Leah
Cooper is an artist who is fascinated by the extraordinary world that exists
within the smallest detail of the ordinary. Her work questions our perception of the everyday and
explores an expanded notion of drawing.
She employs the idea of drawing as strategy in order to investigate the
influence of visual information on a viewer’s subjective perception of object
and place.
Working outside the
traditional definition of drawing as a 2-dimensional representation of the
3-dimensional world she uses drawing as a means to iterate rather than
illustrate a variable framework of information. These resulting site-responsive
installations are of the space and the space simultaneously. Iterations, both
of object and place, are not static, fixed end-products. Rather she aims to create pieces that function as open works, pointing
to a field of possibilities rather than a static fait accompli. Leah is an
avid observer, a determined thinker, a purposeful maker, and an artist who
designates a piece successful when it has generated more questions, rather than
illustrated a single answer
Leah Cooper received her MFA from Maryland
Institute College of Art in 2009, where she was awarded the MFA in Studio Art
Fellowship. She received her BA in
Studio Art from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1989. Since 1989
she has lived and worked in Baltimore. Leah was a 2010 Sondheim Finalist and a 2011 recipient of a Maryland State Art Council Individual Artist Grant. She has shown in the mid-atlantic region at The Baltimore Museum of Art, The
Creative Alliance, Montpellier Arts Center, and RTKL Architecture Firm.