Michael Oatman:  

Life I imagine I'm not the only one who feels idiotic doing this. Still, it would be interesting to see what everyone's been up to. Post-RISD Life: I graduated from RISD in 1986 and received a position as Teaching Fellow at Phillips Academy, in Andover, MA. I supervised a dormitory of boys and played in a local "Industrial" baseball league. Opened a studio in Lawrence, MA, in a gigantic former mill building. I taught at Harvard in the Art Department with Alfred DeCredico for two summers. Lived and worked in Boston from summer 1987- summer '88. Moved to Vermont and got a studio in the woods. Had a bizarre job as sign painter and tombstone painter. Worked on my art in the woods and decided grad school was the next step. Applied to Bennington, Carnegie Mellon and the University at Albany. Got into all three, but went to Albany - it was a free ride, they paid me to teach and it seemed like a lively place. Moved to Troy, NY in fall of '89 and started grad school. Got to work with Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Kate Ericson and Mel Zeigler, Dennis Adams, and other artists who shaped the way I now work. Graduated in 1992 and started teaching at the University of Vermont that fall. Around the same time I began making the large-scale, site-specific works I'm now known for. Ended up staying there for six years, teaching painting, installation art, 2-D Design and mixed-media courses. I also began teaching at Vermont College around 1996. I am still a visiting critic and artist-teacher in that program. I had (for me) a breakthrough show at the Fleming Museum in 1995, entitled "Long Shadows: Henry Perkins and the Eugencis Survey of Vermont". In it I examined the little known history of this zoologist and museum director who helped to enact sterilization legislation in Vermont in the 1930s. It helped me to shape a studio practice around research and "discovery", that is, I began to make large installations based in closely examining collections, both per...Expand for more