Michael Dinges

Michael Dinges lives and works in Chicago, IL where he earned his MFA from the University of Chicago. Dinges makes art that is intended to question the exploitative nature of capitalism and the pressures of consumerism. He uses the traditional practice of scrimshaw to comment on the changing nature of labor and globalization.

Dinges’ work can be seen throughout the region, at such spaces as the Aron Packer Projects, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, IL. In 2007 and 2014 he received Illinois Arts Council Awards.

While in residence in the Kohler Co. Foundry, Dinges fabricated imagined devices of orientation and nautical measurement. In addition to his 2007 Arts/Industry Residency, he returned to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center for a Connecting Communities artist residency, where he introduced the community of Sheboygan to his contemporary scrimshaw practice.