This period is designed for the student to evaluate and analyze and pursue the directions he/she established in Grad Paint Studio Critique I. Group and individual critiques will occur by resident faculty and visiting artists and critics during the semester.

Open to Graduate Painting Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

This course offers a more painterly approach to the intaglio process. The students will produce applications of intaglio, such as collagraphs, large color monotypes and collage. Growth of imagery and technique will be encouraged through medium. A portfolio of prints will be produced.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This course offers a more painterly approach to the intaglio process. The students will produce applications of intaglio, such as collagraphs, large color monotypes and collage. Growth of imagery and technique will be encouraged through medium. A portfolio of prints will be produced.

Open to Junior Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This course offers a more painterly approach to the intaglio process. The students will produce applications of intaglio, such as collagraphs, large color monotypes and collage. Growth of imagery and technique will be encouraged through medium. A portfolio of prints will be produced.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

A continued examination and development of drawing skills. This course is coordinated with Painting II.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

A continued examination and development of drawing skills. This course is coordinated with Painting II.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

A continued examination and development of drawing skills. This course is coordinated with Painting II.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

A continued examination and development of drawing skills. This course is coordinated with Painting II.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

A continued examination and development of drawing skills. This course is coordinated with Painting II.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

Critical Curating will offer an in-depth and immersive introduction to curatorial practice, examining the art of exhibition-making from cultural and theoretical perspectives. The course looks at current and historical exhibitions that engage a range of public platforms, as well as artist practices invested in exhibition-making. The course also has a practical component, which will be an opportunity for students to develop and implement a public exhibition. 

The first half of the course will introduce students to the critical analysis of the curatorial field. We will experiment with writing for various curatorial activities including exhibition reviews, curatorial proposals, and research presentations; as well as conduct site visits to different exhibition platforms. The second half of the course will focus on the production of an exhibition collectively conceived and managed by the student cohort, which will take place in the President’s House and Memorial Hall’s gallery. Coursework will involve workshopping curatorial proposals, soliciting an on-campus open call for work, and overseeing the installation and design of the exhibition. Additionally, visiting curators and artists will give lectures throughout the course, as well as activities such as studio visits, screenings, and research.

Preference will be given to Painting Students.

Elective

This is a course in which first-semester seniors who have already demonstrated unusual commitment, ambition and initiative within their majors will pursue and discuss independent work in a setting that reflects, as closely as possible, the interdisciplinary conversation that actually takes place around advanced art practice today. The course is intended to allow those working within medium-specific vocabularies to test how their work will make meaning in an art world in which a variety of disciplinary histories and conventions coexist, clash, and inform one another, as well as to provide an opportunity for students whose work bridges two or more disciplines (or involves performance/new genres/post-studio approaches) to learn from one another and from faculty capable of addressing all of these sorts of practices. This is a demanding critique course with additional seminar components (readings, screenings, discussions, slide presentations, etc.), and as such students can expect a workload equivalent to a core studio requirement within their major.

Acceptance into the course will be based on a GPA of 3.25 or greater as well as the recommendation of faculty and department heads from the student's major and on review of previous work. Candidates will be identified in discussions between the instructor and department heads during the preceding spring semester. Successful completion of THAD-H490/PAINT-4507 (Contemporary Art & its Discourses) or equivalent coursework is a prerequisite, ensuring students have a shared understanding of the art historical context for interdisciplinary. The maximum enrollment is limited to seminar-size (c. 15 students) in order to provide sufficient attention to each student's work in group and individual critiques while still allowing for seminar-style discussions.

Elective

This is a comprehensive course designed to test the student's ability to create, complete, and document a Degree Project of his or her choosing. The Degree Project should be a distinct, carefully conceived, exhibition-ready body of work which reflects the issues and objectives of your art. The Senior Degree Project is distinct from your Woods-Gerry Gallery exhibition, although its work can overlap with that exhibition.

Open to Senior Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This is a comprehensive course designed to test the student's ability to create, complete, and document a Degree Project of his or her choosing. The Degree Project should be a distinct, carefully conceived, exhibition-ready body of work which reflects the issues and objectives of your art. The Senior Degree Project is distinct from your Woods-Gerry Gallery exhibition, although its work can overlap with that exhibition.

Open to Senior Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This is a comprehensive course designed to test the student's ability to create, complete, and document a Degree Project of his or her choosing. The Degree Project should be a distinct, carefully conceived, exhibition-ready body of work which reflects the issues and objectives of your art. The Senior Degree Project is distinct from your Woods-Gerry Gallery exhibition, although its work can overlap with that exhibition.

Open to Senior Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This is a comprehensive course designed to test the student's ability to create, complete, and document a Degree Project of his or her choosing. The Degree Project should be a distinct, carefully conceived, exhibition-ready body of work which reflects the issues and objectives of your art. The Senior Degree Project is distinct from your Woods-Gerry Gallery exhibition, although its work can overlap with that exhibition.

Open to Senior Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This period is designed for development and presentation of a body of work supported by a written thesis in consultation with resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. A final exhibition of work will be evaluated by a jury of Painting Faculty Members.

Open to Graduate Painting Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

How does visual art influence our relationship with the land and with each other? This seminar course explores various forms of landscape representation and its ties to creating and perpetuating ideas around ownership and identity. We will focus on the ways that mediums such as photography and film have been used to reinforce systems of oppression and uphold power dynamics that have led to our current climate emergency. Students will learn about the relationships between extraction, displacement, and visual material, and gain knowledge around past and contemporary artists whose work has influenced environmental movements. The course will also present crucial debates about the relationships between aesthetics and politics, and the role of the artist in an age of ecological collapse.

Comparative works will be drawn from a global context on climate action, indigenous rights, natural resource extraction, and more, but will focus primarily on American colonization and imperialism. In addition to weekly assignments and film screenings, students will develop and present their own final project using historical visual strategies to develop an open call for proposals for a future exhibition related to art and the climate crisis.

This course does not require prior knowledge or photographic experience. Students will develop practical visual analysis skills and conceptual acuity that will strengthen their authentic voice and respective practices as artists and environmental stewards.

Elective

This course explores the intersection of Photography, Dream and Play, emphasizing experimentation, chance, and intuition in photographic image-making and sequencing. As dreamers, we intend to create a space to think about the image as a form of self expression. We will explore various approaches to photographic narratives by embracing non-linear storytelling, poetic associations, and tactile interactions with images. Through hands-on exercises, collaborative workshops, and theoretical discussions, students will engage with photography as a dynamic, physical, and self-expressive medium. Students are invited to participate by creating and maintaining their own journals and further encouraged to dive into their photographic archives. By engaging with the materiality of photographs, we will consider how the act of holding, folding, layering, and arranging images fosters deeper connections to both the work and the viewer.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

This winter session class is devoted to the color blue.  Through the historical photo process cyanotype (aka the blueprint), students will create unique prints that can be used in artist books, clothing, sculpture, quilts, collages, or as stand-alone imagery. We will print on various surfaces such as fabric, objects, hand-made and store-bought paper.  Students will bring items, darkroom negatives, drawings, and digital images to convert into digital negatives in class.  Other mediums can be put on top of the cyanotype, so we will explore its multimedia capabilities. Finally, we will also change the blue by natural toning our cyanotypes.  Please bring a sense of curiosity, and experimentation.   

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00 - $200.00

Elective

The Image & Difference explores the ways in which photography is and has historically been central to the production of a wide array of forms of difference, and to the normalization of inequities within and between communities and nations. Students will develop means of better understanding how both images and ideas act on us in the perpetuation of forms of differentiation in our contemporary experience of social, political, sexual, racial and economic difference. Discussions will also center on reckoning with how images and ideas might simultaneously offer means of resistance through examination of creative strategies devised by communities or artists to evade, subvert or refuse these exercises of power. The class demands a willingness on the part of all its members to confront unpleasant, ethically reprehensible acts, events, objects and images and to speak to and about them openly, and with care.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Majors are pre-registered by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Photography students.

Major Requirement | BFA Photography