Photo: "All of One of Myself" by Michael Cook

The Mimbres Region Arts Council, in partnership with Western Institute for Lifelong Learning (WILL) and WNMU, is pleased to feature painter Michael Cook in the first lecture of the 2014-2015 Artist Lecture Series on Thursday, September 11, 2014, 6:30 pm at WNMU's Parotti Hall.

The Artist Lecture Series provides an opportunity to get up close and personal with some of America's finest artists. Participants have the opportunity to learn about an artist's motivations, techniques and history in an entertaining, congenial setting. Light refreshments are served.

Michael Cook was born in Puerto Rico and educated in the United Kingdom and the United States. Upon finishing graduate school he accepted an appointment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he began work on his nuclear and thermonuclear paintings, one the earliest concentrated bodies of work in painting that examined the development and use of the atom by conflating the visual language of alchemical notation and particle physics. Expanding the understanding of "landscape" beyond the literal image of geography has been at the core of his concerns by employing a method of visual semiotics.

Michael Cook has been an influential educator. At UC Berkeley he developed and taught the first video/performance classes in the art department called "Temporal and Linear Structures" as well as painting. At the University of New Mexico, as Associate Dean for Technology, he conceptualized and helped implement the Arts Technology Center, which became ArtsLab. Also at UNM he developed "Nature and Technology," an innovative intensive field study class as part of the D.H. Lawrence Ranch Workshops.

Michael Cook's work has been exhibited widely in such venues as The New Museum, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information contact the MRAC offices at 1201 Pope Street in Silver City, call 575-538-2505, or visit us online at www.mimbresarts.org.

The Mimbres Region Arts Council provides quality visual, performing, and youth arts programs that serve and strengthen our community.