What inspires your work? 

This is an interesting question! In a classic sense of the word, I suppose I’d say my inspiration is divine which might sound all too light and corny but it seems that my best ideas and impulses are gifts that come from outside of myself. 

Thinking of inspiration in a more casual way, living inspires my work. People inspire my work. Play inspires my work. Taking walks inspires my work….Often the creative impulse begins with curiosity about a particular material, process or technology. The cycle of trial, error, problem solving and discovery gets me hooked into material possibilities that are then linked up with conceptual interests. Material understanding and ideas begin to co-mingle and poetic art-babies are the byproducts!

Conceptually, I’d say that the body is hugely inspiring to me. Bodies in motion, the gestures of daily effort, how our bodies contain memory and act as maps of personal histories...how our bodies are entirely resilient and fragile; how they are shaped by time and experience…. Bodies are funny and fragile and awkward and incredibly clever. My interest in the body relates in part to playing collegiate soccer and how I was trained to think about the body as a machine and a vehicle of performance enhancement. And later, in massage school, my interests shifted to issues of touch, trauma, memory and gaining a hands-on understanding of the body as a complex energy ecosystem, emotional containment device and memory map. 

The body as a tool, as an impressionable raw material and as a container for memory are keen interests and points of inspiration for me. I suppose I have a love affair with the creative act. Having the opportunity to make a new thing exist in space —an art-object communication device— is endlessly fun. It’s also a privilege. 

Has living in Dallas influenced your work in any way?

Yes. Living in Dallas has cultivated a desire to bring attention to things that are small, slight, fragile, dumb, unpretentious, dirty, silly, absurd, awkward and irrational. 

Living in Dallas has increased my longing for wide open, lush and wild landscapes that remind me of home in the Pacific Northwest. Imagery of rough, rugged, weathered, sublime landscapes have made their way into my practice as a counterbalance to white walled studios and institutions, office cubes and shopping centers. 

Practically, living in Dallas has provided an amazing community of friends and colleagues in the arts who enrich my life personally and professionally and have spurred me on in the studio. I’ve had opportunities to show my work regularly --opportunities that have come to me and ones that I’ve created or collaboratively generated. The cultural soil of Dallas invites DIYness and entrepreneurial efforts which is good for artists. The economics of the place aren’t as conducive to fruitfulness though. Affordable housing and studio spaces are hard to come by despite the idea that Dallas is full of open space. This has been a challenge to my work over the years. I’ve had to move studios many times based on the commercial and/or corporate priorities of local universities and businesses that seem unaware of, unwilling or unable to support artists within the larger infrastructure of DFW. 

What are you currently working on?

Currently, I’m working on a project I’m calling ‘cellular networks’ which explores the idea of the cell as a hub and holder of information both within the human body and within contemporary information infrastructures.

I’m in the testing and experimentation stage. I’d like to develop a series of slight, cast copper sculptures that visualize seamless connections between ‘sensory hubs’ in the body (i.e. fingers, lips and ears) and handheld devices which I’m calling ‘techno-prosthetic hubs’.

I’m hoping to work with some foundry technicians to cast fragile, map-like, linear sculptures. I imagine them to be sculptural ‘info-graphics’ hung on walls or situated on floors.

These network-like sculptures can be thought of as propositions for new ways of interacting with technology or as maps that depict the contemporary reality of our ‘extended body-device’ circulatory systems, visualizing the influx and output or translation of sense data in strange, beautiful and poetic ways.

If you feel comfortable, please share how your residency has been postponed and what you intend to work on in the interim.

I was all set to go to New York and participate in the NARS Foundation International Artist Residency in Brooklyn set to start April 1st. The residency is three months long and seemed to come at the perfect time for me professionally. Coronavirus took over though and as of now, I’ve rescheduled the residency for the Fall. The decision was disappointing but there was no good way forward in light of the drastic changes to counter the rate of infection. The residency cancelled all programming for April and likely it would remain on pause into May or June. While I was creatively intrigued by going to NY during this strange time, it became clear that to do so would be foolish. So, in the next 6 months I’ll do a whole lot of spring cleaning! From closets to studio inventory to mental and physical health practices... and try to shift gears into a much needed slower pace, appreciating simple things at home and in my neighborhood and connecting with friends and family in new ways. I still have my studio here and I plan to be there a lot working on my falsetto and my dance moves while poking at and pruning new sculptures and old piles of stuff.

about kristen cochran

Kristen Cochran is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Dallas, Texas. Originally from Portland, Oregon, she moved to Texas to complete her MFA at The Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in 2010. She has exhibited her work locally, nationally and internationally and has been awarded residencies in Long Island City, New York, Mittersill, Austria, Banner, Wyoming and recently completed a year-long residency at The Center for Arts and Medicine at Baylor Hospital’s Sammons Center for Cancer Research. Kristen has taught extensively at universities and museums in the Dallas-Fort Worth area including The University of Texas, Dallas, The Nasher Sculpture Center and The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Recent exhibitions include chroma soma at Barry Whistler Gallery (Dallas, Texas), Fold In at Lawndale Arts Center (Houston, Texas), GOALS at the Stein Galleries (Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio) and Material Intension at ex ovo projects. She is heading to Brooklyn, New York in the Spring of 2020 to participate in the NARS Foundation International Artist Residency.

Cochran’s recent work explores the pleasures, absurdities and banalities of daily labor (be it physical, mental or spiritual) and its symbolic implications. Her transdisciplinary work shape shifts in the forms of sculpture, drawing, video and installation and is often comprised of quotidian materials such as bread, clay, clothing, shirt pockets and copper plumbing—materials used as they relate to the gestures, needs and aspirations of human beings at work.

kristencochran.com

@cathedrals_of_jelly