On this episode, meet Mary Welcome, a multidisciplinary cultural worker and rural avant-garde artist.

For close to 20 years, Mary's life and creative practice have radiated out from her hometown of Palouse, Washington, toward an immense web of rural communities and partners across the continent. Few artists in our field articulate both a sense of deep respect for local community and a belief in the generative detours of life on the road as well as Mary does.

Along this journey, Mary has created some of the things we expect on an artist's CV, like national and international exhibitions, installations, and publications, but has also followed her own unique path. Serving as an artist in residence with the Washington State Department of Transportation, and as a post office portrait photographer for the United States Postal Service.

In the last decade, the urban-normative arts & cultural field has slowly turned its attention towards what we at Art of the Rural call “the rural condition.” These efforts by institutions, philanthropies, and the media often either reaffirm a preconceived set of assumptions or are extractive spectacles that further mystify what it's like to actually live beyond the city.

Mary's work provides a powerful antidote to this compulsion through long-term attention and care for land, culture, and history, and ultimately the tethers of belonging that hold our communities together.

Resources

• Episode transcript
• Mary Welcome’s website, Instagram, BlueSky, LinkedIn
• God Bless the USPS
• Places & Events Mentioned: Woodpecker Archives, Slippery Gulch 2025, Palouse Newspaper & Printing Museum
• Publications & Authors Mentioned: Ray Bradbury, “The Happiness Machine”; Swift Lathers, Mears Newz; Terry Tempest Williams; Loren Eisley; Mary Oliver; Jorge Luis Borges; William Least Heat-Moon; Roger Tory Peterson; adrienne marie brown
• Shows Mentioned: Pee-wee as Himself (2025)

We are grateful to folks across the country who have made tax-deductible contributions to Art of the Rural to make this conversation possible, and to the Ford Foundation and Good Chaos Foundation for their support of Art of the Rural’s media programs.