Photo Credit: Ben Lloyd
Mary Ellen Strom
is a U.S.-based, contemporary artist known for her temporary public artworks and video/performance installations. She was born in Butte, Montana, a hard rock mining town in the Rocky Mountain West. Her research-based artwork and fieldwork is influenced by the cultural and environmental concerns she experienced growing up in this complex region. Strom’s artworks about place are researched and produced in collaboration with activists, Indigenous scholars, scientists, historians, environmentalists, and policy makers. Projects have been exhibited on farms, cattle ranches, public pools, on rivers, on trains, grain terminals, horse arenas, in galleries and museums.
In 2013-14, Strom was an International Fulbright Scholar Fellow, working on transdisciplinary water restoration projects with Pronatura Noroeste, San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico. Awards include, Creative Capital, Artadia The Fund for Art and Dialogue, MAP Fund, Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Art, Art Matters, ArtPlace America, the Kendeda Fund, and National Endowment for the Arts, among others. She has participated in residencies, De-Archive East Africa, Center for Arts, Design + Social Research, Nairobi Kenya; Art and Science Lab, Biosphere 2, Tuscon Arizona; International Studio and Curatorial Program, NY,NY; Pauli Murray Residency, Washington DC; The Watermill Art Center, Watermill, NY; EMPAC Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.
Artworks have been exhibited at MoMA, NYC; The Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; Satouchi Trienniale, Japan; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Drawing Center, NYC; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Chicago, IL; Sculpture Center, Queens, NY; Stabel Arts, Washington DC; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Nagoya Museum of Art; Nagoya Trienniale, Japan; Currier Museum of Art, Manchester New Hampshire; Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Winter Park, FL.
Strom is a co-founder of the public art organization, Mountain Time Arts in Southwestern, MT. From 2007-2023 Mountain Time Arts commissioned and produced over 25 large-scale public artworks focused on water, draught, fire, segregated recreation, returning place names to Indigenous names and restoring an Indigenous presence in Yellowstone National Park.
Strom is a Professor of the Practice in Media Arts at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University in Boston, MA.
Strom emerged as a visual and performance artist while residing in NYC during the 80s and 90s, where she participated in art and activism with organizations including PS1: MoMA, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Creative Time, PS 122 Gallery, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Visual AIDS.