2008–2009 Visual Arts Courses
First-Year Studies: Directing for Film
Level: FYS
Semester: FYS
This course will explore the fundamentals of visual storytelling. Exercises in analysis of story, script, and character, combined with practical hands-on video production experience, provide the foundation of this course. Students are asked to develop several projects during the first semester that include introductory writing and production elements. With an emphasis on shaping one’s narrative, the first semester encourages content over tools. Key components of these exercises include painting and photography as preludes to motion picture and visual storytelling. The first semester attempts to find a home for the histories, experiences, and stories of the first-year student, ultimately translated into visual expression. During the second semester, students begin working in assigned crews to complete a group conference film. This conference project is an opportunity for each student to direct her or his own film with assistance of the entire class. Positions in lighting, camera, key grip, and sound will form a production crew designed to support each director. Students are evaluated on their preparation as a director in addition to their collaborative abilities in various crew positions. For this course, a strong interest in filmmaking is highly recommended.
First-Year Studies in Painting
Level: FYS
Semester: FYS
The goal of First-Year Studies in Painting is to develop an individual visual vocabulary and to work with the paints in an accomplished manner. We will begin with drawing and painting from observation, using still lifes and the figure. Each project will have three levels of complexity allowing for the individual and creative solutions. Color theory will be the basis for abstract paintings on paper. The history of abstract painting will be discussed in the form of slide presentations. Oil and acrylic paints will be used to explore a variety of painting styles, e.g., as creating direct marks, texture, and layers. Assignments will enable each student to practice and to understand her or his own preferences in working with the brushes and paints. There will be regular class discussions about the work-in-progress and historical and contemporary art issues. For conference the student will select reading about the making of art, art history, and artists. The student will be required to make weekly drawings and writings. This will serve as a journal about observations and information presented in class, and as a tool to develop ideas for painting. The class and conference work will require the student to work independently in the studio in addition to class periods.
Drawing from Life: Subjectivity and Point of View
Level: Open
Semester: Year
This course will explore processes for creating highly personal “first-person” drawings from direct observation from life, with an emphasis on point of view and creative mark-making through various media. Considering linear perspective as a point of departure, students will develop more subjective and mobile means for representing their worlds, challenging the limits of the traditional rectangular frame and the fixed point of view. Studio practice will be reinforced through discussion, readings, slides, and films.
Holistic Digital Filmmaking I
Level: Open
Semester: Fall
This workshop will introduce students to the basics of digital filmmaking. From the initial concept through editing, students will get a taste of all phases of production. Students will shoot exercises focusing on cinesthetic elements such as slow disclosure, parallel action, multiangularity, and the master shot discipline. Students will watch and analyze each other’s exercises, learning how to become active film viewers and give useful critical feedback. For their conference work, students will be required to produce a short film. They will write the screenplay, cast and direct actors, draw floor plans and shot-lists, edit the video on Final Cut Pro, and screen the final product for the class. This is not a history or theory course, but a hands-on workshop that immerses the student in all aspects of visual storytelling.
Media Sketchbooks I: Process
Level: Open
Semester: Fall
Media Sketchbooks I: Process is a rigorous production-based introduction to film/video art over the course of a semester. Designed to encourage students to experiment freely with various media tools—including video and 8 mm film, digital editing, audio design, and interactive media—the course will have short assignments designed around both conceptual and technical concerns, with screening and discussion of each of the assignments. Theoretical schemas such as narrative versus nonnarrative film structures, semiotics, psychoanalysis, political intervention, and cultural studies will be encouraged as engagement for project designs. The works of established film/video/experimental and performance-based artists and makers will be introduced and discussed as they relate to course assignments. Student assignments are geared toward generating an ease and familiarity with one’s articulation as an emerging media maker as well as with the tools of production. Hence, some of the assignments will be personal and semiautobiographical in nature, drawing on familiar stories and/or experiences. Other assignments will involve using found footage or found stories.
Holistic Digital Filmmaking II
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Spring
This workshop will provide a more in-depth look at the process of filmmaking. Students will be required to shoot video exercises using the various cinesthetic principles covered in the first course, but with greater attention to detail. They will workshop their screenplays in class and learn the craft of revision. Students will focus on directing actors, learning an efficient language to communicate with them. They will learn how to break down a script for producing purposes and to budget and schedule a production. For their conference work, in consultation with the professor, students will be expected to develop and produce a digital film of up to fifteen minutes in length. While the fall course is not a prerequisite for this spring course, some prior digital filmmaking course work is required.
Media Sketchbooks II: Animation
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Spring
This course will introduce students to a variety of animation practices including traditional hand animation, claymation, cutouts, motion graphics, and digital animation. The class will look at work by established national and international animation artists as well as by other artists—painters, sculptors, performance artists—who have produced work in video, and other digital media that relates specifically to animation. We will explore the ways this work relates to class projects as well as to individual interests. Integrating new production skills with the theoretical building blocks established for those who participated in Media Sketchbooks I, students will have the opportunity to create a singular large project and/or a series of smaller complex projects related to a specific theme or concern. The central focus of this course will be on the production of animation shorts. Students interested in producing either narrative or nonnarrative animated films are welcome. Students with knowledge of Maya software are also encouraged.
Completion of Media Sketchbooks I or familiarity with at least one digital editing software.
Screenwriting: The Art and Craft of “Film Telling”
Level: Open
Semester: Fall
This course will focus on the fundamentals of the narrative fiction motion picture screenplay as an art and craft, with a particular focus on the short-form screenplay. The course will explore the nature of screenwriting as having less of a connection to literature and playwriting, and more a connection to the oral tradition of storytelling. With the class structured as a combination of seminar and workshop-style exchanges, students will read selected texts and produced screenplays, write detailed script analyses, view films and clips, and naturally, write short narrative fiction screenplays. Students will be introduced to the concept of “talking their stories” prior to writing and will gain a solid foundation in screen storytelling, visual writing, and screenplay evolution. We will migrate from initial idea, through research techniques, character development, story generation, outlining, the rough draft, rewrites, to a series of finished short-form screenplays. The fundamentals of character, story, universe and setting, dramatic action, tension, conflict, sequence structure, acts, and style will be explored with students completing a series of short scripts and a final written project. In conference, students can research and develop long-form screenplays or teleplays, craft a series of short screenplays for production courses or independent production, rewrite a previously written script, adapt original material from another form, and so forth. Research and screen storytelling skills developed through the course can be applied to other writing forms.
Narrative Structural Analysis in Cinema
Level: Open
Semester: Spring
The course explores narrative storytelling forms and dramaturgy in contemporary cinema. Geared toward the perspective of the aspiring/emerging screenwriter, filmmaker, and/or media artist, the seminar includes screenings of films and the concurrent reading of source materials and their respective screenplays. Cinema language, dramatic theory, and cinematic story structures will be explored, including sequencing, episodic, three-act, four-act, seven-act, teleplay, and the so-called character-driven forms. Selected texts will also be read, and weekly structural analyses will be written. Students will also explore screenwriting exercises throughout the course. The course investigates the connection between oral storytelling and the nature of “film telling” through the screenplay. Conference projects focus on the development of a long-form screenplay/teleplay. A foundation course for narrative screenwriting, filmmaking, new media projects, and dramatic analysis, the course develops skills that can be applied to other forms of dramatic writing.
Screenwright: Writing and Rewriting the Feature-Length Screenplay
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Fall
This course is for the emerging screenwriter ready to “pull the trigger” on the writing of a long-form screenwriting project, finishing a work-in-progress, or rewriting a screenplay. A review of screenwriting fundamentals during the first few weeks, as well as a discussion of the state of each project, will be followed by a rigorous screenwriting workshops experience. Students are expected to enter the course with an outline or narrative roadmap of their project and be capable of “talking out” their story. The expectation is for students to finish a first-draft long-form project and a series of rewrites. Preparation of the screenplay for festival/competition entry and for industry submission will be pursued. Conference projects will focus on the development of a new screen project in the outline form, as well as individual troubleshooting of the project at hand. Published screenplays, several useful texts, and clips of films will form a body of examples to help concretize aspects of the craft.
Advanced Workshop in Screenwriting
Level: Advanced
Semester: Spring
This course is for the serious screenwriter/filmmaker/media artist with significant experience in the art and craft of the screenplay form. A rigorous, screenwriting-intensive workshop for those initiating a new screenplay/project, adapting original material into the screenplay form, rewriting a screenplay, or finishing a screenplay-in-progress. Conferences will be devoted to the research and development of a new, original screen story as well as preparation of the workshop screenplay for its presentation to the filmmaking/media-making community.
Explorations in Painting
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Year
This course will emphasize building strong perceptual painting skills through a series of technical assignments based on understanding color, light, and space. Color theory and its direct application in the practice of painting will be covered. In addition to developing painting skills, the course will also devote time to holding regular critiques of assignments and self-directed work. Individual meetings will be held to assist in developing self-directed work both technically and conceptually. There will be regular visits to galleries to view the work of contemporary painters. The lecture component of the course will consist of slide lectures on a wide variety of modern and contemporary painters, in addition to lectures on movements that have influenced painting, such as minimalism and installation art.
Open to students with prior experience in painting.
Advanced Painting
Level: Advanced
Semester: Year
This course will focus on developing the individual’s idea and vision by creating images with paint. In this course, we will work with acrylics. This will give the student who has been painting with oil paints the opportunity to expand her or his painting skills and to experiment with nontraditional painting methods and supports. The students shall be encouraged to incorporate prior art experiences into her or his work in painting. Students will be required to learn basic computer skills to work with images and ideas. The structure of this course is divided between class projects and individual conference work. In the fall semester, there will be a major assigned class project. We will begin with reviewing basic painting issues such as color theory, composition, and painting from observation. We will focus on developing ideas and subject matter. There will be some class reading, slide presentations, and visits to New York City galleries. For conference each student will be encouraged through experimentation to bring together her or his ideas with an appropriate painting method and style. The goal of this course is to take risks and to make soundly constructed paintings.
This course is open to any student who has completed one college-level course in painting.
Basic Black-and-White Photography
Level: Open
Semester: Year
Basic Black-and-White Photography introduces the fundamentals of photographic technique, concentrating on traditional black-and-white printing methods and film processing, as well as the acquisition and development of a personal vision. Weekly reviews and assignments are designed to strengthen the understanding of the creative process while stressing photographic aesthetics within contemporary practices. This course will introduce photographic movements; conference work will entail research into the medium’s history and individual artist’s working methods. Throughout the year, students are expect-ed to visit gallery and museum exhibitions and share their impressions with the class. Students will develop and complete their own bodies of work as a culmination of their study.
Analog Color Photography
Level: Open
Semester: Fall
This course concentrates on the technique and aesthetics of color photography using traditional (analog) methods. Students will use color film and print color photographs in the darkroom. Emphasis will be placed on exploration of color aesthetics and the uses of color photography as a medium of fine art expression. Each student will be required to complete a coherent body of original work.
Open to any interested student with permission of the instructor.
Intermediate Photography
Level: Intermediate
Semester: Year
A further investigation into the medium of photography with an emphasis on long-term projects, this course involves a weekly critique of current student work and offers more advanced technical instruction, including color and digital printing and the use of medium- and large-format cameras. We will examine current photographic practice and its relationship to the history of the medium, through books, slide lectures, and films as well as visits to museums and galleries in New York City.
Advanced Photography
Level: Advanced
Semester: Year
A rigorous studio course in which students will produce a body of work while studying the relevant artistic and photographic precedents. A working knowledge of photographic history and contemporary practice is a prerequisite, as is previous art or photographic work that indicates readiness for the advanced questions presented by this course.
Printmaking
Level: Open
Semester: Year
This course introduces the student to the basic fundamentals and concepts of printmaking in an environment that practices newly developed, nontoxic printmaking methodologies. Participants will learn how to develop an image on a particular surface, how to transfer the image to paper, edition printing, and presentation. Students will utilize the tools, materials, and equipment required to produce a print in a variety of media including intaglio, silkscreen, and relief prints. The techniques involved in each of these processes are numerous and complex. Emphasis is placed on finding those techniques best suited to the development of each class member’s aesthetic concerns.
Artist Books
Level: Open
Semester: Year
In the past, the book was used solely as a container of the written word. However, in the past thirty years, the book has emerged as a popular format for visual expression. Students will begin this course by learning to make historical book forms from various cultures (Coptic, codex, accordion, and Japanese bound) so that they will be able to see the book, with which we are familiar, in a new and wider context. From here, students will apply newly learned techniques to the production of nontraditional artist books. The course will also cover all aspects of letterpress printing, including setting type, using the press, and making and printing with polymer plates. Whether text, images, or a combination of the two is employed, emphasis will be placed on the creation of books as visual objects.
Open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors who have previously taken a visual arts course.
Advanced Printmaking
Level: Advanced
Semester: Year
This course offers an opportunity for an in-depth study of advanced printmaking techniques. Students will be encouraged to master traditional skills and techniques, so that familiarity with process will lead to the development of a personal and meaningful body of work. The course will also cover all aspects of letterpress printing, enabling participants to incorporate text into their conference work, if so desired.
Permeable Spaces: Exploring the Leaky Boundaries Between the Virtual and Real
Level: Open
Semester: Year
In this course, we will explore the porous notion of space through an array of digital media—the Internet, 3-D environments, and digital video/animation/printmaking. We will expand on themes such as the activation of social space, built or architectural space, and invented or imagined space in relation to the social, political, physical, and psychological. Key concepts will be introduced through readings, artist talks, field trips, and other materials.
Space/Time Concepts: Contemporary Approaches to Sculpture
Level: Open
Semester: Year
This course will explore sculpture as a practice that has evolved from the making of discreet objects into a multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It explores digital/ analog technologies, virtual space, architecture, collaboration, site-specificity, mapping, interaction, process, and performance as well as the integration of social, political, and intellectual concerns. Students will develop their work through assignments, experimentation, writing, research, and critiques. There will be collaborative endeavors with other areas of the arts, humanities, and sciences. This is a studio-oriented course but we will also investigate themes via readings, artist lectures, slides, videos, and field trips. The goal of this course is to expand use of materials and concepts, work hard, take chances, and have fun in the process. There will also be training in traditional methods of construction such as wood, moldmaking, etc., as needed. Please bring examples of previous work to the interview.
Things, Situations, and Encounters: Exploring A Thousand Plateaus I
Level: Open
Semester: Fall
This course will explore the possibilities for creative production inspired by readings from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. In doing so, we will consider different ways of thinking about art, different ways of thinking about ourselves, what we encounter, and what we can imagine doing as a result of an encounter. We will imagine concepts such as rhizomes, machines, multiplicities, a body without organs, embodiment, and deterritorialization, as ways of discovering different subjectivities and situations in which art can become. The course will not ask that one “knows” the text, but rather will experiment with how texts can enable different kinds of (art)work to emerge. In doing so, students are asked to suspend (but not give up) their ideas about what is art and how it should be made. We will encounter a range of materials such as cardboard, wood, metal, plaster, and digital media with technical support provided in the handling of these media. We will also explore the zoo, a piece of furniture, and/or a street corner. Experience in the visual, performative, industrial, and/or digital arts is helpful. For the interview, students are encouraged to bring images of work done in any of the previously mentioned practices.
Open to any interested student with permission of the instructor.
Things, Situations, and Encounters: Exploring A Thousand Plateaus II
Level: Open
Semester: Spring
This course will continue to explore creative responses to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. However, in contrast to working with more traditional media, the focus will be on technology and new media and how they have expanded studio practice. Related to this expansion is the emergence of interactivity in which the relationship of the viewer and the object is questioned by changing the relationship between the participants of creative production. This investigation will include developing skills with digital media and the possibilities such an encounter offers for creative work. We will learn to work with the technology of sensors in order to create physically interactive work. We will also explore other contexts for interactivity such as relational aesthetics and the political implications of interactivity. This investigation will include thinking about Deleuze and Guattari's ideas of the “minor within the major,” the “war machine,” and the possibilities for a politically engaged studio practice. Experience in the visual, performative, industrial, and/or digital arts is helpful. For the interview, students are encouraged to bring images of work done in any of the previously mentioned practices.
Open to any interested student with permission of the instructor.
Architecture Seminar: Introduction to Designing Built Form
Level: Open
Semester: Fall
This course will offer the student the chance to experience design as it is done in architecture. It will introduce a range of basic architectural concepts and vocabularies with which to develop and discuss designs for the built environment. The process will include developing skills in drawing and model building. We will learn about form, structure, circulation, use, and spaces-in-between as well as explore our own phenomenological experiences of the built environment. Digital media will be available for both the design process and developing presentation skills. We will learn the basic conventions of drawing architectural space and how to design and communicate using these visual conventions. Visiting and experiencing the built environment that reveal a range of approaches to (1) designing habitable space and (2) designing interventions to existing built contexts will be included. This will assist in our gaining a historical awareness of the changing relationship between architecture and the visual arts and how architecture, as an art, expresses the values of a culture. The impact of environmental sustainability on architectural design will be introduced. Students will work on both short and longer projects that will include drawing, model building, and writing.
Open to any interested student with permission of the instructor.
Digital Seminar: Painting and Drawing Digital
Level: Open
Semester: Spring
Digital imaging began as an aid to photography. Since then, it has caught the imagination of traditional fine artists as advances in the software have offered artists a range of visual qualities that we have traditionally attributed to media such as painting, printmaking, and drawing. However, the nature of digital imaging suggests that there are major differences in the qualities and processes of the digital that separates it from traditional media. In this course, we will explore what distinguishes digital imaging from traditional two-dimensional media, what are the losses, what are the gains, how does the difference in process affect the quality of the work, and how do we begin to develop a criticality about a medium that has not yet defined itself in terms of an art. What criteria can we use, as artists, to evaluate one’s work? Does the inherent lack of “touch” and the resulting “coolness” of the medium question the long-held values of the unique and handmade, or do the qualities of digital imaging propose different criteria for value and quality? Does the process of working digitally change how one is able to use the medium for creative, expressive ends? If so, how? Why would an artist choose to use digital imaging? What is needed to possibly combine the digital with the use of traditional media? These are some of the questions we will ask in exploring the tension between digital imaging and traditional two-dimensional media. As a studio course, we will develop skills in digital imaging by simultaneously learning about the history of images in art in order to reconsider how and if digital imaging might expand on that tradition and maintain the enduring qualities we associate with fine art. Basic experience with digital imaging is helpful but not required. For the interview, students are encouraged to bring images of work done in any medium.
Open to any interested student with permission of the instructor.
Visual Fundamentals
Level: Open
Semester: Year
The process of converting raw materials and ideas into understandable structures is an elemental starting point for the visual artist. Strengthening one’s ability to record and/or respond to contemporary experience is at the heart of the struggle. Working with a wide range of subject matter (the landscape, the figure, still life, the imagined world, etc.) and media (drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, film, photography), students in this course are exposed to a multiplicity of options and a variety of methods, reasons, possibilities, and creative strategies for image making. Developing, nurturing, and sustaining an individual point of view are stressed along with habits of discipline that support creative endeavor. Critical awareness and technical and formal issues as well as analytical skills are discussed throughout. Personal experimentation, interpretation, innovation, and uniqueness of vision are encouraged. Course material includes art and cultural history, readings and presentations, and regular museum and gallery visits. Appropriate for students of all levels.
Interdisciplinary Studio/Seminar
Level: Advanced
Semester: Year
A dialogue for experienced visual arts students. Through close contact with peers working in a variety of disciplines, students have the opportunity to expand studio experience and gain increased depth and awareness of the creative process. A forum to share and discuss critical, creative, and intellectual strategies and processes while building, nurturing, and sustaining an independent point of view. Each participant will be encouraged to focus on growing the values, commitments, and attitudes embedded in his or her own body of work. Topics include recognizing and overcoming influences; the multiplicity of options; the uniqueness of vision, habits, advantages, and problems particular to a given discipline; personal fulfillment; content, intent, and meaning.
Open to juniors and seniors with prior experience.