Mary Jo Bole

Mary Jo Bole is currently based in Columbus Ohio, where she taught as a Professor, Department of Art at The Ohio State University for over twenty years. Born and raised in Cleveland, Bole earned her BFA at the University of Michigan and MFA from Alfred State College (SUNY).

Bole makes art across media, including geologic materials, printmaking, hand-drawn maps, artists’ books, and installations. The “impermanence of permanence” is a recurring theme and she draws upon gallows humor, memento mori, Victorian left-over culture, remnants of industrial Cleveland, and punk/counterculture influences.

A multiple recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, Bole has been an artist in residence at institutions across the U.S. and Europe, including the Netherlands, Sweden, Latvia, Italy. From 2007-2008, Bole worked as an Artist in Industry at the Kohler Factory in Wisconsin.

Notably, Bole created a documentary exploring her family history through an extensive and eclectic collection of inherited objects, documents, and photographs. Bole was one of the inaugural Ohio Humanities Film Fellow Award recipients and an artist-in-residence in the Video/Film lab at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus.  Her film Family White Elephants premiered at the Cinema Columbus Film Festival at the Wexner Arts Center in April 2024.

Selected solo exhibitions include Tombs and Toilets at Mt. Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles (2015); The Building is Gone at William Busta Gallery in Cleveland (2022); and Family White Elephant 1860 at the Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art & Design (2015).  Bole’s work is in the permanent collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, Dublin Arts Council (Dublin, OH), Detroit Institute of Art, and the Pushkin Museum (Moscow). Some of her artists’ books are held by the Getty Institute (Los Angeles, CA), Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), and the libraries of The Ohio State University.