Lia Cook is a pioneer of the modern fiber arts movement. Born and raised in California, she studied political science at UC Berkeley before traveling to Sweden for a year to learn weaving. In 1973 one of her artworks was selected for the International Tapestry Biennial in Lausanne, Switzerland, and she exploded onto the global stage.
Cook pushes the boundaries of traditional textile making, combining weaving with painting, photography and digital technology. She weaves by hand on a computerized loom: The computer raises and lowers the selected warp threads according to a program she writes. Each thread is controlled individually, allowing Cook to depict complex images, such as photographs, with seamless precision.
Created for The Textile Museum’s Sourcing the Museum invitational exhibition, Cook’s Coptic Manga takes inspiration from two very small tapestry fragments in the museum’s collection. Both pieces — one from 6th-century Egypt and one from 6th- or 7th-century Syria — depict human faces at an inch or two in scale. Cook was fascinated by the variety and timelessness of their expressions. One reminded her of the iconic 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop.
She replicated these faces in Coptic Manga but dramatically altered the scale to create an arresting 4 x 7 foot work, with “Betty Boop” at the center. Similar to an impressionist painting, the piece looks different as you move closer. From a distance, the individual fibers blend to form a unified whole. Up close, the woven structure and individual yarns start to command your attention.
