Co-Presented Artists
Lake Object works with a small group of local artists through a non-commission representation model. The program centers artists whose practices have made a meaningful contribution to the regional arts community and whose work has informed or influenced Julie Lake’s own artistic practice. It is an honor to share these artists’ works at L.O.
The exchange between the person who makes the work and the person who chooses to live with it has long been an important part of Taos’s artistic culture, and one the gallery believes in actively cultivating. Rather than following a conventional gallery structure, Lake Object provides a platform for visibility and meaningful introduction while encouraging a direct connection between artist and collector when purchasing a piece.
J. Matthew Thomas
IG: @jmattthomas
J. Matthew Thomas (b. 1976) is an artist and architect who grew up in the Midwest United States. He utilizes the tools of architecture to explore both social and aesthetic patterns using methods of deconstruction and reconstruction of materials to reveal and conceal natural and manufactured systems and patterns. As an interdisciplinary artists, Thomas explores the intersections of the built environment, reimagining landscape, infrastructure, and community engagement through a multidisciplinary approach spanning art, curation, public art and events, architecture, and urban design.
He received his MA in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University in New York City, and currently operates his practice through Studio Taos, and the nonprofit he founded, The Paseo Project.
Thomas currently resides in Taos, New Mexico with his husband and 40 chickens.
Michelle Cooke
Web: https://michellecooke.com/
Current & Upcoming exhibitions:
Aaron Payne Fine Art. Solo Exhibition: Paths to the Horizon. October 3 – October 31, 2026
Taos Center for the Arts. Larry Bell and Michelle Cooke: The Murky Realm of Perception. October 24 – November 29, 2026
“The recurring themes in my work are fragility, transparency, balance, weightlessness, and gravity. There is a delicacy in my work which is due either to technique or material, or both. I work for a tenuous balance of extremes. Each work yields its meaning through the handling of the material.”
Michelle Cooke’s work imbues a keen sensibility for the physical integrity of her materials with rigorous attention to formal structure. Her Light installations rendered with small slides of glass convey a disarming directness and an immediate visual reference to the structural properties of light. At first transparent and virtually self-effacing, the wall-mounted glass squares create lyrical and tactile light effects of enormous evocative power, while at the same time the grid’s enigmatic formal structure subdues the aggressive echelons of projecting glass.
Cooke’s work has been shown in numerous museums and solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. She lives and works in Taos, New Mexico and New York, New York.
Sasha Raphael vom Dorp
Sasha Raphael vom Dorp is a multidisciplinary artist living in the high desert of northern New Mexico whose works explore the rich territory between the most subtle elements on earth.
For the last twenty years, Sasha has mined a rich vein of work at the intersection of light, water, and sound, creating an original technical and artistic vernacular all his own. Deeply influenced by the Light and Space school’s artistic tradition, Sasha’s work blends his deep love for the natural world, modern physics, and the metaphysical borderlands between the two.
He utilizes a custom-designed and built system to support his explorations allowing him to see, and record sound waves interacting with pure sunlight, and matter. From this, Sasha has created a series of interactive video installations and limited edition prints exhibited and collected around the world. His work has been featured in the New York Times and on PBS.
