“The recurring themes in my work are fragility, transparency, balance, weightlessness, and gravity. There is a delicacy in my work which is due either to technique or material, or both. I work for a tenuous balance of extremes. Each work yields its meaning through the handling of the material.”
Michelle Cooke’s work imbues a keen sensibility for the physical integrity of her materials with rigorous attention to formal structure. Cooke’s sculptural installations and her graphite drawings challenge our perception of light: the Horizon Series fractures multiple horizon lines into bands of dark and light, the White Light Series captures light through gradation and texture. Her Light installations rendered with small slides of glass convey a disarming directness and an immediate visual reference to the structural properties of light. At first transparent and virtually self-effacing, the wall-mounted glass squares create lyrical and tactile light effects of enormous evocative power, while at the same time the grid’s enigmatic formal structure subdues the aggressive echelons of projecting glass.
Cooke’s work has been shown in numerous museums and solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. She lives and works in Taos, New Mexico and New York, New York.