Ashokan Fugues - Dawn
Watercolor, color pencils on paper, 14" x 28", 2013
Includes a copy of her book: Margaret Cogswell: RIVER FUGUES
Artist: Margaret Cogswell

Margaret Cogswell is a mixed-media installation artist residing in West Shokan, New York. Cogswell is the recipient of numerous awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2009, Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2017, 1991, 1987) the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007, 1993); and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Emergency Grant (2014).

Since 2003, the main focus of Margaret Cogswell's work is an ongoing series of RIVER FUGUES projects that explore the increasingly politicized role of water. RIVER FUGUES is a series of projects that explore the interdependency of people, industry and rivers. All River Fugues entail regional research, recording images and narratives with video and audio which are later edited into fugues and integrated into mixed-media installations. Research / video road trips, and long walks follow rivers tracing memories and loss in the landscapes they cut through. These landscapes of haunting histories are filled with conflicting memories of hope, beauty, violence, destruction and loss.

A parallel body of explorations include works on paper. These are the result of many months of walking, exploring, photographing, and filming the landscape of an area being researched for the development of each of the River Fugues projects. Much like an archaeologist or geologist, Cogswell searches for clues to the history of a river, a people, or a place in the enigmatic remnants of their past. Often poignant elegies, both the mixed media installations and works on paper reflect the complex and changing relationship of a society to its industries and rivers and strive to be a contributing artistic voice in larger conversations addressing issues related to water.

RIVER FUGUES projects have been commissioned by museums and art centers for exhibitions nationally and internationally. Some of these projects include Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues, a solo exhibition first shown at the CUE Art Foundation in NYC (2014), and later exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Kleinert/James Art Center in Woodstock, NY, July/August 2016, the Art Lab at Columbus State University, GA (2018), the Madelon Powers Gallery at East Stroudsburg University (2019). Other exhibitions include: Soundings: Margaret Cogswell and Ellen Driscoll at Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY (2-person, 2015); Water Soundings, Zendai Zhujiajiao Art Museum, China (solo 2014); Moving the Water(s): Ashokan Fugues and Wyoming River Fugues at CUE Art Foundation, NYC (solo 2014); Wyoming River Fugues at the Art Museum, University of Wyoming, Laramie (solo 2012); Mississippi River Fugues, Art Museum, University of Memphis, Tennessee (solo 2008); Hudson River Fugues at Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, (group 2009-2010); River Fugues at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium, Monaco Ministry of Culture and Chicago Field Museum (traveling group exhibition, 2007-09); Buffalo River Fugues at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY (solo 2006); Hudson Weather Fugues at Wave Hill, NYC (group 2005), and Cuyahoga Fugues at SPACES Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio (solo 2012 and 2003).

margaretcogswell.net