C. Ryder Cooley is an artist, musician and performer. Hazel is a disembodied (taxidermy) ram.  As hybrid-performers, they create site-responsive/durational performances and installations, as well as aerial acrobatics and bittersweet ballads on accordion, singing saw and ukulele. In her collaborative afterlife, Hazel is re-embodied and trans-gendered as Ryder’s spirit animal. Their new album, XMALIA, was released in March 2013.

Ryder has participated in a wide variety of exhibitions, performances, collaborations, public works and educational projects. Her work has been presented at locations including: White Box and Exit Art galleries in NYC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Theater Artaud in San Francisco; the Robert Wilson Watermill Center on Long Island, NY; Pan American Art Projects in Miami, FL; Dorsky Museum in New Paltz, NY; Proctors Mainstage Theater in Schenectady, NY; and public art projects in Indonesia, El Salvador, France and the Czech Republic.  

Ryder received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993 and an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts at Renesselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2008. She lives between Hudson, New York and North Adams, Massachusetts and currently works at MCLA Gallery 51.