Associate Professor
Greene Building, Room M113

518-276-3188

Master of Fine Arts, University at Albany; Bachelor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design

Artist Michael Oatman has taught in the School of Architecture at Rensselaer for 25 years. He is the permanent Artist-in-Residence, only the fourth person to hold the position since inaugurated by kinetic sculptor George Rickey in 1960. After earning a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University at Albany, he taught at Harvard, The College of Saint Rose, Vermont College, RISD, St. Michael’s College, SUNYA and The University of Vermont before joining RPI in 1999.

Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1964, Oatman’s earliest memories are of the outdoors and watching the televised Moon Landing in 1969. Barely 5 years old, these paired events—one local and physical, one conceptual and otherworldly—led him down a path to the method, materiality, romance and critique of science.

Oatman’s installations, collages and videos have been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. Calling his practice “the poetic interpretation of documents” he culls much of his source material from archives, libraries, flea markets and collections: public, private and corporate. His critical interest in the sciences and humanities has led him to vast repositories of material culture including long-lost documents on eugenics; glass negative mug shots related to the prison industrial complex; and technological objects from the exploration of space. He was the first artist invited to work from the archives of pioneering Astronaut Neil Armstrong. Those works were exhibited at Purdue University’s Museum in 2019 as part of “Return to Entry”. Recently, Oatman invited Astronaut Reid Wiseman to give Rensselaer’s 2024 Commencement address. An RPI Alum (class of 1997), Wiseman will lead NASA back to the moon in 2025.

Collectors of his work include The Museum of Modern Art, The Tang Museum, 21c Hotels, The International Collage Center, The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, SUNYA, Sassoon, Fidelity Mutual and hundreds of private collections.

As a curator, Oatman’s “Factory Direct” artist residency/exhibition was first implemented at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in 2001. Oatman invited artists from around the country to work in Troy, NY-area factories. Later, the concept was adopted by ARTspace in New Haven, CT in 2005 and most recently by the Andy Warhol Museum on Pittsburgh in 2012. Another curatorial project, “An Armory Show,” was presented at the Sage College of Albany in 2013, the hundredth anniversary of the infamous “Armory Show” of 1913. The project was co-authored by fellow RPI faculty member Ken Ragsdale.

Oatman has long collaborated with his parents, friends and students on projects: “Rx Box” was a design studio that emerged out of a charrette Oatman led in 2004, after a visit to Port-au-Prince. His students designed and built a shipping container-based medical facility for Haiti: inspired by this student project, a Boston philanthropist has now sponsored the construction of over 40 container-housed clinics in Nicaragua.

As a teacher, Oatman leverages archives and public spaces for the design and fabrication of student works built at a 1:1 scale. Over the years his students in the PIP (Production, Installation, Performance) Studio have designed and built architectural contexts for performing artists: renowned violinist Todd Reynolds, sound artist Francisco Lopez, video artist Mary Ellen Strom and site-specific choreographer Joanna Haigood. His Exhibition Studio has resulted in collaborations with the Tang Museum (2018’s “Living with Duchamp: Rose Ocean”), the City of Troy, NY, and Rensselaer’s own Special Collections. In the spring of 2024, his students researched and designed an exhibition for RPI’s bicentennial. That ongoing project, “The Rensselaereum” (using artifacts from RPI’s history), will be installed in nearly 200 linear feet of storefront windows in downtown Troy’s historic Chasan Building.

1. Michael Oatman, All Utopias Fell, 2006-2010.
Long term installation for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA. Through 20230. 32’ x 8 x 40’

2. Michael Oatman, The Second Oldest Profession, 2015.
Cast glass fighter jets, bombers and drones on welded steel demountable armature. 12’ x 12’

3. Michael Oatman, F(armed), 2016.
Collage in custom frame made by the artist’s father (Gordon Oatman, 1937-2018), 32” x 22” x 2”

4. Michael Oatman, Imitation of Life, or, the Fossil Record, 2020,
Historic magazine clippings, paper and cellophane CD sleeves, binder clips and pins, 10’ x 40’

5. Michael Oatman, Stella by Starlight,
Historic clippings on paper. 48 works in three rows of 16, each image 18” x 12”

6. Michael Oatman, Anniversary (in progress), 2024.
Historic aluminum novelty baking pans on aluminum Grumman canoe attached with aluminum pop rivets. 17’ x 3’ x 2’