USA Projects

Mara Adamitz Scrupe is an interdisciplinary artist whose site installations, videos, performances, interventions, drawings, and artist-made books reach out to explore human commitments to land and community, and the ways that profound knowledge and love of place can impact efforts toward protecting imperiled communities particularly in rural, agricultural America.  Scrupe's projects reveal the strong ties that bind people to places that may seem remote, even desolate, to many of us. They explore qualities of empathy, acceptance, trust, mutual dependency and hope as the basis for building and keeping community.

In past projects designed for exhibition in museums and public spaces, Scrupe has engaged interdisciplinary research strategies to explore plant science and biodiversity, seed saving and preservation of native plant species and landscapes. These projects have been expressed in forms such as site installation, performance intervention, multimedia digital photography and video projections, drawings and handmade books.

More recent projects engage a broader exploration of human commitments to land and community. Multidisciplinary art investigations undertaken over the past two decades have involved places that hold profound meaning for the artist including her extended family's farmlands in north central Minnesota and the rural piedmont of central Virginia where she has lived and pursued her art practice for more than twenty-five years.

Scrupe has received numerous visual arts grants, awards and fellowships including the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities Individual Artist Fellowship; The Sirius Arts Centre Residency Fellowship (with collaborative support from an Irish Arts Council Grant), Cork, Ireland; The National Endowment for the Arts/CEC International Partners/ArtsLink Collaborative Grant; The Irish Museum of Modern Art Artists Work Programme Fellowship, Dublin, Ireland; the Kulturhuset USF International Artist Residency Grant, Bergen, Norway; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Foundation Professional Artist Fellowship; the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Collaborative Residency Grant; the Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, and the Artists Space Grant, New York, NY. Scrupe has also served as visiting artist and professor for colleges, universities, and art institutions including the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the University of Texas, San Antonio; Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; the University of California, Riverside; the Miami University of Ohio; the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia;  Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, Georgia; East Carolina University; Longwood University; Guilford College, and James Madison University, among many others.

She has held numerous residency fellowships at international and national venues. Included among these are: MoKS Centre for Art and Social Practice, Estonia; Sirius Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland; USF Verftet/Stiftelsen Kulturhuset, Bergen, Norway; Konstepidemin, Goteborg, Sweden; TICKON Tranekaer International Center of Art and Nature, Denmark; Europos Parkas Open-Air Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Artists Work Programme, Dublin, Ireland; Sculpture Space, Utica, New York; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Wilmington; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Abington Art Center and Sculpture Garden, Philadelphia, PA; Buffalo Bayou ArtPark, Houston, Texas, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Wendover, Utah; the Delaware Center for Horticulture (Citywide Greening Program), Wilmington, Delaware; the Djerassi Foundation, California, and many others.

She has taught and lectured widely; prior to serving as Professor of Fine Arts and Coordinator of the Multidisciplinary Fine Arts BFA Program of The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she occupied the Alan F. Rothschild Endowed Chair and Professorship in Art at Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia. Earlier appointments include the Barbara L. Bishop Endowed Chair and Professorship in Fine Art at Longwood University in Virginia.

Mara Adamitz Scrupe earned a BA in French from Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota and the MFA in Sculpture from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York.  She has published various essays, articles, and reviews in national and international art journals and magazines, and she has been invited to speak on art issues and topics for the College Art Association, Southeast College Art Conference, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Women's Caucus for Art; and the Environmental Film Festival, Washington, DC.