Lisa Kokin’s work in artist’s books, mixed media installation, assemblage and sculpture is about memory, history, and social commentary. She used photographs as objects to create new ways of considering the photographic image and the results are layered, whimsical, artful, and unique.

Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. A recipient of a California Arts Council Individual Artist’s Fellowship and a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, Ms. Kokin’s work is in numerous public and private collections. She is represented by Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, CA, Tayloe Piggott Gallery in Jackson, WY, Gail Severn Gallery in Sun Valley, ID and Craighead Green Gallery in Dallas, TX.

Sometimes there are inscriptions on the back (“Susie, 7 years old”) but more often they come to me stripped of all identity. I sit in my studio and speculate about the nature of the photographed people’s lives. I will, of course, never know the truth, so I feel it is my job to give them new lives and rescue them from the obscurity they would be headed for were it not for me, humble servant of the arts. I try to invent an altogether different identity for them but of course, in the final analysis these works are more about me than any of the hundreds of anonymous individuals who appear in my work.