Artist Nicole Cooper’s Work Offers New Ways to Think About Climate

On the northern tip of Governors Island, just half a mile from lower Manhattan, a former 1870s munitions warehouse has been transformed. The expansive top floor of the building, which was converted into the Art Center at Governors Island in 2019, now houses the studios of 19 artists who fill the space with creative exploration.

On one side of a long, generously lit room, near a row of windows looking out into the New York Harbor, an amalgamation of colors from past work and new inspiration decorates the workspace of Nicole Cooper.

Cooper, 43, is part of this year’s Lower Manhattan Cultural Center’s Art Center Residency, which provides artists with a workspace in the Art Center at Governors Island and a stipend for materials. The eight-month program selects from a pool of nominated artists whose work highlights the intersection of climate and art.

This criteria is a perfect description for Cooper, whose work explores how art can help people process complicated emotions surrounding the climate crisis. Her goal is to spark connection to the planet in her viewers in a way that inspires climate action.

“What we’re seeing is that science doesn’t tend to motivate. Charts and figures don’t tend to motivate,” Cooper said. “But our emotions actually do motivate us, and I think that’s where art plays a really powerful role in the climate movement.”

Cooper, who now lives on the Upper West Side, is originally from St. Louis, MO. In 2007, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute, where she focused on painting.

Many of her oil paintings center on and display a command of the human form, which Cooper said she was drawn to early on. She quickly took this interest in a scientific direction, studying anatomy and evolution.

“I started researching biology and thinking about how we’re biologically connected across generations,” Cooper said. This led her to think about humans’ connection to the world, a theme that has been in her work for decades.

However, she didn’t specifically begin focusing her work on climate change until around 2020, when the climate crisis was brought to the forefront of global conversations as COVID-19 lockdowns temporarily lowered carbon emissions.

Cooper was inspired to face her own complex emotions around the climate crisis. This led her to notice the disconnect many feel from the climate and begin thinking about how her art could change this.

She began to blend both the themes of generational connection and climate change together. While all of Cooper’s work leans towards abstract, climate change appears through her paintings in varying degrees of literalness.

In one of the first oil paintings where this shift comes through, “Rise,” a billowing stream of black smoke rises behind a morphing figure of women representing the past and present.

Cooper modeled the trajectory of the smoke off the famous hockey-stick chart displaying today’s global surface temperature rise in comparison to the past centuries.

However, in some of her paintings, she focuses more on color and light to build messages around hope or empathy—values necessary for climate action.

She continued to explore these themes around the end of 2022 as she moved to New York City, where she was soon embraced by the community of climate artists within the city.

Already, Cooper’s art has been part of a dozen group exhibitions here. In February, she had her first NYC solo exhibition, “The Mothers in Me Will Meet You There.” The exhibition, which showed at the Centerpoint Gallery of Anthroposophy NYC, featured nine colorful canvases of Cooper’s recent work.

Now, Cooper is trying something new. This year, she has used LMCC’s Art Center Residency to focus on society’s complicated relationship with carbon.

“In climate communications, carbon is often vilified through ‘decarbonization’ and ‘carbon footprint’ messaging in a ‘fight’ against climate change,” Cooper said. “Carbon itself isn’t the problem, it’s just in the wrong place due to our extractive fossil fuel systems.”

If we changed the negative messaging around carbon, though, it could promote conversations around repairing regenerative relationships in nature, a concept Cooper is exploring through her work. To do this, she decided to branch out with her work once again and try new mediums, including papermaking.

At the end of one table in Cooper’s workspace, several squares of neutral, organic-looking paper were placed alongside a small sign that read, “I’m made from mushrooms!”

Though her projects look different, Cooper said her process is still the same: beginning with research and experimentation. She started looking into regenerative agriculture and thinking about nature’s decomposers, which eventually led her to mushrooms.

Now, Cooper has been working to incorporate her handmade paper into artworks that she is creating through handweaving. She is also experimenting with other materials such as compost, algae bio-yarn, and natural pigments.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever completely leave painting,” Cooper said. “It’s just kind of a way of stepping out of it for a little just to think through the ‘why’ of the materials.”

Cooper said that another benefit of the program is the inspiration she has received from the other residents. In fact, it was another resident who loaned her some of the materials she needed for the papermaking.

“It’s really cool to have so many artists that are focused on climate in one way or another,” Cooper said.

Once a month, LMCC opens up the residents’ workspace to the public. These free open studios are an opportunity to see the artists’ process and hear about their work directly.

During July’s open studio event, Cooper held a Climate Cafe, a support group that involves guided discussion for attendees to verbalize their emotions around climate change. As the group took a tour around the studio, more and more people joined.

“It provided this really cool entry point for people to have conversations with the artist or maybe hear answers to questions that they might not have thought of,” Cooper said.

Cooper’s workspace will be on display at two more open studio events this year on August 22 and September 26 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Nicole Cooper is a participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Arts Center Residency program. LMCC.net.