Mary Cook created a life size drawing-installation, that enveloped the walls of the vestibule of a 18th century stone church in the Hudson River Town of Troy, New York located at the CAC Woodside Artists Center. Formerly a very affluent industrial center and home to many American historical figures such as Uncle Sam, Harriet Tubman and Madame Mame Faye, this small town can be considered somewhat of a graveyard of American Industry.

This graphite drawing depicts figures originally taken from film stills from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film The Bitter Tears of Petra van Kant, in exploration of the film’s connections between desire and power. Concerned with an energetic depiction of human form and its emotive qualities, this meticulously rendered graphite drawing is a representation of the push and pull between the sacred and profane with the emphasis on theatricality and a persistence of raw emotion. Side by side with the drawing and submerged within a sub aqueous landscape of ocean waves made of string and fabric, performance artist C. Ryder Cooley floated from the rafters within this nautical tableaux, introducing sounds and projections tin further animation of the environment.