Coulter Fussell

Coulter Fussell (b. 1977, Columbus, Georgia) is a visual artist who lives and works in Water Valley, Mississippi. Her practice spans quilting, upholstery and mixed media works that intersect photography and sculpture. Working across these forms, she produces dream-like objects that blur perspectives of love, violence and place in a rural world. Coulter integrates textile materials donated by friends and strangers with crowd-sourced video and photography, creating forms that compare global conflicts, both historical and current, with interpersonal psychodramas.

Enthusiasm for the experimental, optimism and humor guide her work. Coulter learned to quilt from her mother and make dolls from her grandmother. The rest she learned from YouTube.

Coulter spent two decades as a full-time, career diner waitress while raising her children in rural north Mississippi. During that time, opened and maintained two experimental, open-to-the-public rural art spaces and exhibited in numerous institutions and galleries across the South and New York City. She has been recognized with numerous grants and awards including a United States Artists Fellowship, an Andy Warhol Foundation Exhibition Support Grant for her show at the Mississippi Museum of Art, a 2026 Creative Capital State of the Art Award and a residency at Yaddo. Coulter is currently a full-time studio artist.