hagel Federal Building, Richmond California.
 * "Sons and Daughters" 2006, Art in Architecture Program Fine Arts Collection U.S. General Service Administration, located at Joseph F. Weis, Jr. U.S. Courthouse. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Awards & Special Recognition's

 * 1974, 1977, 1986, 1992 - Fellowships, National Endowment for the Arts
 * 1990 - Artist's Fellowship Grant, California Arts Council
 * 1993 - United States/Mexico Creative Artist's Residency, National Endowment for the Arts
 * 1994 - French Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts
 * Recognition from the Bay Area Women Artists' Legacy Project (A project which highlights women in the arts)

Collections

 * National Gallery of Australia Parkes, Australia
 * Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington, D.C.
 * Oakland Museum of California Oakland, California
 * Toms Pauli Foundation, Lausanne, Switzerland
 * Cleveland Museum of Art Cleveland, Ohio
 * Denver Art Museum Denver, Colorado
 * Textile Museum (George Washington University) Washington, D.C.
 * Los Angeles County Museum of Art Los Angeles, California
 * Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, Illinois
 * Art in Embassies Program United States Department of State

Use of Mixed Media
Cook is mostly known for her Fiber art, however, she is a multimedia artist. She has produced work in photography, video, painting, through a digital means. She has also incorporated some of her own data visualizations into her work, though she was ultimately dissatisfied with the results and then chose to collaborate with a professional data analyst. Cook’s work is notable because of her use of textiles along with various other materials. As of 2022, her work uses fiber to represent the neurological response to faces, and she has begun incorporating fibers from plants she grows herself. Her recent work has also begun to revisit her earlier work by integrating these homegrown fibers and digital technologies. In 2016, she both gave her papers to the Smithsonian and presented a conference paper reflecting on the process of Lia Cook. Cook has long rejected reductive labels and categories that she feels pigeonhole her into the narrow category of a weaver of tapestries. Cook collaborated with data scientist Bradley Shanrock-Solberg for several of her recent works that compared neurological responses to photographs of faces to the neurological responses to woven images of faces. These works represent a shift for Cook since the subject was conceptualized as a collaboration and bridges the gap between science and art. Cook's work is concerned with the intersection of fiber, the body, and, in recent years, the mind. Cook’s work repeatedly grapples with representing these intersections. Embodiment and corporeality are important themes in which she uses the medium of fiber to examine. In recent years, she has used fiber to explore the impact of networked digital communications and to depict digital and neurological networks. One manifestation of this theme is the idea of cloth as a physical embodiment of memory. In her 2006 artist’s statement, Cook wrote about how she wanted to use fiber to depict memory, the role of haptic media in depicting embodiment, and how technology intersects with those themes. At the time, she conceptualized the medium of thread as analogous to a pixel: "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. This woven image brings with it many of the sensual experiences that we associate with cloth." Cook utilizes modern software often used in wedding photography along with neuroscientific software such as TrackVis to produce the images which she weaves. Cook's works are noted for her ability to invoke emotion and a certain level of sensuality and touch along with exploring the vulnerability of the modern individual, without the need of physically handling the piece. Another recurring theme in Cook's work is the idea of cloth as a physical embodiment of touch and of ephemerality. Cook wrote about her intention to depict this in her 2006 artist’s statement: "...childhood family snapshot and video stills are some of the raw materials that I draw on to investigate small, intimate details of the body or to capture a fleeting human expression. 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 physical object." Cook’s movement towards incorporating digital components in her work adds a new dimension to the exploration of embodiment.