Today we’d like to introduce you to Barbara Cooper.
Barbara, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
While I am primarily a sculptor inspired by essential forms found in nature, I consider my garden and my kitchen to be extensions of spatial explorations, texture, structure, and ecological awareness. I love finding the connections between all of my interests and following where they take me. Art has been a process of continual learning in my life, expanding my horizons and reinventing myself.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
While I am primarily a sculptor, I also draw, do large scale public art, design gardens, and most recently, develop community art projects.
Influenced initially by animal architecture, that impacted how I use materials to create structure. Connecting form and function with the study of pattern in nature anchors my work. We can read a fluid history of growth embedded in solid form, whether it is in a body, a tree, or geological strata, where the immense scope of a landscape and the history that is literally embedded within it spans an amount of time beyond our comprehension. But growth can also be impeded, intruded upon, deformed and compressed by conflict or lack of resources. And that is where I find my focus now–on the environmental issues facing us today.
Materials and processes utilized amplify the concepts of my work. The wood veneer began in the form of a tree and is the result of an intensive milling process. The life cycle of these materials is completed by constructing organic forms from factory scraps which would otherwise be discarded. I mirror the efficiency I find in nature by re-purposing this waste product into a new generation of form.
Repurposing industrial waste in Chicago has been at the heart of my work for the last three decades. Recent pieces allude to embedded histories of our current era. The materials getting incorporated reference that shift. In the last two years, discarded and sliced up books compressed with ideas are being added into the layers of forms. These parallel the compacted geographies recorded in tree rings and rock strata.
It is my aspiration to inspire viewers to make connections with the natural world, to become aware of the myriad patterns and systems that occur in both the microcosm and the macrocosm of which we are a part. In so doing, may they come to a place of reverence and respect for the earth that supports and sustains us and appreciate the complex web of interconnections that supports life on this planet.
How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
Success is about having a positive impact on people through my work. My goal is to provide positive, alternative models of being and connecting in the complex world we live in.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I have a number of public art pieces in Chicago. They can be found at the Avalon Branch Library at Stony Island and 83rd Street, the Hinsdale Public Library, the Paulina Station of the Brown Line on Lincoln and Paulina, and the Barrington Area Library.
A compilation of almost everything, from sculpture to gardens, collaboration and installations, can be found on my website: barbaracooperartist.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.barbaracooperartist.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbaracooper1028/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbara.cooper.12764
Image Credit:
Eileen Ryan Photography
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