Advanced Ceramic Sculpture

This course is an introduction to three dimensional design and sculpture. Through a variety of projects students will analyze and apply the classic organizing principles of three dimensional design work. Elements of form, space, line, texture, light, color, scale and time (including sound, sensory perceptions, movement and natural processes) will be explored -- with attention paid to how a work functions, involves a viewer, activates a space, or impacts an environment, physically, psychically or socially. Projects in the class will progress from the creation of objects, to investigations of the sensory and objective aspects of space. Students will experiment with subtractive and constructive processes using traditional as well as contemporary materials such as found, recycled and natural objects. A diverse range of materials and techniques will be introduced and demonstrated. Discussion of historic and contemporary artists' work will augment the course. Students will be evaluated based on completion of projects, participation in class discussions and individual/group critiques.

This art studio course is a continuation of the introductory course Studio Printmaking. A print mirrors the surface of its matrix and presents a reflection of the physical and/or immaterial realms of objects and ideas. Representing concepts clearly in any medium requires an artist to engage in thoughtful collaboration with materials in order to realize the potential of form as a means of expression. This advanced studio course will explore ways to address this aesthetic challenge through printmaking by experimenting with conventional and non-traditional ways of creating a range of matrices. Students will acquire skills as printmakers with an emphasis on multiple-plate, collagraph, and other advanced techniques. Students will develop a deeper understanding of the history of prints; how they have functioned to communicate, document, and transmit information through images on paper – engaging with more complex discourses of representation. Students will be evaluated on their projects, participation in critiques, level of engagement with materials, ability to work in a collaborative studio, and final project.

This course explores animation as a form of creative expression, experimentation and personal vision. Various techniques, such as drawing, cut-out, painting on film, and under-the-camera collage, will be introduced. Students will create flip-books, video pencil tests and animated films. Students will be given exercises and assignments that guide them through processes for making art. Various artists' animated films will be screened and discussed. History and concepts related to animation and film will be introduced through screenings, readings and discussions.

The artworks of Pablo Picasso and Hannah Höch; both the well-known and lesser-known artist made paintings and sculptures that facilitate our understanding of how people experienced the twentieth century. Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Constructivism, Arte Povera, Social Realism, among others — these artist movements were initiated through group declarations of common aesthetic purpose. Variance within artist conventions and procedures accelerated during moments of unrest and social progression thus providing a range of counter-narratives to canonical histories of the period. The last quarter of the twentieth century was one in which new discourses informed creative production and art mono-cultures gave way to intersectional experience. Theories advanced by Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollock, and Judith Butler offered new networks with which to understand how art operates as both a reflection and critique of culture. This art history survey looks at how different artists engaged with theories of the unconscious, radical political programs, social upheaval, gender politics, and scientific advances; and, how diverse receptions of human experience were expressed through artistic production. Anxiety, joy, curiosity, and activist predilection combine to formulate a rich amalgam of fresh and challenging visions of the world. Students will be evaluated based on class participation, reading notes, a descriptive analysis, and final essay.

This beginning course in ceramics will explore the making of objects with clay by using the potter's wheel, slab roller, coils and press molds. We will explore surface design using slips, under glazes and glazes and patterns. Through these methods we will incorporate wax resist, tape resist, plastic resist, sgraffito, slip and glaze trailing. Six hand-built and twenty wheel-thrown works are required, with reviews taking place during week five and week ten.

The student will be introduced to a contemporary stream of visual culture that places nature, ethos, competing ideologies, and our relationship to these within the context of emergent forms of art activism. In response to environmental and social crisis, theory and praxis figure significantly in the work of artists and artist collectives from around the globe whose practice manifests as socially engaged art (SEA) defined by Pablo Helguera; data/information reimagined as by Mona Hatoum and Trevor Paglen; or examinations of reconciliation and mass trauma in the work of Doris Salcedo and Kara Walker. In some cases, artworks engage with nature/culture by their placement in site-specific locations, through new modes of picturing, and/or through the appropriation of hypothetical scientific musings or emerging technologies (e.g., Ed Atkins, fictionalized genetic hybridization and subversion of surveillance tools). Many of the artists we examine make use of new tools designed for industrial purpose, medical, agricultural, or scientific research. Others further participatory dialogues within anti-racist, de-colonizing, and queer-centred discursive practices. This work is inherently transdisciplinary and human ecological in disposition and character. Many of these producer-artists appropriate the role of “researcher” in order to bring attention to ecologies that human beings have disrupted or will disrupt. Doris Salcedo, Tacita Dean, Kara Walker, Mark Dion, Shirin Neshat, Ai Weiwei, Andra Ursuta, Karim Ben Khelifa, Raven Chacon, Frances Alys, Natalie Jeremijenko, Guillermo Galindo, among others, will be considered. Evaluation is based on class participation, evidence of completion of weekly readings, a final paper, and a class presentation.