Born in rural Pennsylvania, Martha Colburn is an artist filmmaker based in Pennsylvania, USA and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She travels extensively exhibiting and lecturing on her work. She has a B.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art and MA equivalent from Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunst (Royal Academy of Art) in Holland.
A self-taught filmmaker, she began in 1994 with found footage and Super 8 cameras and has since completed over 60 films. In Baltimore her band ‘the Dramatics’ released six records. She also exhibits elements from her films and using slide projections and murals to creates installations. She has taught workshops on her animation technique in China, Europe, Canada, Mexico and America. She has made music videos/ films for bands such as Deerhoof, Laura Ortman, Rota Braga, Felix Kubin and many more. She also contributed animation for the documentary ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnson’. For the past twenty years, Colburn has worked with authors including 99 Hooker, Stephen O’Connor, Diana Wagman and others. In the 2007 Sundance Film Festival she was invited to initiate the ‘New Frontiers’ film and video installation program, with ‘Meet Me In Wichita” and in 2008 to opened the Museum of Art and Design (NY) with a live performance of films and music. In 2013 her film Metamorfoza was invited to participate in the series ‘Visual Arts’ by curator of the Collection de Bruin‐Heijn and performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2010 her films joined the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She is a 2015 recipient of the Creative Capital Award for film.
Colburn will be presenting a lecture at the CCAM.