103 Foundations: Art and Public Engagement -
Art and Public Engagement will introduce students to art making processes and strategies that develop a dialogue with the greater public. This course will ask students to plan and execute public projects in a variety of media including: producing and disseminating printed materials; constructing performative sculptural objects; and live performance. Social Practice, activism, forms of resistance, community building, information gathering and sharing, and participatory art will be explored through lectures, demonstrations, and assignments.
104 Foundations: Digital Processes and Production -
This course explores the use of digital processes in the service of making 2-D images and 3-D objects. Topics include digital image manipulation, vector graphics, 3-D printing, 3-D scanning, 3-D modeling and CNC milling. Students will be encouraged to build connections between these virtual tools and conventional media in an engaging and interdisciplinary studio practice. May be taken for credit toward the Film and Media Studies major.
105 Foundations: Material Translations: Line, Space, Mass, and Motion -
This course provides students with the opportunity to explore specific images or ideas in multiple media, employing both the material and intellectual processes of construction, deconstruction, fragmentation, synthesis, analysis, interpretation, and contextualization, while gaining an understanding of primary studio art concepts, including the principles of design, the visual elements, and creative problem solving strategies. Material Translations will offer students the opportunity to explore themes they may be already exploring in other academic classes through the lens of the visual arts, utilizing basic 2, 3, and 4-dimensional tools for image/idea articulation. Students will also gain an introduction to significant artists’ creative productions in their investigation of similar themes.
106 Foundations: The Transformed Object -
This course covers general concepts of 3-D making and leads students to create objects through hands-on experience with material processes. A variety of experimental methods will empower students to think fundamentally about creativity, design, material and space. Instruction will integrate the formal with the conceptual, and the technical with the experimental. This course seeks to make visible a variety of approaches to object making, especially those that reflect a contemporary sensitivity to and experience of materials.
107 Foundations: The Contemporary Print and Artists’ Book -
This course introduces students to both traditional and digital methods of designing, printing, and disseminating prints and artists’ books. With an emphasis on foundational design concepts and visual communication, students explore the relationship between text and image through broadsides, posters, and a variety of book structures. Students will create and analyze prints and books through hands-on studio work, group and individual critiques, and the study of the cultural and historical significance of prints and books.
108 Foundations: Approaches in Abstract Painting -
This studio course will focus on providing students a strong foundation in various approaches to making abstract paintings and considering meaning in them. Students will become familiar with numerous techniques and variations of oil painting media, from gestural abstraction, hard edge painting, abstraction from the figure and landscape, and pure non-objective abstraction. A strong emphasis will also be placed on discovering how abstract painting functions in culture, both historically and in contemporary times. Students will work with painting concepts, skills, and materials with the use of oil paint and oil mediums. The course will explore color, spatial issues, form, paint handling, and idea development as it relates to abstraction. Group critiques involve articulation of terms and ideas.
109 Foundations: Optical Imaging -
Using cameras and scanners to gather images, students will explore composition and color. Assignments will emphasize framing and editing within traditional camera formats, with attention to the rule of thirds and the golden ratio. The gray scale and hue, saturation, and luminance will be addressed using image manipulation software. Weekly readings will address cultural consumption of photographic images. Images produced by students will be critiqued to consider how they are constructed and how they might be read. This class will be open to all Whitman students. May be taken for credit toward the Film and Media Studies major.
111 Foundations: Color Constructs -
This course will examine color theory primarily from the perspective of studio art with the intention of building color acuity and an understanding of the constructs artists have used to organize color perception. Through lecture, demonstration, practice, and critique, we will develop the ability to use color in two and three-dimensional forms as a complex language in and of itself. We will also examine the history of color theory and its relationships to other disciplines in and outside of studio arts.
113 Foundations: Object Memory: Unearthing Material, Form, and Context -
In this course students will explore notions of ‘objective history’ and ‘objective memory’ by attending to the ways in which certain objects (for instance monuments and memorials, but also more general architectures and artifacts) are made to re-member the past for us. The remembered past is inevitably a partial past—both in the sense of being incomplete, and in the sense of serving certain interests. Through individual and group research projects we will excavate as-of-yet buried pasts, and through the development of a broad range of theoretical and practical artmaking skills we will learn how to render these histories/memories in and through objects. Themes of sculptural material, form, and context will be of special interest throughout. Students will be introduced to and receive instruction in a variety of sculptural methods, including but not limited to woodworking, metal-fabrication, plaster casting, and carving. In addition to the research projects mentioned above, students will be expected to participate in individual and group critiques.
114 Foundations: Maker Spaces and Culture -
A critical mass of professional and amateur artists, engineers, crafters, programmers, and entrepreneurs is redefining how things are "made" in contemporary culture. The community of "Makers" thrives on democratic educational practices and hands on, socially oriented experiences that have a measurable cultural impact. This interdisciplinary arts studio/laboratory provides a gentle introduction to contemporary tools, techniques, and philosophies used by the "Maker" community to realize ambitious creative projects. 3-D printing, laser cutting and tangible computing with Arduino micro controllers will provide a base of knowledge and skills upon which students will expand in several group projects. Students at all levels of experience are encouraged to register. May be taken for credit toward the Film and Media Studies major.