Biography

Marit is a filmmaker and farmer who grew up on a wheat farm in western Kansas. She earned a B.S. in Journalism: News and Information from the University of Kansas with distinction as a member of the Kappa Tau Alpha journalism honor society. While at KU, she had the opportunity to explore print, video, and radio platforms, even hosting a music show on student-run KJHK Sunday mornings.

After graduating in 2013, she worked as a copy editor and contributing photographer at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper. Marit moved to Bozeman, MT, in 2015 to work at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle as a layout designer and contributing writer/photographer.

She joined the Science and Natural History Filmmaking MFA program in 2020 with a focus on rural life and agriculture. A film she made about aspen tree biology called ‘The Grove’ debuted at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2021. Through the program, she has had the opportunity to work at Montana PBS on a team, making educational videos about Montana for the K-12 audience. She now resides in western Kansas and is excited to make films about the area, including films about the Ogallala Aquifer and her family.

Artist Statement

I am drawn to remote, rural places — open, binary, so expansive you could be swallowed up in it. I have heard people call these types of places empty, but for me, they’re full of possibility. In places like this, you can see and feel everything; these places are vital; they offer clarity of experience where what is sometimes lost in other environments becomes plain. The starkness and the relative quiet distill down sensory inputs for better absorption of observations, partly because there is less competition for one’s attention and partly because I find it easier to sink into the openness these expanses provide.