Birth, decay and werewolves: sculptor uses stop-action animation to create worlds

Monica Cook, a Dalton, Ga. native now living as a successful sculptor in Brooklyn, creates entire alternate worlds with interactive figures that move in sometimes beautiful, often bizarre ways.

In a work called "Deuce," a claymation man, on what seems like a crucial romantic dinner date, turns into a werewolf. In one called "Volley," two white-haired, terrified monkeys slowly turn to dust after their mother gives birth to a baby monkey surrounded by clear, glassy globes that burst into smoke when touched.

"I learned how to make those bubbles by watching 'Steve Spangler Science,' an online kids' show with experiments; he made those clear globes by pushing dry ice through silk," Cook says. "Children are my biggest fans in New York. All my art contains buttons and levers that you can turn or pump to make a robotic heart pump or a lights blaze on an object."

Starting Feb. 3, Cook's latest artistic universe of sculptures will be displayed at Cress Gallery at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as a part of the Diane Marek Visiting Artist Series. Cook, who studied figure painting at UTC, will be on campus from Feb. 1-6 to meet students and the public.

"Sometimes the artist teaches a workshop; Monica will be giving a lecture about her work and she may decide to teach a class while she's here," says UTC spokeswoman Ruth Grover.

The exhibit she is bringing to Chattanooga is called Milk Fruit and has sculpture that is child-friendly, Cook promises. It also has four moving vehicles in it. Children would probably love the four surrealistic birds that drive one go-kart with a waterfall inside it. An astronaut named Vincent and his pet rooster Coco pilot a spaceship and Coco has a dune buggy/moon rover of her own to drive.

Dalton native Monica Cook, now a New York art star, created an astronaut whose robotic lips try but fail to kiss properly. Her bizarre yet poignant creatures often try desperately to fit into human life.

Like all the figures in Cook's worlds, the Milk Fruit sculptures tell a story, and visitors will be able to flip switches and poke buttons to make some of the figures move.

At the end of each exhibition, Cook always makes a video with stop-action motion of her sculptures, scenery and props -- and the exhibits are always destroyed by the video's end. When "Deuce" and "Volley" were done being shown, she used animation to move her monkeys and the wolfman and his sweetheart through a brief story. But the clay couple in "Deuce" started melting from the natural oils on the skin of Cook's hands because she had to move their faces and bodies into new shapes for the camera.

"I built a glowing magic cave for 'Volley' and trees and a snowstorm so, by the end, it was too big to get out of my studio door so it had to be destroyed," Cook said.

Milk Fruit seems more like a 3-D romp. But who knows what Valentino's and Coco's fates will be until Cook finishes her video at the end of the exhibit. She made detailed storyboards for "Volley" and "Deuce," then threw them away and decided simply to follow her impulses when she filmed their stories. That unpredictability is what makes her kinetic sculptures fascinating -- and probably accounts for their appeal to children as well as adults.

"In the Diane Marek series we look for artists who are challenging, provocative and Monica's work is exactly that," Grover says. "'Volley' could even be considered disturbing with its images of decay and birth."

Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.

Coco the rooster has his own quick-moving go-kart.