³Ô¹ÏÍø

About the Department 

The focus of the studio arts program is the enrichment of the intellect through the creation, expression, and interpretation of ideas within a wide range of visual and conceptual art forms. We serve the needs of students preparing for careers in the arts as well as the needs of students who want to develop their creative abilities in the service of other fields of inquiry.

Learning Goals Upon graduation, students will:

• Demonstrate technical and formal skills in a variety of studio practices, including research-based, experimental, socially-engaged, conceptual, and craft-driven approaches.
• Demonstrate creative thinking strategies, including non-linear and abstract thinking; divergent, convergent, and synthetic styles of thinking; interdisciplinary thinking; metaphorical thinking; process-oriented approaches; revision, iteration, editing/curation, failure, and repetition.
• Demonstrate the ability to give, receive, and discern critical and constructive feedback about their own and other’s work.  
• Demonstrate the ability to position their work across time and cultures, and with respect to relevant critical issues and theories. This includes the ability to connect form and content, and generate culturally-significant meaning that considers how an artwork may be received by different audiences as well as the positionality of the maker.
• Demonstrate skills in professional practices including writing, reading, documenting, communicating, and framing their efforts that enable them to navigate and pursue diverse opportunities as artists/cultural workers, designers, and content-creators post-graduation.
• Demonstrate the ability to generate an independently-driven body of work that is technically sound, conceptually-grounded, and professionally-presented.