Tracey Cockrell is a sculptor with an interdisciplinary practice. Based in Woodstock, NY and Portland, ME, Cockrell is chairperson of the MFA in Studio Art at Maine College of Art & Design, and recently was a visiting faculty member in sculpture at Bennington College. Cockrell’s sculptures and sound art have exhibited nationally and been featured in alternative radio programs and live performance at festivals in New York, San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle. In 2024, Cockrell’s work is to be featured for the first time internationally at Munich’s KloHäuschen Biennale. Reviews include The Portland Press Herald, The Atlantic Monthly, The Art Section, Sculpture Magazine, ArtNewEngland, The Boston Sunday Globe, WGBH TV’s ‘Greater Boston Arts,’ and Maine Public Radio’s ‘Maine Things Considered’, among others. Residencies include Ucross Foundation, Montello Foundation, I-Park Foundation, SEARS Residency at The Parsonage, Penland School of Crafts, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Maine Farmland Trust, The Tides Institute & Museum of Art, Leland Iron Works, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Oregon College of Art & Craft, and Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Cockrell earned an MFA at University of California, Berkeley, a BA from the College of William & Mary, and post-baccalaureate studies in the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Artist Statement
Using sympathetic resonance as a metaphor & as a means of sound propagation, I make art that explores the origins of language & challenges the authority of language for making meaning. I am interested in synesthesia & the poetic potential of the decay of language through acts of translation. My current research is about complex relationships between language & landscape, psychoacoustics, & subjectivity of place.
Often, my projects begin with site-specific listening walks. I hike to collect field recordings, studying relationships between natural & manmade landscapes & harvesting plant materials. These plant materials are processed into inks & pulp that I use in my practice. Materials & audio included here are collected from the woods where I live in the Catskill mountains, Maine’s midcoast & farmlands, the sage desert of northeastern Nevada, & the high plains of Wyoming.
In a way, we can describe thoughts as rhythmic pulsations, and the way that we think is to leap from one rhythmic pulsation to another to create images, ideas. My sound sculptures and installations explore the origins of language, challenge the authority of language for making meaning, and invite participants to play within compositional strategies to make or disrupt meaning.
NEWS2024I-Park Foundation Fellow/Artist in Residence, East Haddam, CT
I am excited that my work is part of the 7th KloHäuschen Biennale DIE RÄUME at the KloHäuschen in Munich, Germany, and thank the Montello Foundation for inviting me to participate in this unique exhibition.
Das KloHäuschen
Großmarkthalle, Westtor Thalkirchner Straße / Ecke Oberländerstraße 81371 München
is one of the most daring and beautiful and challenging (mostly for the artists) artspace there is. The interior is what is was built for - a men's urinal. Often the guests are visual artists, but also others are invited like scientists, theatre artists, architects, musicians, philosophers, authors, and performers. And they are always invited to work in collaboration with the space of Das KloHäuschen. To discover its possibilities. To discover their mutual possibilities. To touch it. And to play with it. Das KloHäuschen turned itself into a sloth’s cage, a holiday home, a kitchen studio, a cave, a forest, a lecture theatre, a recreation area and an observatory. It sparkles or drips or snores. It has been danced with, knitted all over it, being flooded. And sponged. Meditated, polished, enlightened, and it has been set music to it. And exactly every two years, the KloHäuschen is hosting a Biennale.
“Tidal Shift”, Work from Searsport EcoArt Residency at the University of New England Art Gallery on view January 19 - May 20, Biddeford, Maine
2023Montello Foundation Artist in Residence, Montello, Nevada
SEAR residency at The Parsonage, Searsport, Maine
Ucross Foundation Fellow/Artist in Residence, Clearmont, Wyoming
“The Ordinary Unbound” at A.P.E Gallery, Northampton, Massachusetts
4-person exhibition on view October 5 - 28
“Wild Light” at Hewnoaks Artist Colony, curated by Lights Out Gallery, Lovell, Maine
August 12, 3-7 PM
“The Last Season on Earth”, Faculty triennial at Institute of Contemporary Art
at Maine College of Art & Design, Portland, Maine
January 13 - February 19
Thank you to Jorge S. Arango for his Press Herald review:
Maine College of Art & Design faculty show ranges from serene to apocalyptic
“Moonbeams”, Public art installation at the Snow Moon Festival
Sponsored by Jane Street Art Center, Saugerties, New York
February 3 - February 5
2022“An Other Music”, Solo exhibition at Jane Street Art Center, Saugerties, New York
October 29 - December 11
“Poemophone: Transposition”
An evening of cacophonous reading
December 10th 4-6pm
By repurposing vintage typewriters, I have created Poemophone, a series of sound sculptures that explore the poetics of making meaning, playing with compositional strategies at the intersection of linguistics, literature, experimental music, & sculpture.
Transposition is a performance of various scores, poems, and mnemonics on these experimental musical instruments.
Winter Residency, Books & Paper Studio at Penland School of Craft, Penland, North Carolina