Symbiosis is a close biological interaction between living organisms. It can be temporary or permanent; positive, neutral, or parasitic; and involve two or thousands of individuals. In this class we will explore a variety of relationships with and within nature through sculpture. Conceptual prompts will be accompanied by material experimentation with “biomaterials”: materials that are grown, cooked, or processed through collaborations with fungi, plants, and bacteria.

Requisite: ARHA 214 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Spring 2025: Professor Monge.

In this intermediate/advanced level course students will explore the practice of documentary photography. This course is structured around individual projects of the student’s own design and is informed by weekly group critiques and in-class visual exercises. We will examine the history, theory and ideological questions and complications of working with those outside of or within one’s own circle of experience.

(Offered as ARHA 282 and SWAG 282) What does European art history look like when seen from models’ perspectives? Starting in the Renaissance, the ability to convincingly depict the human form became regarded as the height of artistic achievement, and life models became central to artistic learning and practice. Although models were fundamental to art making, their identities, stories, and artistry have often been omitted from the study of art history. More often than not, models were from marginalized groups, leading to their exploitation for art’s sake.

This course investigates the relationship between art and commerce in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. What is the network of auctions, galleries, and fairs overseeing the buying and selling of works of art and how is value decided, constructed, and transformed in the process? How do we understand and calculate the value of art in both economic and symbolic terms? How do you buy and sell a work of performance art? What agency do artists possess in determining how their work operates in the market and how have artists played with the market since the 1960s?

Woodcut is a dynamic form of printmaking. It has been instrumental in communication since the invention of paper in 105 C.E. and is a relief technique with a broad array of possibilities. Students will learn various methods to cut and print wood blocks, and assignments will include multiple block printing, hand-colored prints, collage, and cut paper. All prints will be handprinted using spoons, barens and the palm the hand. Assignments will be critiqued regularly, and critical analysis of prints' conceptual and technical concerns will be discussed.

This course will focus on drawing and printmaking as a means of building visual stories through serial description and expression. Studio work will include brush and ink drawings, watercolor, printmaking techniques, and collage, with a range of approaches to subject matter based on each student’s individual interests and choices. These include representational, narrative, abstract, and symbol-based imagery, among others. Relief printing techniques using both wood and synthetic blocks, will be taught, as well as the intaglio technique of trace monotype printing.

(Offered as ARHA 232 and ARCH 232) This course traces the history of modern cartography from the integration of indigenous map-making techniques into colonial Latin American land surveys in the sixteenth century to the use of GIS software by militaries and corporations to create detailed images of foreign and domestic territories in the twenty-first century. Along the way, we will study the political and economic impetus that drove governments, militaries, municipalities, and private entities to create renderings of the land on which we live.

The combination of language with visual information offers a rich range of possibilities. In this course we will investigate strategies of interweaving image and text to create works that draw upon the qualities of each to produce hybrid forms. The class will look at a variety of sources and respond to them in a series of hands-on studio projects. These sources include maps, diagrams, calligraphy, illustrations and manuscripts, as well as work from the history of art and literature.

“Eco” is derived from the Latin oeco, “house.” That means that the word “ecology” was coined to discuss the study of our home and community. What does art, which is also about making place and participating in community, contribute to this field of knowledge? How can art challenge what we already ‘know’ about our surroundings and the relationships that take place within them? What else can we perceive and communicate through artistic research and practice? How can we notice and creatively denounce neglect of our environment?

An introduction to the fundamentals of the pictorial organization of painting. Form, space, color, and pattern, abstracted from nature, are explored through the discipline of drawing by means of paint manipulation. Slide lectures, demonstrations, individual and group critiques are regular components of the studio sessions. Two three-hour meetings per week.

Fall semester. Requisite: ARHA 102 or 111 or consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Fall 2024: Senior Resident Artist Gloman. Spring 2025: Visiting Lecturer Phipps.