The Cooper Union is welcoming multiple new additions to its full-time faculty at the start of this upcoming academic year.  We spoke with these newest community members to learn more about their research interests and what drew them to Cooper. Joining the School of Art faculty is Marie Lorenz, a Brooklyn-based visual artist who has received the American Academy in Rome fellowship and a Creative Capital and National Endowment for the Arts award. She has a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from Yale University. 

Tell us about your practice. 

I’m a visual artist based in Brooklyn, working with printmaking, sculpture, performance, and installation. Since 2005, I’ve operated The Tide and Current Taxi, an art project where I ferry people through New York Harbor in boats that I design and build myself. I use tidal charts to time each journey so that the boat is pushed by tidal currents. I keep a weblog of every outing, and the trips have become an interesting archive of how the city has changed. 

I also collect objects that I find washed up on the shore around New York—plastic, driftwood, etc—and use them to create prints and sculptures. To me, the harbor is like a giant centrifuge that spins together everything we value and everything we throw away. With printmaking, I want to make something physical and tangible from the experience of beachcombing or navigating through overlooked places. 

What brought you to The Cooper Union? 

I’ve always loved Cooper. After 20+ years living in New York, I have many close friends and people I admire who studied or taught here, and I’ve always been moved by their vision.  There’s a clarity of purpose here, a belief that taking risks and pushing boundaries is fundamental to being an artist. So when the opportunity came up, I was excited to join the institution. It feels like exactly the right place for me to grow, as both an artist and a teacher. 

What aspects of teaching are you most excited about in the coming academic year at Cooper? 

I’m very excited to get to know the students. During my interview visit, I had great conversations that stuck with me. Every student I met was deeply invested in being an artist in a totally different and personal way. After my lecture, it felt like people truly heard what I was saying, understood my work, and were eager to share their thoughts. So many students seemed engaged in process-based, site-responsive projects and were excited to talk with me about them. That mutual recognition made me feel immediately connected to Cooper.