Photo of Michel Droge

Michel Droge

Visiting Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture

Associations

Art and Visual Culture

mdroge@bates.edu

About

Michel Droge is a multi-media artist whose work engages with the environment and ideas of multi-species, non-binary, and entangled life systems. Inspired by oceanic and environmental research and collaboration, their immersive collaborations, paintings, drawings, and prints visually explore vulnerable and under-represented environmental areas to promote awareness and conservation.

An element of Michel’s practice is collaborative engagement with scientific researchers, conservation groups, and community organizations that practice social and environmental justice, including the Schmidt Ocean Institute, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences , Maine Gun Safety Coalition, Good Food Council Lewiston, Eastport Health Care, and Maine Audubon Society.

Michel is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation award, a co-recipient of a Kindling Fund grant, and three Maine Arts Commission grants. They have been awarded fellowships and residencies at Surfpoint, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnoaks Residency, The Tides Institute, The Joseph Fiore Foundation, The Stephen Pace House, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Their work has been included in exhibitions, amongst which are The Field Museum,The Phillip & Patricia Frost Museum of Science, Miami Basel 2023 -Nautilus Magazine and UNESCO, The Cue Art Foundation, Bates College Art Museum, University of Maine, Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA, Maine Jewish Museum, Boston University, and Brandeis University, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and Space Gallery.

 

Expertise

Current Courses

Fall Semester 2025

Painting: Color and Design

AVC 202

An examination of color theory and its application to the art of painting.

Printmaking Workshop

AVC 316

Students develop images using printmaking techniques selected from intaglio, relief, and monoprinting methods. Emphasis is placed on development of sustained projects with increasing independence, and critical thinking in an expanding context. There is a laboratory fee. May be repeated twice for cr…

Visual Meaning: Process, Material, Format

AVC 350

This course investigates conceptual approaches to art making through a range of topics represented in the contemporary and historic art world. These topics reflect pertinent contemporary social, ecological, and political issues reflected upon aesthetically by artists. Working in various media of th…