About the Artist

Cindy Stokes is a contemporary photographer and paper sculptor based in Redwood City, California. She primarily makes abstract black-and-white photographs and sculptural forms that play with order and chaos and reflect life’s ambiguities better than representational styles. At heart, Stokes is driven by a view that much of our world, including people’s actions, ecosystems, economics, politics, etc., is complex, highly networked, and nuanced, and hence difficult to truly understand or control. This view is probably innate but has been reinforced by her career in computational biology that repeatedly demonstrated how intricate, and seemingly unknowable, the human body is.

Stokes’ interest in making visual art began during countless hours viewing and photographing cells and tissues through the microscope in graduate school. Over time, photography became a means to explore and express broader ideas, emotion, and story. More recently, Stokes has expanded into three dimensional forms – shaping photographs into sculptural objects, mark-making with ink, charcoal or paint, and incorporating wood, metal and other materials that relate to the concept of a project.

Whether using photography or sculptural forms, Stokes seeks to use beauty and intrigue to attract attention and hold it long enough to stimulate emotion and questions in the viewer. She is a keen observer of the world around her and creates artwork that’s informed by a deep love of the natural world, curiosity about human psychology, and her knowledge in science and engineering.

Stokes has exhibited nationally and internationally and been a featured speaker at Leonardo art-science programs and Shooting the West. She’s a member and current president of the Bay Area Photographers Collective. In addition to photography and sculpture her interests include handmade and photo books, cross-disciplinary projects, travel, hiking, and music.