Lia Cook is a visual artist who combines weaving with painting, photography, video, and digital technology to explore the sensuality of the woven image and the embodied memories of touch and cloth. She exhibits nationally and internationally and her work is included in many museum collections.
For more information, please see: https://www.liacook.com and on Instagram @liacook2.
Lia Cook in her studio.
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
I seem to be weathering these unusual circumstances fine. I am very conscious of keeping my medical conditions under control. Eating well, exercising, and enjoying myself by spending time in the garden and taking neighborhood walks with the dogs. The good part of this experience is that it has given me more time to do what I feel like doing at the moment. I don’t have so much pressure to produce i.e. finish a piece for an upcoming exhibition, ship it, or even paperwork. I do think that artists are used to knowing what to do with private time; how to keep engaged with the moment, experiment with new ideas.
It would be great if you could briefly talk us through your practice. Understanding it is integral to appreciating the multivalence of your work.
Right now, in my practice I am experimenting with new work. Moving from my focus on faces using neurological brain imagery to integrating the fiber connection I see in plants from my garden with the structural woven fibers of the brain. I am repurposing older work by reweaving the imagery back into the new work. Rediscovered work I wove as samples as part of my neurological emotional studies are now becoming material basis for new work. I have always used research as a basis for my work even research I did years earlier. Allowing myself to do research into something that interested me with no particular purpose in my work at the time is used many years later, i.e. early Jacquard technology. Weaving, textiles, as both technique and concept is central to my work. My conceptual focus remains consistent throughout the years emphasizing the tactile emotional quality of woven artwork. I moved from optical imaging of fabric landscapes to emphasis on domestic textile objects, to classical images of draperies in the old master paintings, to the touch of the hand on fabric, the body and the face. My technical weaving processes have changed over time, from simple but distorted plain weave, to the integration of actual painting on linen, cut into strips and rewoven, to the more complex but flexible use of the Jacquard process in which all the threads can be controlled separately.
Lia Cook’s studio with jacquard loom and multi-colored thread
Has any of your imagery shifted in a reflection to what's currently happening? Or are you considering using coronavirus related imagery for future projects? Do you find it necessary to make work about the pandemic? And why, or why not?
I am not interested in doing work that directly relates to the corona virus or the pandemic. It’s not that I don’t respect artists that do but the content of my work is more related to sharing the personal emotional experience of the work. I want people to bring their own experience, interpretations and even stories to the work rather than specifically narrating my own. The work needs to be open to interpretation. It is not always the same for every individual.
Are you thinking differently? Coping differently? Inspired differently?
I was already just at this stage when this all happened. Thinking differently- now more open to new ideas and ways of working. Coping differently- taking the time I need and want, not being in a hurry. Inspired differently- Inspired by things close to home, spending time in the wonderful garden my husband has created, and relooking, finding, discovering older work and samples and incorporating them into new work.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
What brings me peace and joy is just accepting and settling in to the moment.