Visual Arts

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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.

This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium.

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.

The practice of graphic design relies on the existence of networks for distributing multiple copies of identical things. Students in this course will consider the ways in which a graphic design object's characteristics are affected by its ability to be copied and shared, and by the environment in which it is intended to circulate.

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 will be a studio introduction to sculpture, with particular emphasis on the study of how form, space, and a wide variety of materials and processes influence the visual properties of sculpture and the making of meaning.

This studio course investigates video installation as a contemporary art form that extends the conversation of video art beyond the frame and into live, site-specific multi-channel environments.

This course takes an exciting approach to color photography using methods of cameraless and lens based analog photography.

This course is an introduction to the fascinating history of collage.

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.

In a digital world, this course promotes hand-made printed images. Students will examine two kinds of printmaking: relief and intaglio. To make images that matter, students will learn to cut blocks, fashion stencils, plan and execute color layers, etch and drypoint copper plates, and understand the range of mark making possibilities available in printmaking.

This course will examine photography's constant negotiation of evolving technologies. Students shoot black and white and color film and scan and print it digitally to broaden their photographic strategies, their technical skills, and their understanding of the medium of photography. A range of tools will be introduced, including analogue film development, scanning negatives, Photoshop processing, and inkjet printing.

An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.

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 class will use fairytales, films, games and new media to illustrate universal script principles while creating a rich interdisciplinary lens to explore the innovative intersection of narrative screenwriting, science and technology.

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.

There are unlimited ways in which to record and portray the world around us. In this class, we will analyze classic and contemporary strategies for making a documentary film, and see if we can invent some new ones of our own.

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.

This class will focus on how contemporary painting considers the human figure. Portraits without people, the selfie, imagined figures, forgotten figures, fragmented figures, figures from our lives, abstract figures, cyborgs, crowds, and composite figures will be considered within a structure of exploratory painterly approaches. This class will NOT focus on "how to" paint the figure. No experience painting the figure is necessary.

This workshop class will introduce students to the fundamental elements of developing and writing a TV series in the current "golden age of television." Students will watch television pilots, read pilot episodes and engage in in-depth discussions about story, series engine, season arcs, character, structure, tone and dialogue, which will be applied to their work.

Advanced Questions in Photography will examine ways in which lens-based media can interrogate representation, class, gender and race. The class will look artists of the 1960's through 1990's such as Eleanor Antin, Adrian Piper, Douglas Huebler, Martha Rosler, Barbara Kruger, Carrie Mae Weems, Felix Gonzales Torres, Lyle Ashton Harris and more recent artists Trevor Paglen, Hank Willis Thomas, Jason Lazarus, Walead Beshty and Hito Steyerl.

This studio course builds on the skills and concepts of the 200-level Graphic Design classes. VIS 415 is structured around three studio assignments that connect graphic design to other bodies of knowledge, aesthetic experience, and scholarship. The class always takes a local concept or event as the impetus for investigations. Studio work is supplemented by critiques, readings and lectures. Students will refine their approaches to information design and visual problem solving, and to decoding and producing graphic design in print and electronic media.

Students will design, build, and critically analyze three common objects—a Cushion, a Prosthetic, and a Light Fixture—each of which will be informed by the diverse structural properties of a singular material: ash wood. These objects will be executed quickly and in round-robin fashion, a structure that allows students to be leaders on some assignments and learn from their classmates on others, supported by lab work. The course is capped by a semester-long, collaborative project to design and build a flexible bridge. A larger goal of the class is to compare and contrast methods of evaluation in visual art, engineering, design, and ergonomics.

This class concentrates on the editing process. Students will re-edit samples from narrative and documentary films and analyze the results. We will also critique ongoing edits of your own thesis films. This course will give you a better understanding of how many ways there are to approach and solve the puzzle of editing a film.

This sculpture class will engage contemporary approaches to the figure with an emphasis on the figure as body.

This seminar examines the radical possibilities of collaboration as fundamentally a process of radical composition through which collaborators bridge different modalities of creative expression - textual composition, artistic composition, speculative composition, among others - that span multiple media, forms and practices. By modeling and exploring collaboration as radical composition, this course seeks to reframe it as more that a dynamic of participation and coordination, and to recognize it as a generative methodology for producing critical scholarly and creative work.