Tara Cooper: Weather Girl’s Field Guide to Lightning – Nick Novak Fellowship Exhibition

From October 27 through November 26, 2011, Open Studio was pleased to present the 2011 Scholarship/Fellowship Exhibitions, featuring artists Tara Cooper (Nick Novak Fellowship), Lauren Nurse (Donald O’Born Family Scholarship), and Flora Shum (Don Phillips Scholarship). Each year, Open Studio awards three scholarships/fellowships, providing artists working in print media with both professional support and access to studio facilities to create new work during a one-year period. All three artists gave illustrated talks about their work and the progress of their projects over the year on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at Open Studio, followed by an opening reception. For further information about our scholarship program, please click on Scholarships on the menu to the left.

Open Studio thanks The Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation and the Donald O’Born Family for their kind support of the 2010-11 Scholarship/Fellowship Program.

Derived from true stories documenting recent encounters with lightning, Weather Girl’s Field Guide to Lightning depicts a myriad of subject matter from meteorological equipment, weather patterns and cloud formations to the quotidian—a light bulb, a metal chair, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a lottery ticket. Combining print with film and sculpture, the guide conflates the impersonal language of the statistic with the impact of the personal experience—a place where both the weather and the viewer share the role of witness, impartial bystanders to the events of everyday. You can follow Weather Girl’s adventures at taracooper.tumblr.com.

Tara Cooper (Nick Novak Fellowship recipient) received her Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2008, specializing in the disciplines of print, film and installation. She also holds a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. Beneath the rubric of Canadian Nature, Cooper’s observations combine fieldwork and footwork moving from the amateur ornithologist, to the idea of north, to her most recent study involving the language of weather. This interest in fieldwork has led Cooper to participate in many national and international artist residencies including: Kloster Bentlage in Rheine, Germany, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California, Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, The Frans Masereel Center in Kasterlee, Belgium, Malaspina in Vancouver and St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In 2010 she received support from the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council. She is also a member of Loop—the Toronto artist collective.