Originally from New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, Rita Leduc is an interdisciplinary artist now living in New York’s Hudson Valley. In her creative practice, she absorbs insights from nature-grounded relationships and applies them to novel endeavors on human and societal scales.
Current examples of these endeavors include multifaceted projects with Oika, a living philosophy that merges creativity, natural science, deep time, cognition, and spirituality. One such project is Extending Ecology, a collaboration with ecologist Dr. Rich Blundell and the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. Additional ongoing engagements include GROUNDWORK (process-oriented creative direction), and The Place Collective (using art to enrich community research).
Leduc’s work has been shown throughout the greater New York City area and beyond, including exhibitions at the Museum of the White Mountains (NH), Stand4 Gallery (NY), Maria Mitchell Gallery (MA), Mount Saint Mary College (NY), Glasshouse Project (NY), Terrain Biennial (NY), Wells College (NY), Nizhny Tagil Museum of Fine Art (Russia), Governors Island (NYC), RAW (Miami), and Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC). Past residencies include i-Park Foundation, PLAYA, Tofte Lake, and Vermont Studio Center. She has received support from NYFA, the Jerome Foundation, Atlas Obscura, Oika, Broto, Wells College, and Rutgers University, among others. She has published and presented her work widely including on the cover of Signal House Edition as well as in unpsychology magazine, Artis Natura, and at Art.Earth’s conference, “Sentient Performativities: Thinking Alongside the Human” at Dartington Hall.
Leduc received her MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and BA from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently teaches at Rutgers University within their new, interdisciplinary program, Creative Expression and the Environment.
