Celeste Cooning: Myth and Memory

Celeste Cooning is best known for creating large-scale integrated art installations. Aside from various exhibitions, her work adorns city parks, storefronts, special events, and the stage. 2013 marked the transformation of Cooning’s signature cut paper aesthetic into a permanent outdoor sculpture for the city with support from 1% for Public Art and Seattle’s Office of Arts
and Culture. The sculpture, titled Bounty, functions as a threshold for Jackson Park Perimeter Trail in north Seattle’s Pinehurst neighborhood. The stylized, ornate fronds function as a bouquet of sorts extolling the virtues of the Pacific Northwest landscape.

Cooning was the first Artist in Residence at Amazon Corporate Headquarters in 2018. More of her artwork lives at Harborview Medical Center West, Starbucks Global, Theo Chocolate Tour Hopper, and Amazon’s Bigfoot building in downtown Seattle.

Cooning’s window installation has a wonderful synergy with BIMA’s other “paper-based” exhibitions this spring, Power of the Presses, Young Ok Kim: Hanjicraft — Revival of a Joseon Dynasty Artform, and Urban Sketchers.

She received an MFA in Painting from the University of Washington in 2007. For more information visit celestecooning.com.