Fine Arts

In order to evolve and discover new pictorial horizons painting today must remain open to the possibility of a dialogue with the wide range of multidisciplinary influences that are available. Where once the field of exploration was defined by the rigueur and strict dictates of a formal training.

The strength of painting today lies in its flexibility to use such training and adapt to the influences of other 2D and 3D disciplines and the pictorial possibilities that they offer as art experience. The possibility to create an art experience through research, experimentation and interaction are the key components in the junior year in painting. With this as a core component the dynamics of painting are explored through a variety of set projects designed to stimulate the individual imagination.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year painting

This course aims make aware students of certain issues in contemporary sculpture and gives them the technical and conceptual means to develop a more personal language and identity. Students are encouraged to experiment with different approaches, media and concepts and continue to explore technical skills necessary to conceiving and executing sculptural work. Over the course of the semester students are encouraged to develop and pursue a personal sensibility within their artistic research.

Prerequisites : Sophomore Sculpture

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

This interdisciplinary course explores the rise of visual media, communication and information, within the context of a broad cultural shift away from the verbal and textual toward the visual, which has taken place since the advent of photography and cinema in the late 19th century, through the birth of television, to the present proliferation of digital media worldwide. We will consider the critical practices of looking, historicizing and interpreting that have accompanied this ‘visual turn’. Our readings will primarily address the theoretical foundations of the study of visual culture, which is understood to incorporate a variety of visual media and visual technologies: painting and sculpture, scientific imagery, material culture, the internet. If everything can be visual culture, what remains of traditional notions of medium specificity? What critical tools must be invented to analyze visual events from a visual cultural perspective? The relationship between the visual arts and visual media, especially with respect to the ‘global’ contemporary visual landscape, will be a focus of this course.

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

This course aims make aware students of certain issues in contemporary sculpture and gives them the technical and conceptual means to develop a more personal language and identity. Students are encouraged to experiment with different approaches, media and concepts and continue to explore technical skills necessary to conceiving and executing sculptural work. Over the course of the semester students are encouraged to develop and pursue a personal sensibility within their artistic research.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year sculpture/Junior Sculpture1

In order to evolve and discover new pictorial horizons painting today must remain open to the possibility of a dialogue with the wide range of multidisciplinary influences that are available. Where once the field of exploration was defined by the rigueur and strict dictates of a formal training,
the strength of painting today lies in its flexibility to use such a training and adapt to the influences of other 2D and 3D disciplines and the pictorial possibilities that they offer as art experience. The possibility to create an art experience through research, experimentation and interaction are the key
components in the junior year in painting. With this as a core component the dynamics of painting are explored through a variety of set projects designed to stimulate the individual imagination.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year painting/Painting Interactions 1

This course engages more complex forms of printmaking, such as photo emulsion silk screen, laser lithography and other forms of etching to encourage students to combine printing techniques.
The course will be given in a workshop environment, using water based materials.

Prerequisites: Printmaking 1

This course will focus on the actual drawing process as concept and experimental research as resource. Drawing as the subject matter, drawing context and the actual drawing practice to develop new ways of expression and mixing media, new ways to appropriate the act of drawing. This course is not about drawing “things”, but to encourage students to explore the actual physicality of making a drawing or to question the physical involvement of drawing; to explore existing and reinventing new methods, ideas or processes simultaneously. Through different exercises, in class workshops or given assignments the students can invent and develop a personal language and propose new ideas, make links between media and technologies.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year drawing, advanced drawing skills

What is performance art? Exploring the body and live media in art. What is the meaning of the term “performance” today? For many artists, its attitude is an integral part of their working process, with a range of expressive means: from painting to installation, video to text. This course will investigate ideas related to performance in the context of art. Together, we will experiment and delimit thinking around ‘performativity’, technology, and subjectivity via presentations, games, exercises, and visits to live events. The aim of this course is to explore and understand how the body (human and non-human) can be used as a tool for investigation, improvisation, and documentation. Students on the course are active in their learning. You will be introduced to key subjects and issues with examples of performances, followed by practical workshops where you will work together to develop and experiment through themes of music, movement, language, technology, liveness, and collectiveness. You will then be invited to test your own ideas with practical and conceptual support from the group. You will develop critical, creative, and producing skills in order to challenge what performance can be, what it can do in the world, and how it might connect ideas, practices, and communities.