Colleen Choquette-Raphael received her MFA in Art with an emphasis in photography and intermedia from the University of Washington and holds a BA in Art History and Art Education, and a BFA in Visual Design from the University of Oregon. Since joining the faculty in 1998 she has taught a broad constellation of courses in photographic media; including film and darkroom photography, large format, and the constructed image. She has also offered courses in foundations, theory seminars on the body and the abject, activist art, a workshop on experimental book structures and intermedia courses on performance art and the found object.

Using images and cultural artifacts that are aligned with stereotypical notions of gender, she summons the unstable point when a sign becomes its antithesis; where equilibrium slips into delirium, science becomes sentiment, and the flower in the garden pornographic. These objects exist in a state of perpetual deterioration; a child's toy reveals itself to be a discarded emblem of gender performance, scientific diagrams are inscribed into melting beeswax, and a series of constructed images mythologize the suicide of female poets.  Current work investigates strategies of repetition to compose a performative narrative around the plight of the elephant as as a symbol of matriarchy, grief, and the history of speciesism.

Choquette-Raphael is also the faculty academic advisor for the School of Art and Design and directs study abroad programs in Italy and Greece.