Sculpture Seminar II: Visual and Critical Literacies is the fourth sequential course in the Sculpture curriculum centered on research and coordinated with the content of the major studio courses. These research courses are designed to excite student learning through the practice of critical and engaged pedagogy in art history, material histories, research methods, representation, and what “counts” as artist research. Course content has been selected precisely to support the understanding of how critical literacy impacts a creative practice. De-material practices like reading, thinking, moving, and speaking can merge with, bend around, and twist through material practices.

Sculpture Seminar II: Visual and Critical Literacies is an intermediary level course which follows Junior Research Studio where students have learned about field research and the local manifestations of larger systems. The design of this seminar is to facilitate and support the study of themes relevant to art practices and conversations today. Through a series of readings, films, classroom discussion, group, and independent work, students learn to contextualize myriad discourses using the frames of art history, critical theory, philosophy, ethics, and politics. In this studio-centered seminar, students will develop critical literacy that is applicable to their working practices and the attendant process of using materials to make meaning. This course supports discourse around the formation of the artist in an effort to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of sustainable artistic and intellectual practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

An introduction to the principles of architectural design beginning with a close examination of materials, forces and the human body. The examination will progressively widen in scope to include issues of form, space, structure, program and site. This condensed architectural studio is intended for freshmen and students outside the Division of Architecture and Design.

Elective

Beginning with the workshops of the Bauhaus and the Vkhutemas in 1920 and ending with the global emergence of the Zoom studio classroom in 2020, this course takes a school-centered route through the past century of art. Each class will situate a single experimental art school within its larger historical and geographic context, from the federally-funded Harlem Community Art Center in New York, ca. 1937–1942, to the anti-academy project of Bigakkō, est. 1969 in Tokyo, to the participatory model of the Catédra Arte de Conducta, run out of artist Tania Bruguera’s home in Havana in the early 2000s. Through these case studies, you will gain a broad introduction to historic and contemporary debates surrounding the theory and practice of art education. Readings will focus on primary sources from our case studies, and we will often test our hands at assignments from these historic classrooms. As a final project, you will develop your own experimental “syllabus” for an imagined course relating to your studio practice. 

Elective

In this product design studio, we will dissect an existing product, analyze a market segment, and redesign the product to fit the described market. The methodology used to complete this task will be accelerated, giving students an overview of a typical industrial design process. Students will be exposed to design drawing techniques, foam modeling methods, and the concept of designing for consumers.

Elective

In this product design studio, we will dissect an existing product, analyze a market segment, and redesign the product to fit the described market. The methodology used to complete this task will be accelerated, giving students an overview of a typical industrial design process. Students will be exposed to design drawing techniques, foam modeling methods, and the concept of designing for consumers.

Elective

In this product design studio, we will dissect an existing product, analyze a market segment, and redesign the product to fit the described market. The methodology used to complete this task will be accelerated, giving students an overview of a typical industrial design process. Students will be exposed to design drawing techniques, foam modeling methods, and the concept of designing for consumers.

Elective

This sophomore studio expands basic principles of furniture design and material skills, exploring how the made objects interact with the human body. Intermediate skills will be demonstrated and practiced as students further explore materials and their applications in design.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Furniture Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

This sophomore studio expands basic principles of furniture design and material skills, exploring how the made objects interact with the human body. Intermediate skills will be demonstrated and practiced as students further explore materials and their applications in design.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Furniture Design Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

Strategies for analysis and documentation are presented and discussed as students combine their research and reflections on their own evolving production into an illustrated, written thesis that organizes, focuses, and articulates their ideas. Artist's books, online publications and other formats will be explored. Intensive support for development and production of the thesis in relation to studio practice will be given.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Printmaking Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

The graduate seminar is a forum for discussion and research outside of the studio setting. Through a series of topical investigations, lectures and presentations, students will explore current design issues, professional practices, directions, and developments within the field, and other topics that will help to formulate the basis of the graduate thesis work.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. First preference is given to Graduate Furniture Design Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Furniture Design

This course is a continuation of the ideas presented in GRAPH-3252 Photo/Graphics, but it is not a prerequisite. This course will explore how video design and sound design can be utilized to convey visual narratives. Students in this studio will design a visible language of video-graphic expression. It involves two-dimensional design, three dimensional design, lighting design, and sound design. As a final project, each student will make a short video utilizing techniques learned.

Elective

This studio course introduces students to the art and craft of papermaking, focusing on traditional Chinese and Japanese methods. Students will learn paper specifications, fiber preparation, sheet formation, and processed paper techniques, working with both plant fibers and recycled materials. The course also explores how handmade paper can be applied in two- and three-dimensional projects, including sheet production, book arts, and installation-based work.

Elective

The final semester in the MFA Sculpture Program is structured around the development of a written thesis and culminating in a body of work, components of which may be exhibited as part of the school-wide MFA Thesis Exhibition. This work is nurtured by tutorial studio visits with faculty, visiting artists, and thesis committee members during the run of the semester.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Interior Architecture and the work of adaptive reuse pose a challenge: To understand an existing idea, concept, materiality, and context, which then becomes the starting point for architectural transformation. The origin may be ill-used or obsolete; the challenge is to knit together that which exists, with newly created form and materiality. Through a series of intertwined projects students will use multiple hand hewn modalities to draw and model proposals. This introductory studio is not designed for students with prior architectural training.

Elective

This course challenges students to rethink how they gather inspiration and conduct research for art and design practices. By engaging new sources and collaborative methods, students can creatively generate original research that counters harmful narratives, combats erasure of identity and culture, engages collective memory, celebrates personal experience, or reveals unanticipated insights about a topic, whether new or old to their practice. This course is for students of any discipline, at any stage of their academic journey. Using free tools, students will create publicly accessible, participatory web archives. Students will create surveys, and activate online and in-person networks to gather submissions around a topic of their choosing.

Students will learn to connect their surveys to HTML, enabling responses to auto-populate a website they design. No previous coding experience required. The course combines studio practice, lectures, readings, and discussions. Students will be introduced to key figures such as Mindy Seu, Chia Amisola, and Zoë Pulley to provide examples of how web-based archives can inform and be a part of creative bodies of work beyond the course. Students will connect the research they gather to their existing practice through an open-ended final project of any medium. Experimentation and the cultivation of a collaborative studio culture are emphasized in the classroom as students explore how situated knowledge, lived experience, and varying perspectives can be gathered, shared, and represented.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $100.00

Elective

This advanced studio invites students to explore how designed objects shape our everyday rituals of gathering, serving, and sharing. Through the creation of tabletop collections, students will engage in a hands-on, research-driven process that bridges form, function, and lifestyle.

The course begins with an investigation into target users, seasonal events, and market trends to uncover design opportunities. These insights will guide students as they develop their own collection, moving through concept generation, material exploration, and technical refinement. Each project will culminate in a curated “tablescape” that tells a story - visually and functionally - about how the objects relate to one another and the context they’re designed for.

Throughout the course, students will be challenged to develop thoughtful, well-crafted designs that embody long-term usability - encouraging students to create products that are not only beautiful and functional but also built to last. Studio work includes iterative model making, Illustrator-based ideation, and technical drawings to support production.

By the end of the semester, students will have created a refined tabletop collection that reflects strong material fluency, thoughtful storytelling, and a high level of craft.

Note: It is strongly encouraged that students registering for this class have completed ID 2453-XX Wood II or ID 2452-XX Metals II or ADS: Production Ceramics.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design, MID (2.5yr): Industrial Design

In this class you will find a site, a venue, a place from which your investigations will spring. Working from the tradition and need of tableware; or architectural ornamentation; or public art, you will attach your personal expressive needs and vision to uses outside of the studio. Creative and inventive individual solutions are stressed. All ceramic techniques and processes appropriate may be used. Collaboration is encouraged. Designed for students at an advanced level, using clay as a primary material and involving a variety of processes and forming methods.

Elective

This studio elective focuses on creating digital image-based artworks. Students will be introduced to a wide variety of contemporary artists working between digital imaging, photography, and digital painting — and a range of technical possibilities for making and producing “painterly” digital artworks. Through several short assignments and one final project, students will experiment and then hone in on image-making processes that suit and expand their practices. These projects are complemented by readings and discussions which provide context for contemporary digital art-making: an exciting and ever-changing space for creative work.

Elective

Part II of a two-semester course that will survey major topics in the Histories of Photography. Emphasis will be given to the diverse cultural uses of photography from its invention to the present day. Such uses include: the illustrated press; amateur photography; studio photography; industrial; advertising, and fashion photography; political and social propaganda; educational and documentary photography; and photography as a medium of artistic expression. Much attention will be paid to how photographs construct histories, as well as being constructed by them.

Preference given to Sophomore Photography Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Photography

This course emphasizes the design process - how to come up with an idea and how to develop it into a finished design - as well as technical skills. Using tools, techniques, and materials from professional studios, students work on paper exploring and analyzing layouts, color, and other design elements within repeated patterns. As students develop their individual styles, they are exposed to design requirements stemming from production methods and the intended end use. Successful work from this course becomes part of students' portfolios.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective