Courttney Cooper draws large elaborate and exuberant maps of Cincinnati, by hand, from memory. Gluing together pieces of found paper from his job at a grocery store, Cooper's obsessive drawings, rendered with ballpoint pens, map out neighborhoods in his hometown in remarkable detail. He often walks the streets of the city, committing all the places he visits down to memory, a process that he has been using since he was a child. His maps depict more than just streets and monuments, often addressing the season in which it was made, current events and projects going on locally, like the WEBN fireworks or Oktoberfest or the Taste of Cincinnati, even going back into the drawings to update them when new buildings are constructed or torn down. Throughout the sprawling maps are written thoughts and phrases hidden beneath the landscape and revealed within the open white space of the paper.

Cooper's 2-person show (with Cole Carothers) at The Cincinnati Art Museum in 2013 was reviewed in CityBeat and AEQAI and he has exhibited extensively in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area including the Contemporary Art Center and The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, Covington, KY and is a studio resident at Visionaries + Voices, a non-profit arts organization that provides support for artists with disabilities, offering them professional studio space and that allows them to grow professionally and personally.

Courttney Cooper mini-documentary by V +V work-study intern Sam Pennybacker: http://vimeo.com/36694123 and profile by Visionaries + Voices co-founder Keith Banner on AEQAI