Dru Colbert's fascination with how our culture uses objects to tell stories - and who's allowed to tell those stories - began at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, where she designed exhibits for more than a decade. She recalls a project that marked a turning point in her work: an exhibition on the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Colbert and her colleagues were looking through the Smithsonian's collection of materiel from the 442nd Fighting Unit, a group of Japanese American soldiers who became the Armed Force's most decorated unit, when they realized half of the story was missing. "We had jeeps and Howitzers and all kinds of military stuff, but we also wanted to tell the alternate story," Colbert says. "As these men were fighting overseas, they had families in internment camps back in America."

The exhibition team reached out to the Japanese American community to gather stories and objects that they felt reflected daily life in the U.S. internment camps. Their guidance helped shape "A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the Constitution," one of the first exhibits in the nation to engage a community in telling its own story. Fifteen years after it opened, "A More Perfect Union" remains a powerful and moving testimony to the courage of those wrongly imprisoned during a dark period in American history.

Colbert reflects on her Smithsonian work as she sips a cup of tea in the cozy island home she shares with her partner and fellow COA professor Nancy Andrews. "Working with the community was a key learning experience for me in how we should do things instead of having some person up in an ivory tower writing labels for objects," Colbert says. She brings the same passion for collaboration to her work at COA, where she has taught graphic design, 3D art and design, and museum studies since 1999.

Students often work together in the class projects Colbert designs. She brought one class to the home of a local sculptor to create an onsite work with trees felled by a storm. At first, the scene was chaos, she says, and everyone had a different idea about what to make. But soon, Colbert says, students began to collaborate on an elegant sculpture that wove through an acre of forest.

To Colbert, tension is a healthy part of the creative process. "One of the things I find most fascinating about the art experience related to the human ecological experience is the negotiation that takes place between people of disparate perspectives that allows them to come together to create something bigger than themselves," she says.

As she fosters collaboration, Colbert also encourages each student to understand his or her own creative process.  "Since I've wrestled with these things, I work with students almost on an individual basis to ask them, 'what...trade;s the best way for you to stay passionate about being a creative person?'  I find some people are much more comfortable planning things out while others work better by just starting to make something and then stepping back to analyze it."

A painter and sculptor who received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Colbert makes large-scale works that invite others to participate and create their own stories. "I'm interested in creating theatrical landscapes that people can explore; intriguing tableaus that invite the viewer to become the actor," Colbert says.

A common thread running through Colbert's work is her passion for exploring visual narrative. In addition to her work for the Smithsonian, she has designed exhibits for the Abbe Museum, The National Park Service, and the Maine State Museum. She also has worked with students on interpretive projects presented in the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History. Colbert continues to examine the questions of who tells our stories and plans to next investigate the roles and responsibilities of museums and curators. "Nancy and I want to do a class that asks, who's the art boss, who's the culture boss, who decides?"