Biographical Note
Laurie Beth Kalb Cosmo is currently a lecturer at the University of Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society in the Netherlands. Before relocating to Europe, Cosmo was a folklorist who worked as a curator and museum administrator at several institutions and was the recipient of a number of fellowships and a Fulbright award.
In the 1980s, she participated in two projects where she worked alongside Carl Fleischhauer and Boyd Pratt in New Mexico. Cosmo documented the art of Hispanic carvers in northern New Mexico while working on the New Mexico Folklife Project. A year later she contributed to the survey of historic architecture in the northeastern quadrant of New Mexico.
Cosmo authored two books from the project, Crafting Devotions: Tradition in Contemporary New Mexico Santos and Santos Statues & Sculpture: Contemporary Woodcarving from New Mexico.