Exploring meaning in/through textiles
Bodies are born to embrace. My experience as a queer woman striving to feel grounded, coupled with my academic interests in art, gender, and sexuality studies, provide me with an intersectional lens for approaching my creative practice and inspire me to pursue making with a positive global impact. Fashion serves as the ultimate convergence of my interests. Through fabric, we render our bodies into sites where both gender constraints and empowerment manifest materially.
My artistic practice merges fashion with sculpture, collage, and performance to express frustration with oppressive norms and joy in the power of refusing to conform. Found materials meld to ensure the environmental sustainability of my feminist approach, as well as honor the rich histories woven into existing materials. I strip discarded furniture and garments down to their skeletons to mend, rebuild, and heal them, mirroring the act of undressing and redressing, creating new iterations of the self and telling new stories. By making work intended to be touched, my viewers transform into performers. As figures, patterns, and textures intersect, confront, and highlight one another, I investigate how people embody the fabric of their environments and how clothing, as an external expression, impacts an individual’s internal attitude and sense of belonging in the world.
Nora Cowett (she/her)
Born 2002, Ithaca, NY
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA
Education
2024 AB with Honors in Visual Arts and AB in Gender & Sexuality Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI
Art Exhibitions
2024 Venus Dissolved — List Art Center, Providence, RI (solo show)
44th Annual Student Juried Exhibition — Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Providence, RI (Jurors: Jessica Brown and Shandiin Brown)
2023 Hm, Check It Out — List Art Center, Providence, RI
Your Honor, I Have A Show To Get To — List Art Center, Providence, RI
Senior Summer — List Art Center, Providence, RI
2022 42nd Annual Student Juried Exhibition — Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Providence, RI (Jurors: Wendy Edwards and Jordan Seaberry)
A Room of Our Own — List Art Center, Providence, RI
2021 Sculpt — List Art Center, Providence, RI
Fashion Exhibitions
2024 Amuse-Yeux — Brown Fashion Week, 1 Davol Square, Providence, RI
2023 Fruits of My Labor from the Kitchen Table — Brown Fashion Week, 1 Davol Square, Providence, RI
2022 Styleweek — The Capital Grille, Providence, RI
Look, Mom! I Just Learned How To Knit — Brown Fashion Week, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Providence, RI
Popup Showroom — The Bag LA, Los Angeles, CA
2021 Bound to Somewhere — Brown Fashion Week, held virtually
2019 Denim Day Fashion Show — The Argos Inn Warehouse Lounge, Ithaca, NY
Awards
2024 Roberta Joslin Award for Innovation in the Arts — Brown University Dept. of Visual Art
2023 Marlene Malik Fellowship Award — Brown University Dept. of Visual Art
2022 2nd Place in the Annual Juried Student Exhibition — Brown University Arts Institute
2021 Foster Prize for Outstanding Achievement — Brown University Dept. of French and Francophone Studies
Press
2024 The Brown Daily Herald — “Fashion@Brown launches biggest annual runway show to date” by Rose Farman-Farma, March 18 (interview).
2023 Brown Alumni Magazine — “How to Read a Picture” by Tim Murphy, August 24, p.14-15 (interview).
The Brown Daily Herald — “‘It’s really an art form’: Nora Cowett ’24, Phoebe Dragseth ’24 talk pursuing fashion at Brown” by Rya Vallabhaneni, March 21 (interview).
2022 The College Hill Independent — "Sit on Me" / "Look Mom! I just learned how to knit." October 21, p.17 (feature).
Related Experience
2024-present Creative Content Intern — DÔEN, Los Angeles, CA
2024 Studio Assistant — Ella Mae, Los Angeles, CA
Producer / Moderator — The Turnaway Play: Reading & Panel, Providence, RI
Costume Designer — This Was Really Great (film), Providence, RI
Retail and Partnerships — Dresscue, Los Angeles, CA
2023-2024 Studio Assistant / Social Media Manager — Loominous Rugs, Providence, RI
2023 Costume Designer — Last Night Was a Movie (film), Providence, RI
Marketing and Partnerships Intern — Basic Space, New York, NY
Costume Designer — Persimmons (film), Providence, RI
2018-2020 Research Assistant — Cornell Costume and Textiles Collection, Ithaca, NY