A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia

Although best known for appearing in John Waters's early films, Cookie Mueller made a more substantial mark as a writer and performer in New York from the late 1970s to her tragic death from AIDS in 1989. With her zany stories, essays, plays, club performances, underground-film roles, fashion designs, and health and art columns in the East Village Eye, Details, and High Times, Cookie became a downtown icon, mixing with luminaries such as David Armstrong, Patti Astor, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Max Blagg, David Bowes, Dianne Brill, Francesco and Alba Clemente, Gregory Corso, Scott Covert, Jackie Curtis, Dennis Dermody, Katy Dierlam, Divine, Annie Flanders, Patrick Fox, Jedd Garet, Nan Goldin, Robert Hawkins, Pat Hearn, Richard Hell, John Heys, Peter Hujar, Gary Indiana, Peter Koper, Joseph Kosuth, H.M. Koutoukas, Susan Lowe, Taylor Mead, Eric Mitchell, Stephen Mueller, Vali Myers, Glenn O'Brien, Gennaro Palermo, Amos Poe, Dean Rolston, Stephen Saban, Julian Schnabel, Willoughby Sharp, Mark Sink, Bill Stelling, Gordon Stevenson, Mink Stole, Billy Sullivan, Teri Toye, Chi Chi Valenti, David Wojnarowicz and Linda Yablonsky. In addition to exploring aspects of Cookie's life, including her eight-year live-in relationship with Sharon Niesp and subsequent marriage to Vittorio Scarpati, and providing a publishing history of her work, this encyclopedia serves as an overview of the '80s lower Manhattan art scene, examining Cookie's take on every artist whose work she sought out for her monthly "Art and About" column (1982-1989).