December 2011 Educators Showcase: Michael Arrigo — Integrative Teaching International

Michael Arrigo is a multi-discipline artist based in Toledo, Ohio. He received his M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the Ohio State University. Awards include a G.C.A.C. Individual Artists Fellowship, and painting awards from The Columbus Museum of Art, The Maser Museum of Art and The Toledo Museum of Art. He is currently the President of the Toledo Federation of Art Societies and National AP Studio Art Portfolio Reviewer for Educational Testing Service. Arrigo’s recent work begins as simple domestic interactions with his family. He preserves these interactions as photos, video or audio snippets and displays them in ways that expose the meaning and strangeness immanent in commonplace objects and activities. He is a “tinkerer”, taking ideas, language, electronics—everything apart to see how it works. He puts these bits and pieces back together in ways that expose underlying structures and unexpected tensions in the fabric of the everyday. His work reveals rather than conceals his messy process of experimentation in the hope that viewers will enter into the spirit of playfulness and shared discovery. Arrigo is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Coordinator of First Year Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.