Baker Artist Portfolios

     Cathy C. Cook is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, educator and eco-activist working at the intersections of eco-feminism and experimental lens-based image practices. Cook’s research-based work engages the viewer through humorous, surreal, and inviting works that integrate multiple disciplines including 16mm film, video, animation, photography, performance, dance, interactive media, science and poetry. Cook began her career as an experimental filmmaker, working across documentary and narrative forms to challenge social norms and explore the complexities between bodies, identities, and the environments that shape them. Most recently her encompassing environmental installations allow the viewer to engage on many levels: personally, artistically, and intellectually.

     Cook received an MFA from UW-Milwaukee in Film and Women’s Studies and has been creating award-winning films since the mid 1980s. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship; grants from the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, MD Council for the Arts, as well as numerous academic research grants. Her films have been screened globally, including at MoMA, The Whitney Museum, The Flaherty Seminar, PS.1 Contemporary Art Center, PBS, Black Maria Film Festival, WNYC, SBS Australia, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Channel 4 - London, and the Pacific Film Archives of Berkeley. Her works are in the permanent collections of Princeton University, Milwaukee Art Museum, Patuxent Visitors Center, UCLA Broad Art Center, Donnell Library (NYC), MICA, NYU Film Library, and the University of Technology - Sydney, Australia. She has participated in artist residencies such as VCCA and Millay Arts Colony. Cook worked in the NYC film industry as a Production Designer and Art Director for 12 years working with directors Barabara Hammer, Yvonne Rainer, Zeinabu Davis, Cecelia Condit, and Lynne Sachs and was a contributor to DYKE TV. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College for 7 years before becoming an Associate Professor at UMBC (R1 Research Institution.) Cook migrates between Baltimore and Wisconsin; the latter where she lives on a small swampy lake and shares residence with cranes, loons, eagles, badgers, deer, herons, and coyotes.