Jess Riva Cooper
Arts/Industry: Pottery, 2013
Jess Riva Cooper integrates color, drawing and clay. Mining her experience as a Canadian Jew of eastern European descent, she studies the foundation myths of The Golem, and Dybbuk spirits in Jewish folklore and reinterprets these traditional stories through a female lens. Cooper also investigates fallen economic and environmental climates in regions such as Detroit Michigan, where there are over ten thousand abandoned houses. These houses have become feral, disappearing behind ivy, trees and Kudzu that were planted generations ago.
Cooper is a ceramic artist and educator currently based in Toronto, Ontario. Cooper received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. Cooper has shown work and participated in artist residencies throughout Canada and the United States, such as Brandeis University, Lillstreet Art Center, Medalta, and The Archie Bray Foundation.
Cooper’s artistic objectives during her residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center were the continued exploration of The Golem, and Dybbuk folktales, exploring magical realism in Yiddish folklore from a female perspective within the format of ceramic sculpture.
