Lisa Kokin | Art made from thread

Welcome

This website strives to be accurate and complete. It represents a large part of the work I have completed since 1990. Although it is rather vast in scope, there are many pieces in each body of work that are not included. On occasion I accept commissions for private and public collections. Please send me a note if you are interested in a commission.

Send me a note →

Sewing & Alterations

How the West Was Sewn

In 2008 I found boxes of pulp cowboy novels at the local recycling center. Although I wasn’t drawn to the imagery, the sheer quantity of the books was enough to entice me to take them back to the studio. After awhile I started to like the imagery, in a campy sort of way. The machismo and violence were so overt and over the top that they begged to be rearranged and recontextualized. And so it happened, just at the end of the Bush Administration, when the cowboy mentality was, I hoped, soon to be left in the dust. How wrong I was and so I continue to use the cowboy novels to comment on guns and the violence that is prevalent in our culture.

Some of the pieces incorporate the covers and spines of the books made into horticultural forms, organic and life-affirming. I have begun to collect pods on my daily walks; their elegant, dessicated forms appeal to me, as does the fact that new growth in the form of a seed contained inside will often forcibly pop out of the pod.