Global Arc

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. Through hands-on design projects, readings, and discussions, students will delve into different material forms of distribution - the public newspaper, the community newsletter, the course packet, the PDF - and investigate the particular attributes of each.

This course engages students in the decoding of and formal experimentation with the image as a two-dimensional surface. Students take a hands on approach to formal experimentation through an array of modes and technologies including the photocopier, the computer, the camera, letterpress and silkscreen printing to address the most basic principles of design, such as visual metaphor, composition, hierarchy, and scale. Studio assignments and group critique will foster an individual ability to realize sophisticated images and motivate these towards carrying specific meanings.

This studio production class will engage in a variety of timed-based collage, composition, visualization, and storytelling techniques. Enrolled students will be taught the fundamental techniques of 2D animation production, acquire a working knowledge of digital animation software, utilize the basic technologies of audiovisual recording, editing, and composition, and explore the connective space between sound, image, and motion possible in animated film. In-class critiques, workshops, screenings, and discussions will relate student work to the history and practice of animation and to other media, art, and design forms.

This class is an introduction to sculpture with an emphasis on a wide variety of materials and processes. Weekly studio work will engage the visual properties of sculpture; regular presentations and discussions will study how form, scale, and cultural references can be combined to create meaning. Indoor and outdoor assignments will prompt students to discover an understanding of contemporary sculpture.Students will also develop basic facility with hand and bench tools, catalytic chemistry, and industrial techniques, as well as a heightened awareness of how 3D objects relate to one's own body, to architecture, and to the landscape.

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. A balance of indoor, outdoor, and/or transient assignments will lead to the development of an understanding of contemporary sculpture, as well as basic technical facility with found objects, common materials, natural earthworks, ergonomics, and three-dimensional design.

Sound is at once ephemeral in air, concrete in material, and conceptualized in the mind. This unique transformation makes sound ideal for examining the relationship of our internal experience to physicality. In this course, students will reconsider sound as material through studio projects exploring physical technologies of sound-making along with listening and viewings of related arts and artists, readings and writings in theories of sound, new media, perception and phenomenology. This class offers a hybrid experience - both studio and seminar reconsidering our relationship to the body, physical material, and sound embodied in the world.

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.