Oct 20-31, 2014

Mara Adamitz Scrupe is an interdisciplinary artist whose work investigates the strong ties that bind people to one another and the ways in which profound knowledge and love of place can impact protection of imperiled lands and communities. Her poems, essays, artist books, installations, videos, and performances explore qualities of empathy, acceptance, trust, mutual dependency and hope as the basis for building and keeping community. These projects recognize that crucial ties between people and places are the wellspring of efforts to protect vulnerable lands and communities throughout the world.

Mara Adamitz Scrupe received a BA degree in French from Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minn., and an MFA in Sculpture from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York. She is a published essayist and critic on topics in the contemporary visual arts. She has had extensive international exhibitions of her site installations and projects and she has received numerous fellowship and artist residency awards for her projects, performances, interventions, drawings, and artist-made books in the United States and abroad including Taiwan, France, Ireland, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Lithuania. Scrupe has also been the recipient of many grants and awards including artist fellowships from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington, D.C.; Irish Arts Council, Dublin, Ireland; National Endowment for the Arts/CEC International Partners/ArtsLink Collaborative Grant; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Professional Fellowship; Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Grant; Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, and the Artists Space Grant, New York, N.Y. Scrupe has taught and lectured widely; prior to serving as Associate Professor of Fine Arts and Coordinator of the Multidisciplinary Fine Arts BFA Program she occupied the Alan F. Rothschild Endowed Chair and Professorship in Art at Columbus State University, earlier appointments include the Barbara L. Bishop Endowed Chair and Professorship in Fine Art at Longwood University.   http://www.scrupe.com