'Lia Cook: In Touch, Faces and Mazes' opens March 16 at Hillestad Gallery

The Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will present "Lia Cook: In Touch, Faces and Mazes," a solo show featuring the work of Lia Cook, March 16 through April 10.

Cook, a weaver from Berkeley, Calif., uses an electronic Jacquard hand loom to weave faces that dissolve into continuously changing, maze-like patterns. As the faces fragment, a perceptual shift occurs, moving through a place of transition and ambiguity to reveal the physical, tactile nature of the constructed image. Cook uses a detail, often re-photographed, layered and re-woven in oversize scale, to intensify an emotional or sensual encounter.

"I use a digital loom to weave images that are imbedded in the structure of cloth," Cook said. "The digital pixel becomes a thread that when interlaced with another becomes both cloth and image at the same time. My practice involves research into new technologies and new ways to translate my images that make the structure visible and physically felt, attempting to create the image as physical object."

About Cook's work, Robert Bell, senior curator of decorative arts and design at the National Gallery of Australia, wrote in an exhibition catalogue essay: "The candid intimacy of the family snapshot seems an unlikely starting point for Lia Cook's over-scale woven images, until one considers that such weaving, whatever its size, is the result of the organization of small elements, close attention to detail and the dexterity of handwork."

The show, organized and curated by Hillestad Gallery director and UNL textiles professor Wendy Weiss, is a traveling exhibit that will be on tour through 2011. The Hillestad Gallery is the first venue on the tour.

Cook will present a public lecture, "Lia Cook: Faces and Mazes," at 4 p.m. April 4 in Room 11 of the Home Economics Building, north of 35th Street and East Campus Loop. The Hillestad Gallery is part of the UNL Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design and is located on the second floor of the Home Economics Building. The gallery is open to the public without charge Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and weekends by special request. Call (402) 472-2911 for more information and to request weekend opening. The gallery is closed during university holidays and between shows. For more information, visit http://textilegallery.unl.edu.