Michael E. Goldman is a fine artist and motion picture art director born in Rochester, New York. He currently resides in San Francisco, California.
As an undergraduate, Goldman studied at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York in 1984 and then in 1985 completed his B.S. from Skidmore College combining architecture, art history and photography. In 1989, Goldman earned his Masters Degree in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, which also awarded him a stipend to study architecture in Paris during the summer of 1987.
Goldman’s professional career has taken a winding path. He began working as an architectural draftsman while a student and then for a variety of firms in New York City and Rochester, NY eventually settling in an office in Seattle, WA. In search of more hands on design/build work, Michael departed from the architecture office to freelance with the Seattle artist, Buster Simpson where he was employed to draw, build and install his large-scale public pieces. From 1990-1994, he assisted Buster on works located in San Francisco and Anaheim, CA, Boston, MA, and Houston, TX.
During this period, he began to work as a studio artist developing, fabricating and exhibiting 2D & 3D works combining found objects with steel, wood and concrete. In 1994, he was chosen to participate in the three month Emerging-Artist-in-Residence program at The Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington and has been a practicing and exhibiting artist since then.
In 1996, he began work in the motion picture industry as an art director. In this role he designs the scenery, graphics, props & set decorations as well as develop and manage the art department’s schedule and budget. Over the past two decades, he has completed >60 film, television and commercial projects with department budgets ranging from $60K - $1.2M and collaborated in teams from 2 - 30 people.
In 2005, he was one of the four art directors that won an Oscar for Columbia Pictures Memoirs of a Geisha and part of teams nominated four times by the Art Directors Guild for their Excellence in Production Design Award; in 2009 for Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon & Marvel’s Iron Man and in 2014 for Paramount Picture’s Star Trek Into Darkness & Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine.
Currently, Goldman divides his time between his own art and design projects with his company Consolidated Studios doing site specific works & showing in galleries and working in motion picture industry in San Francisco and on location.
