Artist Bio

Michael Oosting is the Vice President of Operations for the ODC Network, where he has founded and introduced a creative space called the Nature Play division. Within “Nature Play”, Michael has pioneered the integration of natural landscape into public functional spaces; bringing forth his passion and appreciation for natural beauty.

Michael’s artistic practice is a culmination of a life-lived, intimately within the spaces of the world’s most iconic ecosystems. Michael has lived amongst the rugged, wild-timber of Alaska; far reaches of high-desert Idaho; and fiery, unpredictable, volcanic terrains of Hawai’i. Michael has learned in the various regions that he has lived that the up-close and personal diversity of Mother Nature can be a bit unforgiving at times.

Michael has now found home amongst the wildlife of Holland, Michigan, with his beautiful, and loving wife, Cindy; and fur-baby, Marjorie.

In Holland, Michael continues to bridge the important gap between heavy-timber-craftsmanship and environmental-advocacy. With a professional background in log-home building and landscape-architecture, Michael possesses a mastery of wood creation as both a structural necessity and a necessary vessel for storytelling. Michael’s rare-talented abilities channel the love-energy of a human-created-bond , while simultaneously intergrading the co-existence of living nature. Michael’s beautiful soul-ability of re-creation is meant to bring new-life to the shared environment in which we all live and are rooted.

Michael has created a legacy of new-life in the places he has been, with a claimed desire to reclaim what was once “lost”.

Today, Michael finds that the white ash of Michigan’s natural beauty, often viewed as an “environment in crisis”, as an interesting transformational storytelling space. Here in Michigan, Michael has unearthed an opportunity to carve monuments that invite you and other willing participants the chance to grasp the tactile connection of engaged natural appreciation for the suffering beauty that surrounds us all.

Michael has found the sensory journey to be the most effective and loving way for a human being to understand— a creative dance of the human heart. One can almost feel the heartbeat of nature through Michael’s creations.