Cherie Sampson has worked for thirty years as an interdisciplinary artist in environmental performance, installation, video art and dance.  She has exhibited internationally in art-in-nature symposia, video/film screenings and exhibitions in many countries, with site-based solo performances presented in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Finland, Norway, Cuba, Spain, South Korea and in the Netherlands (in a performance attended by the Dutch Queen in 2003).  In 2018, the Pori Museum of Art in Pori, Finland acquired photographic and video documentation of Sampson’s site-based installations and performances created over a 20-year period in Finland for their permanent collection.  Recent exhibitions and public presentations include “The Quality of Being Fleeting” at the Currents 826 Gallery for the Currents New Media Festival 2022 in Santa Fe and “Art, Cancer & Transformation”, a solo exhibition at the Joan Hisaoka Gallery at the Smith Center for Healing & the Arts in Washington D.C., summer 2023.  Sampson’s current performance-in-process, “every.single.one” depicts an experience with hereditary breast cancer exploring topics of science, genetics and integrative healing from a patient’s perspective of modern medicine. It is a dramatic interpretation of a universal human reality that explores the body as a site of uncertainty in illness and survival. “every.single.one” was performed live at the Goldman Theater, in the Edlavitch DCJCC in Washington, D.C. on July 26, 2024, at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in Minneapolis in August 2024,  for the 20th Annual Conference of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) at the Banff Center for Arts & Creativity, Canada and for the Midwest Women in the Arts Symposium (MWAS) at Bradley University in Illinois in the fall of 2023. The full production debut of the performance is scheduled for and the Columbia Entertainment Company (CEC) Theater in Columbia, MO in February, 2025. 

Professor Sampson is the recipient of many grants including a Puffin Foundation Grant (“every.single.one” project), two Fulbright Fellowships, a Finnish Cultural Foundation Grant, multiple university research grants (including funding from the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center Research Administration office to support the “every.single.one”project) and an Arts & Humanities Research and Creative Works Fellowship (2022-24) from the Office of the Provost of the University of Missouri. Sampson is a Professor in the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri, teaching in the Art and Digital Storytelling programs. She divides her time between her academic and artistic life and the organic farm where she lives - a site for many of her works.  She received her MFA degree in Intermedia & Video Art from the University of Iowa in 1997. In addition to her creative work, Sampson serves as a patient advocate in several organizations: the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO), Facing Our Risk Empowered (FORCE) and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (BCRP).

Courses Taught

Intro to Digital Media Production (DST & FS 1880)

Video Art I (& Video Art & the Moving Image)

Performance Art (& Topics in Theater/Humanities)

Environmental Art (& Experimental Media)

Non-Profit Management in the Arts

Graduate Practice & Critique

Problems courses in Art/Sculpture

Foundations (2-D & 3-D Design)

Senior Seminar