Education:

  • M.F.A. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1997
  • B.F.A. Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 1980

Before COA

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. 

Scholarly and Creative Interests

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. 

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.

More Information about my Courses

What my courses have in common is a focus on how we tell our stories as humans in visual, spatial and experiential terms. They explore how we can expand the depth and breadth of how we “look” at this world, how meaning is created between things, how we envision future worlds, and how we manifest those visions through the things we make.

More About Me

At the College of the Atlantic, Dru helps students find ways to work with the National Park Service in Acadia on interpretation projects. She teaches the National Park Service Practicum with Steve Ressell - a course that focuses on projects with the National Park Service in Acadia National Park.

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.

Publications

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.