Tracey Cockrell

Tracey Cockrell is an interdisciplinary artist who frequently collaborates with other artists, writers, & musicians. Using sympathetic resonance as a metaphor and as a means of sound propagation, she builds sculptures and experimental musical instruments that explore the origins of language and challenge the authority of language for making meaning.

Biography

Cockrell’s work examines complex relationships between language and landscape, psychoacoustics and subjectivity of place. Her sound sculptures and installations vibrate with the sounds of the landscape.

Cockrell’s work has been discussed in the Portland Press Herald, The Atlantic Monthly, The Art Section, Sculpture Magazine, ArtNewEngland, The Boston Sunday Globe, WGBH TV’s ‘Greater Boston Arts,’ and Maine Public Radio’s ‘Maine Things Considered’, among others. She has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Oregon College of Art and Craft, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Leland Iron Works, the Tides Institute & Museum of Art, Maine Farmland Trust, and Penland School of Crafts. Her sculptures and sound art have been exhibited nationally, and have been featured in alternative radio programs and live performance at festivals in New York, San Francisco, Oakland, & Seattle.

Cockrell currently teaches in the MFA in Studio Art at Maine College of Art (MECA), where she has also served at the chairperson of the sculpture department. From 2008 to 2018, she taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in Portland, Oregon. While at PNCA, she also served as interim academic dean, associate academic dean, chairperson of the foundation department, and founding chairperson of the Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies.

Cockrell was a visiting faculty member at Bennington in Spring and Fall 2022 and Spring 2023.