Today we’d like to introduce you to Michelle Ramin
Hi Michelle, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It’s a long story that started with my Mimi (my grandmother) drawing with me a lot as a kid. She would buy me Prismacolor (in the 80’s, the brand was Berol) color pencils for every “A” in school that I received – so there was a great incentive to do well! I love color, and always have! The pencils looked like jewels or candies to me; I could almost taste them. The colors were so rich and delicious.
From childhood on, I would draw in my free time – it was always a great way to escape into and make my own world. I grew up in a small duplex with a lot of kids around, and I think drawing gave me a quiet outlet to express myself. As I got older, I really pushed for art in my career. Everyone told me I should go into medicine or law, but I was pretty adamant that I wanted to pursue art – so I did. I’ve never been great at following someone else’s expected path for me, so I paved my own!
I graduated from Penn State University in 2005 with a BA in Fine Art and a minor in Art History. From there, I moved across the country to Portland, Oregon – an artist haven at the time, and a place I could afford to live while also pursuing all my creative projects. I helped to manage an indie art supply store there while selling my work in local art & craft shows and fairs, and online through Etsy (back when Etsy was an art-only site). During the Recession years, I saw a lot of my artist friends going back to school to get their MFAs, and it seemed like a good time to do that.
I went to the San Francisco Art Institute from 2010-2012 and graduated with my MFA in Drawing and Painting. I showed a lot of my work through this time at galleries across the country (SF, NYC, New Orleans, Portland, Las Vegas, etc.), won various awards including the Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship & the Outstanding Graduate Award for Painting, and my work was published in the MFA edition of New American Paintings, Vol. 99.
In 2014, I was awarded the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s prestigious Goldies Award for Excellence in Visual Art. Around this time, I was teaching night classes at San Francisco Art Institute and City College of San Francisco. In 2016, I moved back to Portland, taking on an adjunct faculty position at Clark College in Vancouver, WA and it was here that I really fell in love with teaching, and specifically teaching at community college. In 2019, in addition to teaching, I took over the Gallery Directorship of Archer Gallery at Clark. I was Director and Curator there until 2022, when I was given the opportunity to take a tenure-track teaching position & Gallery Directorship at Norco College in Inland Empire – which is where I still am today!
I’ve been at Norco now exactly 2 years, and I absolutely love it! My students are incredible (I love my students so much! Hi, students!) and I feel so lucky to have landed at such an amazing college in Southern California. I live in Los Angeles and commute out to Norco 3-4 days a week during the semesters, teaching 2 courses per term, and curating the Norco College Art Gallery with 4 exhibitions per year. I make art on weekends when I can, and during my summer and winter breaks from teaching. My work was just shown at Brea Gallery in Brea, CA as part of the “Made in California” exhibition, and I’ll have work up in our Faculty Biennial at Norco in September. My work is also included in the current edition of New American Paintings, Pacific Coast, Vol. 169.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been a long struggle, for sure – I grew up lower-middle class in rural Pennsylvania, and my parents really worked hard to give us a decent life. I shared a bathroom with 6 people and a bedroom with all 3 of my siblings until I was 11 years old. I went to college, both undergrad and grad school, entirely on student loans while working 30+ hours a week at numerous jobs. Everything I have, I made myself with the help of my now-husband, long-time partner Joel (we’ve been together since 2003). We’ve worked hard, played hard, and made this life the way we envisioned it. No trust funds, no parents paying our rent or cell phone bills, no inheritance, nobody hooking us up with jobs. Heck, we drove ourselves across the country in 2005 in a beater Plymouth Neon that broke down over and over again until we finally made it to Portland – I remember screaming into the vacant landscape of Eastern Wyoming and wondering how we were going to keep going (because I was not going back, no matter what!). No safety net was waiting for us if we failed – just our hard work and wits to find ways through. In San Francisco, we had roommates for years – all of us living in a 600 sq. ft. apartment that was slanted, with a kitchen and bathroom that was falling off of the house. It’s been an adventure, for sure!
But, we made it work! We always make it work. Every step has been ours and ours alone – the wins and losses. I’m very proud of that! Though, yes, every step of the way has been hard fought and hard won. I wouldn’t trade any of it for more support or more money – my life is entirely mine, which is such a freeing feeling!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I do so many things and wear so many hats! I’m an Artist, an Art Professor, and a Curator/Gallery Director. It’s 3 professions really – all with separate trajectories and requirements and expectations and work that needs to be done. I think of these as 3 separate careers, though they do overlap from time-to-time.
In my art practice, I think I’m probably most known for my drawings with color pencils. When I was in grad school, I made a series of figurative works done in color pencil that gained a lot of national and international attention – the figures were masked with balaclavas (ski masks) but just sitting around doing regular 20-30-something things, like sitting on the couch with friends, or riding a bike while smoking a cigarette. I now make color pencil drawings about technology and layered laptop windows as a metaphor for my own scattered thoughts. I guess they could all be considered self-portraits in a way though.
Teaching was always something I was interested in, but it wasn’t until I was in grad school that I knew for sure that was a career I wanted to pursue. I loved my mentors in grad school (shout out to Mark Van Proyen, Taravat Talepasand, Brett Reichman, Nicole Archer, Jeremy Morgan, Bruce McGaw, and many others) at the San Francisco Art Institute, and I really had such a great experience there (RIP SFAI). It was so punk – the whole thing. Subverting the dominant paradigm, and all of that. I didn’t realize school, in general, could be punk, but it was for us, which was life-altering in the best way possible. Now I take those ideas into my own classrooms & really try to give my students power, agency, and full respect – and ultimately a really exciting and safe learning space where I encourage them to try new things, experiment, and explore. And they do!! My students are incredible and so inspiring. They work hard and make amazing artwork. I love seeing where they take their art careers. I just got to visit a former student of mine who now lives and works in Paris – she’s getting her MFA in Art Direction there at École Intuit Lab and I’m so proud of her (so proud of you, Madeleine Wevers!)! Teaching is a true passion of mine – it’s not the side note to making art. It’s an incredible gift in and of itself. I love it!
Curating and directing college galleries also came later – something I didn’t think I would find exciting at first, but the longer I’ve been doing it (I’ve now directed 2 college galleries for a total of about 4.5 years), the more exciting it is! I love working with artists – especially artists with clear perspectives and visions – and I love bringing these artists into my schools to teach my students, colleagues, and community about the contemporary art world! It’s so much work – my current gallery is over 2000 sq ft of space, and I manage 3-4 student workers who help me run it (on top of teaching and making art!) – but it’s so cool to have these spaces transform into locations of beauty and ideas and dialogue. A hands-on learning environment that can really bring community together – it’s so fantastic!
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I think school is the best place to find mentors – maybe I’m a bit biased being a professor myself, but truly! Get involved with activities related to what you want to do – I’m the Art Club Co-Advisor at Norco College and the students who are active in Art Club are often the students who also do the best in my classes, and go on to great things in their art careers after graduation. My mentors in grad school would invite me over to their house for dinner, we’d go bowling together, art shows together, punk shows together, etc. We’d stay after class and go get a beer together. I’d ask them questions about their lives and careers, and my professors were so gracious and giving – they’d tell me exactly how they got to where they are, which modeled how I wanted (or didn’t want, depending on the story) to be. I’ve also stayed in touch with many of my college and grad school art friends, and they have been such fabulous supports over the years – in my art career, and just as awesome friends. We’ve all grown up in the art world together, and the ones that stuck it out are doing great things now – partially due to all of us continuing to stay in touch and raise each other up! I wouldn’t be where I am without these folks.
Bottom line: Go to school! Go to college! Get involved! Ask your teachers/professors/peers questions! They are a plethora of experiences and knowledge! Tap into that! Also: never be afraid to cold-email someone about a professional opportunity. You never know what might transpire!
Pricing:
- Pricing for my artwork ranges. Feel free to email me to chat about it michelleramin@gmail.com.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.michelleramin.com
- Instagram: @michelleramin
- Other: https://www.norcocollege.edu/employees/faculty/profiles/pages/mramin.html
Image Credits
All drawings by Michelle Ramin. Headshot photo by Joel Wasko.
