LEAH COOPER

About the Artist

Leah Cooper is a Baltimore based installation artist. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Through site responsive drawings she examines the liminal state that exists between what is noticed and what is overlooked and is interested in employing the contextually dependent nature of her work as a means to create a heuristic state that invites the viewer to complete the piece. She finds art production at the intersection of theory and practice an intriguing and demanding way of working. Questions arising from theoretical studies are articulated in the artwork; resulting output is then examined and mined for further questions. Although reflexive, this dialogue between idea and ‘object’ is not insular. Rather, it is an attempt to maintain an open approach, centrifugal in nature, generating inquiries at the edge of current methods and disciplines. Leah has been a recipient of the Franz and Virginia Bader grant, Maryland State Art Council Individual Artist Grants in 2017 & 2011, and a William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund B Grant in 2013. She was a 2015 Trawick Prize Finalist and a 2010 Janet & Walter Sondheim Finalist. In addition to her year as finalist, she was a Sondheim Semifinalist in 2012, 2014, and 2015.  She has exhibited her work at The Baltimore Museum of Art, Arlington Art Center, VisArts Center, Montpellier Arts Center, and RTKL Architecture Firm.

Artist's Statement

As an artist who is captivated by the everyday my focus often narrows to the smallest of cracks on the sidewalk, the faintest of shadows on the wall, and the subtlest shift of light on a log in the forest. In ­The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard (1994) submits that, “The man with the magnifying glass-quite simply-bars the everyday world.  He is a fresh eye before a new object.” The discovery and exploration of unnoticed properties of the everyday is the source of my investigation.  My aim is to produce work that explores an expanded notion of drawing, questions the edge of perceptibility, and reconsiders the role of the audience in relation to the art object. Within these investigations my intent is to produce work that yields questions rather than asserts conclusions. Thus, the effectiveness of my practice is bound to the quality of my questions. The tangible product of my investigation takes the form of site-responsive drawing/installation. I work outside the traditional notion of drawing, notating a physical site rather than rendering an illusory version of that site. Drawing is traditionally considered to be a two-dimensional re-presentation of the three-dimensional. What if drawing was liberated from its conventional role of descriptor and rather employed as a strategy where tactics might include nomination, and notation contingently, where materials move outside of standard mark makers and paper, and thus a line drawn by the artist is equivalent to a line created by an existing site element, something as ordinary as a visible drywall seam? Within this context, two dimensions would no longer be a boundary that confines drawing. In addition to perceptibility, I am interested in employing the contextually dependent nature of my drawings as a means to encourage the viewer to engage as participant rather than observer. My interest in audience as contributor leads me to question the hierarchy of the art object. Is it possible to create work where meaning is not contained within the object, but rather the object creates a heuristic state that asks the viewer to complete the piece?