Mary Ellen Croteau
Contact Information
Education
1998 MFA, Rutgers University/Mason School of the Arts
1990 BFA, University of Illinois at Chicago
1987-88 School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Biographical Information
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I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1950. I attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987-88 and received a BFA in sculpture from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1990. I received an MFA from Rutgers University/Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1998.
My art has been exhibited extensively in the U.S. as well as in Europe, Korea and South America. It has been reviewed by Holland Cotter in the New York Times, by Kim Levin and Arlene Raven in the Village Voice, in the Sacramento Bee, Dialogue Magazine and The Cleveland Plain Dealer among others. My work has appeared on the cover of Artpaper and On The Issues magazine, and has been reproduced in Ms, and numerous other journals. Most recently, I have exhibited at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC and in Zurich, Swizerland. I have lectured nationally and internationally, including at the Accademia de Belle Arte in Florence, Italy; Nylistasafnid/The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; and Seoul Women's University in Korea. My artwork has received several awards, including first prize in the "Women Artists '91" national juried exhibition, and an honorable mention from the National League of American PEN Women. I am a former member and past president of Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, an internationally recognized women's cooperative founded in 1973.
As a member of SisterSerpents, a Chicago-based feminist art collective, I have co-curated several exhibitions, including "Art Against Dickheads," "Piss on Passivity, Piss on Patriarchy," and "Home Improvements: Demolishing Domesticity." We have exhibited in Chicago, New York, Denver, and in Hamburg and Berlin, Germany. We have been extensively reviewed in local and national publications including PRINT and the AIGA Journal. We have even been brought to the attention of every Member of Congress through letters from Donald Wildmon and his American Family Association, and have drawn the ire of the Heritage Foundation and columnist George Will. Our posters have been included in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and were exhibited in their 1996 exhibition "Mixing Messages." We are featured prominently in the book Suffragettes to She-Devils (Liz McQuiston, Phaiden Press, London, 1997) and in the book Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls
My art is in-your-face, radically and unapologetically feminist. I see my work as social criticism - a visual challenge to all the sexist cultural assumptions that are the bedrock of the patriarchal order.
Artist's Statement
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The function of the visual in consumer culture is to overwhelm and imprint, rendering us passive vessels for received wisdom. Additionally, vast databases of disconnected facts, driven by arcane mathematical formulae rather than by a creative or logical progression of thought, do more to confuse and disconnect us from the information we need to control our world than they do to facilitate it. My work is an attempt to counter this trend toward disembodied “intelligence.”
I firmly believe in the power of the visual, and my work is my voice: a social critique and a visual challenge to all the cultural detritus we are force-fed every day. My art is about looking at things in a slightly different way, and is intended to undermine the status quo with humor and ironic juxtaposition. I work both large and small, from installations to artist books, and use a variety of media, from traditional painting to photography to xerox and assemblage. The critique largely determines the presentation.
Selected Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2009
Manmade, Florida Gulf Coast University, North Port, FL
2008
Manmade, Gallerie StartArt, Reykjavik, Iceland
2007
Bag World, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
2005
A Measure of Consumption, Chun Chun Hee, Seoul, Korea
2004
War Games, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
2003
Art Herstory, Olin Gallery, Roanoke University, Salem, VA
2002
New Political Figures, Beacon Street Gallery, Chicago, IL (two person)
2001
Musee de Nouvelle Renaissance, Whittenberg University, Springfield, OH
2000
American Landscapes, Dupreau Gallery, Chicago, IL
Musee de Nouvelle Renaissance, Matrix Gallery, Sacramento, CA
1999
Mercy, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
1998
Musee de Nouvelle Renaissance, Feral Art, Brooklyn, NY
1997
Musee de Nouvelle Renaissance, Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL
1996
War Memorial, Space Lab, Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, OH
1995
Good Girls and Bad, Buckham Gallery, Flint, MI
1994
Icons, Idols and Blasphemies, Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI
Slight Alterations, No. 10 00 22, Stockholm, Sweden
Group Exhibitions
2008
Environmental Catastrophe, Puffin Foundation, Teaneck, NJ
Heatin Up, Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL
It’s Not Easy, Exit Art, New York, NY
2007
Bridge /Miami Art Fair, Miami FL
15th Anniversary Invitational, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL
2006
My Apocalyptic Playground, South Union Arts, Chicago, IL
2005
Home Grown: Select Produce, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL
2004
Red Alert! War, Peace and Civil Liberties, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA
2001
Illinois Women Artists, Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL and Rockford Art Museum, IL
Chicago Women Artists, Judith Racht Gallery on Lake, Chicago, IL
2000
Gretel's File, Josephstrasse 79, Zurich, Switzerland
Reconfiguring the Heroic, Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL
1999
Illinois Women Artists: The New Millennium, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC and Illinois State Gallery, Chicago, IL
..And Everything Nice, Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL
1998
The Figure Revisited, Galeria Mesa, Mesa, AZ
1997
C.A.A. New York Area MFA Exhibition, Hunter College Gallery, NYC
1996
Mixing Messages, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, NYC
1995
Good Girls, Bad Women, The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
International Exchange Exhibition, Art Gallery Woong, Seoul, Korea
1994
The Pilgrimage Show, SACI Gallery, Florence, Italy
No More Nice Girls, ABC No Rio Gallery, New York, NY
1993
Latina/Americana: Tierra Fertil, Centro Colombo Americano, Medellin, Colombia
1920: The Subtlety of Subversion, Exit Art, New York, NY
1992
Berlin 37 Raeume: Miss-ing, Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin, Germany
1991
Women Artists '91, Matrix Gallery, Sacramento, CA
Selected Publications & Reviews
1999
Ms. Magazine, v.lX, no.3, April/May (reproduction)
1998
On the Issues, v.VII, no.2, Spring (cover illustration)
1997
Suffragettes to She-Devils, Liz McQuiston: Phaiden Press, London
1996
The Plain Dealer, C1eveland. OH, March 26 (interview)
1995
DV, Reykjavik, Iceland (review, Olafur Engilbertsson)
1994
Village Voice, VOICE New York, NY, March29 ("Art In Brief:" Kim Levin)
1993
New York Times, Art in Review, April 16 (review, Holland Cotter)
Dialogue, Jan/Feb 1993 (review, Deborah Duez Donato)
1992
AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, v.10, no.2, (interview, Victor Margolin)
1991
Artpaper, September (cover illustration)
Selected Guest Lectures & Panels
1997
Women's Art History Conference, Barnard College, NYC
1996
Modern Art Museum, Ft. Worth, TX
1995
Nylistasafnid/The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland
Seoul Women's University, Seoul, Korea
1994
Accademia de Belle Arte, Florence, Italy
1993
Colorado University, Boulder, CO
Virtual Exhibitions
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