Lisa Kokin | Art made from thread

Welcome

This website strives to be accurate and complete. It represents a large part of the work I have completed since 1990. Although it is rather vast in scope, there are many pieces in each body of work that are not included. On occasion I accept commissions for private and public collections. Please send me a note if you are interested in a commission.

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Sewing & Alterations

Thread

I have always thought that eventually I would take my X-ACTO knife to the books that I inherited from my grandfather but I realized that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I decided to make sewn versions of random pages of some of the books. I have begun with the Yiddish edition of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

The pieces look as though they might be sacred text, but they are not, at least not in the traditional sense. Some would say they are the opposite, given Marx’s thoughts about religion. For me they are a way of preserving the legacy of my ancestors and affirming the continued life of the book and of a language rescued from the brink of extinction.

The three pieces in the self-help title series are each a kind of sound poem composed of statements and admonitions, all related to each other. Cacophony is a spiral of titles beginning in the center with mothers, progressing to the realm of negotiating and the world of work, and culminating with helpful hints on money and wealth. Pulling Your Own Strings, an apt title for a piece composed entirely of thread, has to do with striving and power. Overcast, a double-entendre relating to both weather and stitching, deals with happiness, depression and menopause.