Global Arc

This online course focuses on the technical, cultural, geological, and everyday characteristics of raw clay and fired ceramic objects. Students develop an understanding of and vocabulary for the physical properties of clay in all its states. Students will learn about clay harvesting, processing, making, drying, firing, and the local histories of ceramic production. Along with demonstrations, artist visits, lectures, and readings, students will develop a research interest and apply their ideas to a final project that adds to their own observations on clay. The Visual Arts Program will provide all materials needed.

This course explores Dance Black America (DBA), a festival program presented in 1983 that featured Black dancers, choreographers, scholars, and dance companies. DBA centered on Blackness and the African Diaspora over the span of 300 years and showcased the richly diverse traditions of African American dance. This course, hybrid in form, will include film presentations, lectures, live filming session, site visits and guest speakers who are featured in the project. We will collectively produce research on dancers, choreographers, and dance companies to work to bring forth names that have been overlooked in the past and present.

This class experiments with 3D fabric construction, weaving, knitting, knotting and more as a means for making sculpture. In her essay, "The Materialists", curator Jenell Porter asks,"Why not consider fiber as painting and sculpture, drawing and sculpture, installation and painting, and most problematically, art and craft?" Through this "both/and" condition, this course introduces a range of art in which textiles are used as the primary material while providing techniques and materials for developing textile-based sculpture.The class includes readings and assignments for understanding and producing textile works in a contemporary art context.

This studio course investigates video installation as an evolving contemporary art form that extends the conversation of video art beyond the frame and into live, hybrid media, site-specific, and multiple-channel environments. Presentations, screenings, and readings augment critical thinking about temporal and spatial relationships, narrative structure, viewer perception and the challenges of presenting time-based work. Workshops hone technical skills and problem solving. Students develop research interests and apply their skills sets to short turnaround exercises and expanded self-directed projects for gallery and non-theatrical contexts.

This introductory course focuses on the technical, historical, cultural, and artistic aspects of color photography. Students will experiment with form and content, using the medium to convey observations and ideas. Students will work in an analog color darkroom and use hybrid methods of analog and digital photography in order to understand how color is translated by photographic material. The course will introduce possibilities of color in photographs and expand students' ability to interpret color for their own formal and conceptual ends. The class will include weekly laboratory sessions, assignments for critique, readings, and a field trip.

This course is an introduction to the fascinating history of collage. Students study techniques employed in the iconography of China and Medieval Europe, and expand to its historical resurgence in the form of keepsakes and scrapbooks. Students evaluate the relationship of collage to historical advancements in photography, assemblage, and décollage. Students discover collage's relationship and technical developments to the radical histories of trauma, disruption, and desire by studying contemporary artists. Projects are structured around mixed media drawing, printmaking, painting, along with found object sculpture.

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A historical examination of a film genre--e.g., comedy, documentary, detective film (also called film noir). The object of the course will be the understanding of the uniquely cinematic aspects of each genre, studied against the backdrop of parallel literary genres (e.g., comedy from Aristophanes to Beckett; documentary fiction and essays; 19th- and 20th-century detective fiction). One genre will be the topic of the course each year. Two 90-minute classes, one film screening.

A film/video course introducing the techniques of shooting and editing digital video. Works of film/video art are analyzed in order to explore the development of, and innovations in, cinematic language. Production is oriented toward film/video as a visual art, including narrative, documentary, and experimental genres. Several short video projects produced during the semester. Two studio classes, five hours per week. Prerequisite: instructor's permission.

A film/video course introducing the techniques of shooting and editing digital video. Works of film/video art are analyzed in order to explore the development of, and innovations in, cinematic language. Production is oriented toward film/video as a visual art, including narrative, documentary, and experimental genres. Several short video projects produced during the semester. Two studio classes, five hours per week. Prerequisite: instructor's permission.