Design Arts & Practices

Bachelor of Arts

Just as cartographers seek to plot our volumetric world onto flat surfaces, the eye of the artist is also compressing height, width and depth into the picture plane when drawing from observation. Mapping will focus on drawing as an exploratory means of seeing and knowing the world. This process-emphasis art studio workshop gauges cumulative experience rather than performance on individual drawings. Progress and success will be evaluated through the assembly of portfolios gleaned from daily drawings; this structure encourages the essential risk-taking that drawing demands by de-emphasizing the criticality of any singular drawing. Process-oriented studio classes encourage good studio practice by making dedicated in-class work ethic difficult to avoid. This is an eight week course.

Is the camera an arbitrator between the eye of the artist and their environment? When does an image transcend a snapshot and become an artwork? Like drawing, photography can be a means of seeing and processing the world, or changing it. Gaze is an introduction to the conception and execution of art through photographic processes. Gaze is a project-emphasis art studio workshop. A digital camera is required for this workshop (Point-and-Shoot or SLR, above 5 megapixels).

The surface of a painting can operate towards many different ends. Is the painting a window (the illusion of depth) or an object (the negation of depth)? Or both? Surface is an introduction to the conception and execution of art in two dimensions (height and width). Surface is a project-emphasis art studio workshop.

Propaganda will explore artwork as a tool for communication in the public sphere. Critical investigations into this functional art form will be engaged through both a graphic design and illustration-oriented approach. Propaganda is a project-emphasis studio art workshop.

This course is an introduction to visual communications, study of graphic design principles, history and techniques. Students will produce projects exploring visual communication problems.

Introductory level overview of illustration as visual storytelling and graphic communication. Illustrators, designers, painters, printmakers, sculptors, photographers, typographers, comic artists and all students interested in strengthening their art; making muscle as a communicative instrument will be well suited for this class. A brief overview of the history of illustration, as well as a contemporary perspective on the field of illustration, will be covered. No matter what your level of experience, this class will help you find and develop your unique visual vocabulary.

This course introduces students to the essential methods of visual communication and ordering systems through a series of interrelated exercises. Techniques such as investigative sketching, freehand drawing, and digital design communication are considered in relation to their potential to reveal the world around us with a heightened sense of awareness. Importantly, this is an interdisciplinary-based studio - students enrolled in this course will have the ability to engage in a variety of different design strategies.

An introduction to the practice, theory, and history of animation within art and independent media through labs, lecture, readings and project critiques. Production will cover 2D animation and computer-based stop-motion. Emphasis is on creative content, experimentation and critical thinking. Students work with computer-based editing and 2D and other animation tools to create several significant animation projects using one or more techniques. Basic computer skills including Photoshop are necessary for this course.

This course is an introduction to web design and deals with concepts such as online graphics, systems, and information structures and will look at processes such as site development, research, site maps, icons, and interface design.

Study letterforms and their appropriate and effective use in visual communications from a historic as well as from a contemporary perspective.

A history of design beginning with the industrial revolution including graphic design, industrial design, technological advances, mass communications, the consumer culture and its critique, avant-garde design, postmodernism, and the cultural politics of design.

Survey of American architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, and the decorative arts from colonial times to the present.

Survey of contemporary art in the United States and Europe since the 1960s.

This course will survey the history of photography as an art form and a means of visual communication.

This course is a historical and theoretical survey of significant developments in modern architecture since the industrial revolution. It will consider the impact of changing philosophies and technologies that have impacted the modern view of the built environment. Special focus will be placed on 19th-century historicism, early 20th-century avant-gardes, and Post-WWII practices that embraced sociology and new types of technology.

Survey of major artistic movements, including academicism, expressionism, cubism, and surrealism, and their influence on film in Germany, Italy, America and France.

A culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies.