Another Fine Mess examines celebrated contemporary artist Michael Oatman’s encyclopedic approach to art making. Spanning three decades, the exhibition catalog assembles a selection of the artist’s densely accumulative works, ranging from early pivotal pieces to his monumental collages, site-specific installation and recent work made for the final exhibition in the “Collage at 100” series.
The Branch—Spriing—Or, Now We Are Even (C.E.S.) by Michael Oatman 36″x84″; historic book cuttings on paper; 2012 Courtesy of the author.
About the author: Todd Bartel is a collage-based artist. His work assumes assembled forms of painting, drawing and sculpture that examine the roles of landscape and nature in contemporary culture. His work has been exhibited nationally in venues that include Palo Alto Art Center, Katonah Museum, Brockton Art Museum, The Rhode Island Foundation, Zieher Smith, Mills Gallery (Boston Center for the Arts), Iona College. Todd Bartel received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and also studied in Rome as part of RISD’s European Honors Program between 1984-1985. He earned his MFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993. In 1990, Bartel was a recipient of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship (U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C.) and in 2000, he was awarded a Connecticut Council on the Arts Fellowship Grant in support of the continuation of his drawing series Garden Studies and related Terra Reverentia assemblage series. Bartel has taught at Harvard University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Manhattanville College and Bridgeport University among others. He has been a guest critic at Rhode Island School of Design and since 1998 Bartel has served as both an Artist Teacher and a visiting critic at Vermont College, MFA in Visual Art program. Since 2002, Bartel teaches drawing, painting, sculpture, installation art and conceptual art at the Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, Massachusetts. Bartel is the founder and the Director of the Cambridge School’s Thompson Gallery, a teaching gallery dedicated thematic inquiry, and IS (Installation Space), a proposal-based installation gallery.
Text adapted from the author’s press materials
ABOUT THE BOOK Michael Oatman—Another Fine Mess by Todd Bartel 312 pages; soft cover 8.5″x8.5″ $64 US Thompson Gallery; 2013
