About the Artist
Michelle Samour is a multi-media artist whose installations, drawings and handmade paperworks explore humankind’s attempt to harness the natural world through science, technology, and the redefinition of socio-political borders. Her work has been featured in ARTnews and The Boston Globe; on the covers of FIBERARTS and Hand Papermaking magazines; and on WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, among others.
Samour resides in North Bennington, Vermont. Previously, she lived and worked in her hometown of Boston, Massachusetts, where she taught as a Professor of the Practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts University. After receiving her BFA from SMFA in 1975, Samour went on to establish the papermaking program at the school in 1983, which she led for nearly 40 years. In 2022, Tufts University awarded Samour with the honorary title of Professor Emerita.
Samour’s work has been exhibited at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA); the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Strasbourg, France); the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI); the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (Houston, TX); the Racine Art Museum (Racine, WI); the Fitchburg Art Museum (Fitchburg, MA); and The Rose Art Museum (Waltham, MA), among others. Her work resides the collections of the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY); the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA); the RISD Library (Providence, RI); the International Paper Company (New York, NY); and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta, Canada), among others.
She has received grants and awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Cushman Family Fund; the Massachusetts Cultural Council; Society of Arts and Crafts New England; and the Daynard Fund to study historic papermaking in France and Japan. She has been an artist-in-residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Deer Isle, ME); the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Alberta, Canada); and P.R.I.N.T. Press (Denton, TX); and a scholar-in-residence at the Tufts European Center (Talloires, France).