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Beyond its use in commercial and fine art photography, image compositing is a useful tool for artists and designers more broadly. This course will cover processing, combining, and editing images in Adobe Photoshop to an intermediate level. Students will learn about the Photoshop interface, and how to work with images using filters, masks, levels, color and saturation controls, and a variety of selection and editing tools to create digital collages and composites. Student work will culminate in a large-format printed project.

Lighting design has the powerful ability to shape the experience of an audience. Its practice incorporates elements of artistry and craft, and should interest those working in all aspects of visual and performing arts. In addition to hands-on work with theatrical lighting equipment in and outside of class, awareness of light, play analysis and conceptualization, color, angle, composition and focus are explored in class demonstrations and in a series of individual and group projects.

As a follow-up to the course Working With Light, participants in this class will learn how to adapt lighting design ideas to work within the common constraints of theater architecture and scenery. We will take a deep dive into the process of choosing lighting equipment and figuring out where it needs to be, in relation to everything else in the theater space. Beginning with basic drafting techniques, the course will move ahead to planning lighting coverage with scaled drawings, and then to the creation of a light plot and other supporting paperwork.

This class is an exploration in fabric modification through the use of dyes and various stitched resist techniques often referred to as shibori. Students will learn to work with acid, direct, cold process, union, and natural dyes. Concurrently students will learn a variety of resist techniques such as kanoko, mokume, orinui, makinui, karamatsu, boshi, arashi, itajime, adire eleso, and katano which create patterns and designs on fabrics when dyed and/or overdyed.

In this 7-week course, we’ll explore a variety of approaches to improvised scene work, focusing on techniques beyond the Upright Citizens Brigade paradigm. Emphasizing Chicago-style improv, we’ll shift away from a strict ‘Game’ focus and instead prioritize relationship and character.

Get ready to jump in, take risks, and perform hundreds of scenes as you sharpen your skills and expand your improv toolkit. And of course, we’ll top it all off with a final class show where anything can happen!

This lab class is structured for students who are registered for CER2208 CUPS: Slip Casting and Mold Making to achieve production goals. The two-hour mandatory lab will be guided by the faculty so that students can receive technical guidance and adequate support to establish their studio production practices and expand their knowledge and creative capacities. 

This lab class is structured for students who have completed CER2208 CUPS: Slip Casting and Mold Making (or equivalent introductory mold making and slip casting courses) to achieve independent production goals to create a series of  ceramic functional ware (cups). The two-hour weekly lab will be guided by the faculty so that students can receive technical guidance and adequate support to establish their studio production practices and expand their knowledge and creative capacities. 

At the center of almost every live performance is a single human being who quite literally runs the show: the stage manager. This course will explore the stage manager’s role as both an artist and an administrator, using the SM’s wide-ranging responsibilities as a roadmap to understanding the production process and all the people involved in it.

Historical Dress: The Park-McCullough Project Fall ‘25

Working in collaboration with the local Park-McCullough Historic Governor’s Mansion, students will create a new archive of the historic dress collection.

Every fictional universe has its own history, culture, geography, and ecology that act as a backdrop to the narratives that inhabit it.  This course will investigate the relationship between such a fantastical place and its characters – with a particular emphasis on the philosophy and symbology of the characters and their clothes.

A sustainable design process with found clothing 

Every year, roughly 92 million tons of clothing end up in landfills. This course seeks to support students rescuing our cast-offs by upcycling fast fashion. Students will explore how to deconstruct garments, rethink their intention, and reconstruct them anew. 

An exercise in planning, communication, creativity and resourcefulness, property design applies to film, television, and theatrical production. This course will look at theatrical props and set dressing from a property designer’s perspective. Starting with a script, we will uncover the questions you didn’t know needed answering in order to comprehensively produce or curate props that are functional, period appropriate, and successfully contribute to a production.

Modeling and Thinking in Rhino 8 is an introductory course to Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Modeling and how those models can be used in real-world applications. This course will explore the use of Rhino to create interactive models that represent imagined designs for manufacturing, architecture, and spatial sketching. Particular attention will be paid to how computer models relate to specific measurements, spaces, context, and future outputs. This course aims to build technical skills but will also consider aesthetics, functionality, and design concepts.

“Not long ago, a near prerequisite for vanguard architecture was an engagement with theory; lately it has become an acquaintance with art” or so observed Hal Foster in his 2011 book ‘The Art Architecture Complex.’ While ideas about what constitutes cutting edge architecture may have transformed in the decade since, entanglements between art and architecture and the reciprocal effects that they have on each other remain central to architectural discourse.

“Not long ago, a near prerequisite for vanguard architecture was an engagement with theory; lately it has become an acquaintance with art” or so observed Hal Foster in his 2011 book ‘The Art Architecture Complex.’ While ideas about what constitutes cutting edge architecture may have transformed in the decade since, entanglements between art and architecture and the reciprocal effects that they have on each other remain central to architectural discourse.