Lia Cook (b. 1942) is internationally revered as one of the pioneering figures of 20th century and contemporary weaving, rising to prominence in the 1980s through her experimentation with digital weaving and dimensional use of materials. Cook’s ‘Tunnel’ series and ‘Pocket’ pieces explore architectural shapes made by manipulating materials and weave structures, a particularly progressive technique that cemented her position as a leader in the fiber arts movement.
Her creation of volume in her pieces evolved into a focus on conveying draped fabric through flattened imagery, driving the notion of fabric to an even more conceptual level by removing its dimensionality and ability to be held or touched, and retracting it back to its original plane, in an effort to highlight our sensory connection and relationship to fabric and fiber art and its important yet undervalued role in our culture.
Widely considered her most influential and groundbreaking period of work, related pieces from this series and era of Cook’s creative output are in the permanent collections of multiple international institutions, notably The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
A native Californian, Cook received multiple Fine Arts degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught for several decades at the renowned College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. She is the recipient of five National Endowment for the Humanities awards among numerous other honors, and has lectured, exhibited, and been published internationally for half a century. Cook lives and works in Berkeley, California.