Claire Coté is a multi-passionate artist, mother, off-grid homemaker and director of LEAP and Questa Stories. Springing from the natural and cultural ecology of the Northern New Mexico high desert, Claire's interdisciplinary approach synthesizes passions for art, education, collaboration, community building and social, emotional, and environmental awareness. Her multifaceted arts practice and collaborations explore and celebrate connection to “place.” As an artist and curator, Claire has worked with the US National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management, as well as the Global Geoparks Network on commissions, residencies and site-based environmental artworks and events. For seven years she practiced as an international collaborative duo with English artist, Anna Keleher.

Experimentation is at the core of Claire’s practice with drawing, painting, cyanotype, sound, photography, interactive sculpture and installation. Claire’s work has been exhibited in traditional art venues and galleries as well as libraries, universities, museum bookshops, cafes, visitor centers, on radio stations, along historic site trails and been taken out for walks. She has shown and aired works across New Mexico, throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Europe.

Claire holds a B.A. in Studio Art and Cultural Anthropology from University of New Mexico and an M.A. in Art and Ecology from Dartington College of Art, England. In 2009, she founded the environmental art initiative LEAP (Land Experience and Art of Place) and in 2018, co-founded Questa Stories: Voices of the Northern Rio Grande. She serves as a board member for Questa Creative Council and works closely with local nonprofit Localogy. Born and raised North of Questa, she lives with her husband and two daughters in their owner built, off-grid home in the sagebrush ocean of Sunshine Valley.