Dru Colbert

Dru Colbert is an artist, designer and teacher. As a two and three dimensional designer, Dru works primarily for not-for-profit organizations on design projects that focus on social or environmental issues. She has designed major museum installation/exhibits like " A More Perfect Union" for the Smithsonian Institution (that focus on cultural issues such as Japanese American internment during WW II), and developed exhibitions presenting complex environmental topics such as the geologic, historic, social, and ecological landscapes of the Florida Everglades for the National Park Service. Her clients and collaborators include the Smithsonian Institution, the Maine State Museum, the Abbe Museum, the National Geographic Society, and the National Park Service. Dru has received various awards in recognition of her work from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The American Association of Museums, The New York Art Director's Club, The Smithsonian Institution, Print Magazine and others. As an installation artist, sculptor and painter, she combines curiosities, fragments of history, the documentary and the fantastic into stage settings for mysterious and personal narratives to unfold. She pursues opportunities to analyze, and utilize cultural objects and the American landscape as symbols and repositories of meaning and memory. Dru received a Master of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997, where she subsequently taught courses in installation art, museum exhibition design, and two and three dimensional visual communication. In addition, she has taught special courses as a visiting artist in graphic design at Auburn University and the University of Maryland. In the summer, she offers courses in sculpture and puppet making for grades K- 12 at the Summer Festival of the Arts.

At the College of the Atlantic, Dru has worked with students on a variety of interpretive projects that are presented in the George B. Dorr Museum of Natural History and often travel to venues beyond the campus. Some of these projects include:
- 'The Laramie Project Performance Gallery' (students in the "Activating Space:Installation Art" class create dimensional artwork responding to 'hate crime' as set pieces for a theatrical production of the Laramie Project performed throughout Maine)
- 'Plants and Animals in Peril: Miane's Endangered Species'
- 'The Anne Molloy Howell Collection' at the Abbe Museum (student intern project)
- Traveling exhibits by the Graphic Design Studio 1 and Visual Communication Projects classes on The Union River Watershed
- Exhibits for the George B. Dorr Museum - 'Human Ecologist: Bill Drury'; 'Art and Nature'; 'What is Organic?'; 'The Discovery Forest'; 'George B. Dorr and the Creation of Acadia National Park';  'Extinction Then and Now: Photographs by Rosamond Purcell'

Some of Dru's course offerings in graphic design, three-dimensional art and design, and museum studies include:
3D Studio: Introduction to Three Dimensional Art and Design
Activating Space: Installation Art; Page Layout and Computer Aided Design
Graphic Design Studio 1
Advanced Graphic Design - Graphic Attack
Advanced Graphic Design - Visual Communication Projects
Constructing Visual Narrative
Curiosity and Wonder: Design and Interpretation in the Museum and Beyond
Special Topics in Museum Study

These courses combine hands-on studio practice in a variety of media; student involvement in real world projects with local communities; theoretical reading on contemporary issues surrounding art and the presentation of culture, and discussion concerning the social roles and responsibilities of artists and designers.
 

INSTALLATIONS 1995-2004
Current work, Blum Gallery, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME
Small Subjects in a Great Emptiness, Installation, Gallery 2, Chicago, IL
Systematic Pseudo Habitat # 5073, Installation, Gallery 2, Chicago, IL
Mapping Meaning, Roger Brown Study Collection, Chicago, IL.
Madame Planchette, NAME Gallery, Chicago, IL
Watch, Shoe, Sorry, Performance/Installation, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Sense Sync, Installation, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
They Took to the Prairie, Installation, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
I Saw the Future in My Rearview Mirror, Installation, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Daddy Dawn and the Carpet Man, sculptural object, Recycle Show, Auburn University
Yard Photographs, The National Museum of American History, Washington, DC

SELECT MUSEUM INSTALLATIONS AND SPECIAL PROJECTS
At Home in Maine, The Maine State Museum, Augusta, ME
Women of the Dawn: the Four Mollys, The Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, ME
Wabanaki: People of the Dawn, The Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, ME
Layers of Time: Seventy-five Years of Archeology at the Abbe Museum, The Abbe Museum
The Road to America, Brownsville Flatiron Building (with the National Park Service), Brownsville, PA
How We Discover, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Cash Processing, Federal Reserve Bank, Chicago, IL
The Wisdom of Wildness, National Fish and Wildlife Visitor Center, Patuxent, MD
A River of Grass, National Park Service Visitor Center, Everglades National. Park, Homestead, FL
A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the US Constitution, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
The Elvis Presley Museum, Graceland Enterprises, Memphis, TN
The Building of Washington, The Preservation Trust, Washington, DC

SELECT CLIENTS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN
Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic Society, American Medical Association, Discovery Channel, Maine State Museum, the National Park Service