Susanne Cockrell's social and documentary projects consider how people inhabit specific places over time, amplifying the emergent choreography of landscape, shared experience, and participatory actions that shape collective and civic life. Early research in experimental dance, environmental studies, and Eastern philosophy continues to shape her interests and craft, with attention to ecological rhythms, ephemeral encounters, and the rhythms and poetics of daily life. From 2002 to 2017, fieldfaring projects, in collaboration with her late husband, Ted Purves, asked questions about systems of critical exchange, collectivity, and the urban landscape through the lens of informal social economies and rural aesthetics. The work investigated ways that people come together in social and public contexts.  

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Her artwork and teaching over forty years has evolved in response to the dynamic ethos of the Bay Area and within a continuous inquiry and relationship to landscape, embodiment, the ethics of care and reciprocity, and impulse to dig and deepen conversations.  Tracking encounters and stories that ground, heal, and uplift, she is often working in collaboration with landscape, communities, and non-human species. As a Professor of Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts, she actively contributed to the fledgling field of art and social practice from 2005 to 2027. 

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She lives and works, as a guest, on the Ancestral and Traditional Homelands, yet unceded territories, of the Chichenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. 

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Contact: susanne0cockrell@gmail.com​​​​​​