How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.
The great thing about drawing is you can do it anywhere! This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. We'll introduce basic techniques while also encouraging experimentation, with a focus on both drawing from life and drawing as an expressive act.
An introduction to the materials and methods of painting, addressing form and light, color and its interaction, composition, scale, texture and gesture. Students will experiment with subject matter including still life, landscape, architecture, self-portraiture and abstraction, while painting from a variety of sources: life, sketches, maquettes, collages, photographs and imagination.
An introduction to the processes of photography through a series of problems directed toward lens projection, the handling of light-sensitive material, and camera operation. The goal of this course is to make art, and by doing so, understand the necessity for the invention of photography.
This studio course introduces students to the aesthetic and theoretical implications of digital photography. Emphasis will be on gaining competency with digital equipment and editing techniques so that students can learn to express themselves and their ideas through the medium.
This studio course introduces students to graphic design with a particular emphasis on typography. Students learn typographic history through lectures that highlight major shifts in print technologies.
This course introduces students to techniques for decoding and creating graphic messages in a variety of media, and delves into issues related to visual literacy through the hands-on making and analysis of graphic form.
This studio course engages students in the decoding of and formal experimentation with the image as a two-dimensional surface. Through projects, readings, and discussions, students take a hands-on approach to making with an array of technologies (the camera, video camera, computer, solar printing, web publishing) and forms (billboard, symbol, screensaver, book) to address the most basic principles of design, such as visual metaphor, composition, sequence, hierarchy, and scale.
This studio production class will engage in a variety of timed-based composition, visualization, and storytelling techniques. Students will learn foundational methods of 2D animation, acquire a working knowledge of digital animation software and technology, and explore the connective space between sound, image, and motion possible in animated film.
This class is an introduction to sculpture with an emphasis on a wide variety of materials and processes. Weekly studio work will engage the visual properties of sculpture; regular presentations and discussions will study how form, scale, and cultural references can be combined to create meaning. Indoor and outdoor assignments will prompt students to discover an understanding of contemporary sculpture. Students will also develop basic facility with hand and bench tools, catalytic chemistry, and industrial techniques, as well as a heightened awareness of how 3D objects relate to one’s own body, to architecture, and to the landscape.
This course studies contemporary representations of Black Europeans in film, music, and popular culture in dialogue with critical works about diaspora, citizenship, and transnational blackness. We will read critical works by scholars who focus on Black Europe.
What is public art and how does it impact you? What is the role of the artist and the relationship between the use of materials, the site, and the community? Learning from varied concepts of art in public spaces, such as alternative digital spaces, intimate social relations, interventions, books and zines, outdoor public art spaces, we will learn from past and contemporary examples as we imagine the future of art in public spaces. Through hands-on projects created in 3D form and collective collaborative projects, we will redefine and design the future of art in the public.
This course will explore film and visual arts made by and about people who identify as women, trans and/or queer in dialogue with feminist and queer of color critique. Our course will center a transnational, intersectional and comparative perspective that will allow us to think about multiple social movements, styles and aesthetics while centering the lives of people who have experienced the cost of homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny often while fighting against other forms of colonized oppression such as racism and poverty.
In the real world, what relationships have the necessary friction to generate compelling films? Documentary Filmmaking I will introduce you to the art, craft and theory behind attempts to answer this question. Through productions, readings, screenings, and discussions, you'll take your first steps into the world of non-fiction filmmaking. You will analyze documentary filmmaking as an aesthetic practice and a means of social discourse. Further, as films are often vessels for their directors, preoccupations, the course will push you to examine the formal, social and political concerns that animate your life during these turbulent times.
An introduction to narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques.
Students in VIS 300 / DAN 301 will create sculptures that relate directly to the body and compel performance, interaction, and movement. Students will also create dances that are informed by garments, objects, props and structures. Works will be created for unconventional spaces and designed to challenge viewer/performer/object relationships, augment and constrain the body, and trace the body's actions and form. The class will consider how context informs perceptions of the borders between performance, bodies and objects.
This course will examine photography's impact and evolving technologies. Students will work with analog and digital media to broaden photographic strategies, technical skills, and understanding how a photograph's material form influences how it is understood. A range of tools will be introduced, including camera operation, darkroom printing, Photoshop image management tools, and inkjet printing. The course will require independent and collaborative assignments augmented by readings, visiting artists, and field trips.
This course focuses on the variety of ways filmmakers have imagined and represented the relationship between the virtual space of screens (primarily in the cinema but also on devices and in the art gallery) and the physical places we encounter in our daily lives. How do various approaches to the creation of moving images reconfigure our ideas about natural landscapes, cityscapes, geography, architecture, home, outer space, and the screen itself? Students will produce a series of three videos (5 to 10 minutes each) engaging various conceptions of place for the space of the screen.
This course is designed for students who are interested in learning the fundamentals of working with clay. A wide variety of hand-building will be taught, enabling students to make utilitarian vessels as well as sculptural forms.
This course will introduce students to core screenwriting principles and techniques.
This studio class will explore a broad range of approaches to art-based performance: from instruction pieces and happenings, to the body as language and gesture, to performance as a form of archiving.
An intermediate exploration of narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques.
The course addresses current issues in painting, drawing, sculpture, film, video, photography, performance and installation. It includes readings and discussions of current contemporary art topics, a visiting artist lecture series, critiques of students' work, and an artist book project.
This course offers an exploration of visual storytelling, research and dramaturgy, combined with a grounding in the practical, collaborative and inclusive skills necessary to create physical environments for live theater making. Students are mentored as designers, directors or project creators on realized projects in our theaters, or on advanced paper projects. Individualized class plans allow students to imagine physical environments for realized and un-realized productions, depending on their area of interest, experience and skill level.
This course focuses on the development of various approaches in observational drawing from the human figure.
The structure of Senior Exhibition Issues and Methods is to create a conversation and vision for, and in regards to and around your Senior Thesis. The nature of the class is somewhat informal and conversational, with the majority of class time being for student studio presentations and visiting artists lectures.
The Haptic Lab is hands-on studio course in which haptic learning—both physical and virtual—will occur simultaneously. Four fast-paced, materially intensive assignments will be paired with equally intensive digital production. Students not only will engage in making artworks in both realms, but also engage in critical analysis of the dynamic relationship between the two. Materials may include ash wood, silicon rubber, soil, polystyrene, or a recipe for 2,000-year-old cement.
Photography has evolved under changing socio-political climates, technologies, and market pressures, and artists using photography today continue to address their interests and concerns using formal innovations. The medium reminds the viewer that representation itself is unstable. How can artists who use photography address broader societal concerns in a way that honors the poetics of the medium, while that medium has a troubled relationship to the record? This course will coincide with a fall symposium and exhibition.