CAROL McDOWELL is a movement/video artist based in Los Angeles who creates interdisciplinary performance structures
and installation environments using movement, text, video and light. Her work has been presented internationally, most recently at the Sweeney Art Gallery/UC Riverside, and in Los Angeles at The Electric Lodge, The Wedge/Women’s Building, Platinum Oasis, Crazy Space, Highways, Judson Studio/Smart Gals Productions, FAIRY at Side Street Projects, and the 2001 Dance Moving Forward Festival. Commissions, fellowships and grants include the National 2000 Dance/Media Fellowship and 1999 Asia Pacific. Performance Exchange Artist Fellowship at UCLA, Makasar Arts Forum (Sulawesi), Indonesian Dance Festival (Jakarta), Djerassi Foundation (CA),Colorado Council of the Arts, Boulder Arts Commission (CO), Island Dance Festival (Honolulu), The Colorado Dance Alliance, Dance. Theater Workshop First Light/ Jerome Foundation (NYC), Working in the Kitchen (NYC), Composers' Forum/ DIA Art Foundation (NYC), and Performance Space 122/ Jerome Foundation (NYC).

From 1992 to 1998 McDowell was a faculty member of the InterArts Program at the Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. With Barbara Dilley, Polly Motley and Diane Butler she helped found the Mariposa Collective there, which presented works-in-progress showings, and concert productions of new dance work at various venues and sites in Boulder. While based in downtown NYC  from 1979-1991 McDowell has performed in the companies of numerous artists, including Cheng-Chieh, Yu, Barbara Dilley, Polly Motley, Karen Finley, Tim Miller, Pooh Kaye's Eccentric Motions, Yvonne Meier, Yoshiko Chuma's School of Hard Knocks, Kei Takei's Moving Earth, Poppo & the GoGo Boys, and Phoebe Neville.

For the past three years McDowell has co-directed and curated contemporary art and performance at Crazy Space in Santa Monica with founder Lauren Hartman. From 2001-2003 McDowell co-produced Max10, an annual ten-month performance lab series at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA, with Cid Pearlman, David King, Nurit Siegel and Marcus Kuiland-Nazario. Currently McDowell is pursuing a PhD in Culture and Performance at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Culture. Her dissertation will focus on the political actions and aspirations of several new trans-disciplinary art performances by mid-career artists from NYC, SF, and LA. Dissertation committee members include Mary Kelly, David Gere, Susan Leigh Foster, and David Rousséve.

Also known for her lighting and theater designs, she received a 2002 Horton Award for her work with Victoria Marks, and a 1985 BESSIE/New York Dance and Performance Award for her work with John Bernd. As a designer she has collaborated many choreographers, performance artists and musicians including Cid Pearlman, Carmela Hermann, David Rousséve, Karen Finley, Pooh Kaye, Fred Holland, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Yvonne Meier, David Cale, Yves Musard, Hugo Largo, and Kei Takei.