CAA Experience, II

Lia Cook and Kim Grant also presented at the "When is Technique Central to Meaning" panel.
Lia Cook is an artist and teaches at the California College of the Arts. She is a weaver and has used digital technology along with traditional weaving techniques to make her work. In her words, "I use a digital loom to weave images that are embedded in the structure of cloth. I explore how the architecture of the image is built from interlacing threads and how the process of weaving can build and dissolve image and pattern simultaneously. I am drawn to the movement of instability in which this transition takes place, when perception moves from a primarily visual event to a tactile, sensual experience." I have seen Lia Cook's work at the Nancy Margolis Gallery in Chelsea and my favorite works are those that, during close inspection, reveal an almost invisible labyrinth in the weave. The photograph below is a studio shot.

Kim Grant, a professor at University of Southern Maine, presented a paper titled "Making Difficulties", an examination of instances where an artist's "unresolved struggles with medium serves as both subject and significance of the work" and instances in contemporary art that use "artistic hard work to critique repetitious drudgery, ...while for other artists it exemplifies the transcendence that labor makes possible."
Next, Mia Reinoso Genoni, Virginia Spivey and Bruce Metcalf...