Nancy G Cook is a North Carolina fiber artist who uses layering of textiles and embellishments to convey impressions of nature. Her fiber work, informed by the traditions of quilting and botanical illustrating, combines passions for nature, texture, color and women’s work as art. Because of its historical meanings of comfort and security, the look and feel of fabric motivates her to utilize machine quilt lines to create both line and texture as bas relief sculpture. She adds further visual interest to her quilts by incorporating hand embroidery details.
Her current series, Seed Play, began mid 2008 and focuses on tree seeds and fruits, as metaphors for life’s riches. She works directly from collected seed specimens where her designs are based on research and sketching of the specimens to clarify what is structurally unique for each species. What differentiates one tree species’ seeds from another is fascinating for Cook. These tree seeds, that are often overlooked, are so individually unique that she carefully showcases these little metaphors for life in her quilts. Cook responds to the critical role that variety plays as a species-survival mechanism for all of nature. She states that trees and their dispersal of seeds is a tiny microcosm of all of life that she can get her mind and hands around.
Cook maintains a private studio in Charlotte, NC. Her nature-inspired quilts are in private and public collections across the USA. She has received multiple grants and awards for her work which has been exhibited in the USA and Europe and has been widely published. She was an Affiliate Artist at McColl Center for Visual Art in 2004 and received Regional Artist Grants from the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg and surrounding counties in 2004 and 2009.
Affiliate Artist Summer 2004
April - August 2004