Jim Cogswell is Professor at the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. He uses painting and drawing as the knowledge base for his artistic practice while exploring a variety of media languages in his work. Especially attracted to interdisciplinary projects, he has collaborated in performance works, videos, and installations with poets, dancers, musicians, composers, cosmologists, astronomers, a biostatistician, a computer science engineer, and a mechanical engineer.  

Cogswell was born in Japan to missionary parents. As a literature major at Rhodes College, he spent a year in the Philosophy Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of New Mexico. In 2008 Cogswell was appointed Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in recognition of outstanding undergraduate teaching. He has twice been selected as Faculty Fellow at the U-M Institute for the Humanities and in 2014 was elected Senior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows.

Cogswell's work has been exhibited internationally and is in numerous public collections. Cosmogonic Tattoos (2017) was an installation for the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the University of Michigan Museum of Art based on objects in their collections.  Unseen Worlds (2021), at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, was based on scientific images of microorganisms. Vinyl Euripides (2022) is an installation for the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens, Greece. Hands, Nets, and Other Devices (2022) was a solo exhibition at the International Museum of Contemporary Sculpture in Santo Tirso, Portugal.