Anastasia Coope - Darning Woman [CD]

Darning Woman is an intentional, beautiful,sometimes confrontational album that shredsexpectations of DIY, bedroom music, and femininethemes. There's a lushness and maternal instinct at play,as Coope connects the dots between physicality,ephemera, and the ultrafeminine. "I don't really like to deal that much with themes ofpersonal hardships, or heartache and love," saysAnastasia Coope. "Ultimately, I work most honestlywith the language of what is happening in a moment andthe passage of time around it. That, coupled with myreaction to entering the artistic landscape, and mythoughts about what does and doesn't getrepresentation, comprises most of this album." Darning Woman explores, among other things, themeditative aspect of sewing, patching andembellishment, care and repair, collection not asmodern, craven consumption but as a counterpoint tomaterialism. This sort of collection - the good kind, thegathering of things to make a home - can be, in Coope'swords, "A very baby way to critique capitalism. Birdsmake nests, right? It can be a new life for a thing thatwas made. What you surround yourself with matters." To that end, Anastasia Coope is also the founder andleader of the Bonzo collective and show series, anexciting new home for the type of expansive,profoundly creative scene that New York has beenmissing for some time. And while Bonzo may well bethe ascent of a new community, Darning Woman is thestory of Anastasia Coope, herself. It is the sound ofCoope entering the world as an artist, acknowledgingthe tangle of what changes - the gaze of the world,Coope's art in reaction and community to art in general- and what does not: her ideas and her own self.