Barbara Cooper
Arts/Industry: Foundry, 2006
Barbara Cooper’s artistic practice focuses on the growth process of evolving from one condition to another as a form responds to its environment. This process of transformation is an essential aspect of life, whether in the natural environment or in the realm of the cultural or the personal.
Cooper’s work has been exhibited at Saint Xavier University Gallery (IL), Perimeter Gallery (IL), Bellevue Arts Museum (WA), Merwin Gallery (IL), Chicago Cultural Center (IL), Hafnarborg Institute of Culture and Fine Art (Iceland), Fassbender Gallery (IL), Sybaris Gallery (MI), Joanne Rapp Gallery (AZ), Virginia Beach Arts Center (VA), Evanston Art Center (IL), DePaul Art Museum (IL), Gerald Peters Gallery (NM), Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), Cranbrook Art Museum (MI), and Hyde Park Art Center (IL), among others. Her work is in the collections of the Columbus Museum (GA), the Contemporary Museum (HI), Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum (MI), Illinois State Museum (IL), Long Beach Museum of Art (CA), and Museum of Contemporary Art (IL), among others. She has been an artist fellow at City Museum of Copenhagen (Denmark), Studios of Key West (FL), Eastern Frontier Society (ME), Dorland Mountain Arts Colony (CA), Carmargo Foundation (France), MacDowell Colony (NH), Sitka Center for Art and Ecology (OR), Montalvo Center for the Arts (CA), and Yaddo (NY), among others.
Her work has been featured in Art in America, Sculpture magazine, Chicago Sun Times, New Art Examiner, Fiberarts American Craft, Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, and Artweek, among others.
Cooper earned a BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.
