Global Arc

This course introduces students to 16mm analog film production. The focus of this course is on the completion of a short experimental film originating on analog film. Various hands-on exercises with 16mm film production cameras, lenses, light meters, tripods, and film stocks will prepare students for making their film. Students will also learn dark room motion picture film developing. Anaylis of the works of experimental filmmakers will provide histortical context of the form.

In this class, students will make a short (5-10 minutes) film directly inspired by the genre of the vampire film. Students may make a short narrative vampire film, a video essay about one of the vampire films screened in class, an abstract/conceptual/experimental/self-reflexive art film that riffs on the idea of the vampire (for example, re-edit scenes from existing films into a narrative about vampires with fabricated sound design and narration).

Notes on Color is a digital photography class that will address color photography, both analogue and digital, with the aim of unpacking and understanding the profound aesthetic and material sway over our habits of vision and culture color photography exerts. Beginning with the 19th century's two foundational texts on color theory for artists, Goethe's "Theory of Color" and Michel-Eugène Chevreul's "Principles of Color Harmony and Contrast," Notes on Color will explore how color transformed painting and photography from 1850 to the present.

This course focuses on the technical, historical, and cultural aspects of Photography. Photography is more important now than it has ever been. As we begin to use and disperse photography as fluidly as we do text, it is crucial that we understand the syntax of photography. Emphasis is on creative expression, learning digital workspace, and managing print quality. Popular media, found photographs, and the life of digital images will also be investigated. Slide lectures, readings, and class discussions of student work will provide critical and conceptual understanding of contemporary art and photography.

This will be a creative studio course dedicated to the unrivaled experience of making things. Throughout the history of sculpture is a repressed history of "craft," a term that refers, often pejoratively, to objects skillfully made out of wood, metal, ceramics, reeds, dried pasta, textiles, or glass. Students in this class will engage in a selection of these techniques to make craft objects that critically examine the distinctions made between them and what we call "sculpture." Inherent to these investigations will be a critical examination of craft as well, how it's traditions and techniques might also be questioned and made new.

How do Black visual artists draw on cinematic, photographic and historical archives to create innovative new work? How do they "fabulate" new possibilities for understanding the past and envisioning the future differently? And how might aspiring young artists use this work as a source of inspiration? This seminar engages the practice of "critical fabulation" (rigorous archival research and speculative storytelling) in the work of Black contemporary artists, using it as a point of departure for students to craft their own critical responses to these artworks in ways that bring their research and creative practice into conversation.

This interdisciplinary studio seminar explores the material, scientific, and cultural dimensions of glass. Co-taught by a sculptor and a material scientist, the course considers glass at both the molecular and artistic levels. Students investigate properties such as thermal expansion, refractive index, and durability while examining how transparency, fragility, and luminosity have shaped technology and visual culture. The seminar pairs scientific inquiry with creative practice: the first half features lectures, demos, and field trips; the second culminates in a glass kiln casting project from wax modeling to mold making and cold working.

Learn how to draw with perspective! Take flat surface lines to three-dimensional depth. Students will acquire skills of drawing one-point, two-point, and three-point perspective creating illusion of depth with spatial relationships. Students will think about line formation and the poetics of lines. With the techniques learned, students will apply into a drawing project of their choosing. Students will gain confidence in learning how to speak about their work and learn various methods to offer valuable feedback to their peers. Students will read and study from artists to gain greater knowledge and a new perspective on drawing.

This course explores the way drawing expands beyond the representational and connects back to our sense of the bodily and the spatial through gesture, material, and process experimentation. The nature of this class is experimental.We look at the history of experimental drawing and how artists throughout time have used this medium to push boundaries of perception and the indexical. Lectures, readings, in class and out of class studio work will bolster our understanding of the themes presented throughout this course. Themes may include abstraction, figure/ground relationships, color relationships, collage, and process based iterative series.

This interdisciplinary studio and seminar class will investigate the concept of the archive from an embodied perspective, asking: How can analog and physical memory-keeping counter the digital and the institutional record? When do they work responsibly in tandem? What unexpected forms can story-keeping take? We will work to undermine the totality of the internet, elude surveillance, and complicate historical narratives through oral histories, encounters with the land, ephemeral experimentation, and redaction.