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Who’s Ariel?
Ariel Cooper is an artist living and working in the unceded homelands and territories of the Ohlone people. Most people now call this place Oakland, California and she lives in the Fruitvale neighborhood.
Where does she work?
Mostly in Oakland at her home in Fruitvale and in the woods along Sausal Creek. But she also has some special places she likes to visit outside of town as much as she can.
Who does she collaborate with?
Friends, the woods, water, trash, dream people, scrub jays, english ivy, cats, paper, paint, fire, invasive plants, tools, willow trees, sheep, rocks, clay.
What does she make?
Comic books, picture poems, quiet moments, cups, tapestries, baskets, interspecies and mysterious friendships, rooms and gardens that feel good to be in, stories that ask questions, time travel, opportunities to practice commoning.
Why does she do it?
Ariel is responding to the art, and stories of creative visionaries she admires like Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Silvia Federici, John Berger, George Washington Carver, Hildegard of Bingen, Friedl Dicker Brandeis, Father Simeon Carmona. She wants to be a good ancestor someday too and hopes the art she makes, skills she builds, and stories she tells can be a small link in a web of other links that leads to a world where living people of all species are more free and have more opportunities and abilities to live in mutual abundance. She doesn't totally know what that future will look like, but she has lots of ideas and questions she wants to ask and try out with her friends while she's still alive.