Claire Coté | New Mexico, USA

Bio

Claire Coté (b. 1981) is an artist whose practice synthesizes science, education, community collaboration, and environmental action. Rooted in the natural and cultural ecology of Northern New Mexico’s high desert, her interdisciplinary, experiment-driven work spans drawing, painting, cyanotype, collage, sound, interactive sculpture, walking, and story collection. Through mixed-media experimentation, multi-sensory experiences, and collaboration she explores the concept of place as both living ecosystem and shared narrative.

Claire holds a B.A. in Studio Art and Cultural Anthropology from University of New Mexico and an M.A. in Arts and Ecology from Dartington College of Art in England and completed UNM’s Land Arts of the American West program. As an artist and curator, Claire has worked with the US National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service as well as the Global Geoparks Network on commissions, residencies and site-based environmental artworks and events. For seven years she practiced as an international collaborative duo with English artist, Anna Keleher, including their residency at Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark in Ireland, and an itinerant residency across Europe. Recently, Claire participated in the Kinhouse Residency in Fort Wayne Indiana. Her work has been exhibited at UNM Art Museum in Albuquerque, Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Arnolfini Bookshop in Bristol, England, Great Sand Dunes National Park Visitor Center, and Goggleworks Art Center in Reading, as well as in galleries, libraries, radio broadcasts, and walks in New Mexico, U.S., U.K., and Europe. Born and raised in Northern New Mexico on the Taos Plateau, Claire lives with her husband and two daughters in their off-grid home near Questa, New Mexico.

www.ClaireCote.com@clairecotearts IG

@clairecotearts FB

Dreaming Place Collaborative Drawings Statement

“Collaborative drawing as an exploratory tool is like wandering; we never know what we’ll find or who we’ll meet along the way…”

These drawings come from DREAMING PLACE, an adventurous collaboration between Claire Coté (New Mexico) and Anna Keleher (Devon, England) and the people, places, plants, creatures and things of Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark (Ireland & Northern Ireland). On sunny days and rainy days the artists passed these drawings back and forth to dream imaginative Geopark worlds.  DREAMING PLACE is a project investigating dúlra – ecosystem, dúchas – heritage, aisling – dream. Based on an ancient Celtic tradition in which the land remembers everything, the project explores “dreams of place” in which the land speaks through the dreamer. The artists collaboratively inhabited the ancestral homelands of the cross-border Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark in Ireland for 40 days and 40 nights in June and July 2011, and then brought the project back in the Place-Dreamer Pod to tour its homeland in April 2013.

During these itinerant residencies, Claire and Anna developed innovative techniques for total immersion in the diverse natural, cultural and dream ecologies of the Geopark. Field data was interpreted and shared via collaborative drawings, blog posts, radio broadcasts, Learning Log and Place-Dreamer’s Toolkit.

https://dreamingplaceproject.wordpress.com/

https://claireandanna.wordpress.com/

ClaireCote.com

LEAPsite.org

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

-Melody Beattie