Lia Cook creates weavings that explore the complex relationship between visual image, sensory stimulation, and emotional identification. Her artistic investigations have followed diverse approaches that are expressed in her various series, including Big Baby, Un/Mask, Traces, Binary Traces and Face Maze, all created from 2000 to the present. Cook weds the early 19th century Jacquard weaving technique with contemporary digitial technology. Beginning with slides, photographs or video stills, she develops her imagery, couples it with digital technology, and creates specifically designed weaves that allow her to build the image thread by thread.
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.


Public Collections

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN
Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian, NY
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MA
Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, NC
The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, NSW, Australia
Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, 2005
The Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
American Association for Advancement of Science, Washington, DC
Museum Bellerive, Zurich, Switzerland
Det Danske Kunstindustrimuseum, Copenhagen, Denmark
American Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY
Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, Racine, WI
De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, CA
Galerie Nationale de la Tapisserie et d’Art Textile, Beauvais, France
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Permanent Collection US Embassy, Moscow
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA

Selected Exhibitions

2010 Faces and Mazes, Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
         Faces and Mazes, Gregg Museum of Art & Design at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
         University of North Texas, Denton, TX
2009 Dollface, Perimeter Gallery, Chicago. IL
         The Embedded Portrait, University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY
         Faces and Mazes, Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
         Lia Cook: Large Works, Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, WA
2006 Re-Embodied, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY
2004 Binary Traces, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA
         Embedded Portraiture, Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, IL
2002 Lia Cook New Work, LewAllen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
2001 Past Presence, Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Structure & Image, Miami University Art Museum, Oxford, OH
1999 Presence/Absence, Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, IL
1998 Duane Reed Gallery, St. Louis, MO