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In this course we will engage drawing’s portable and responsive nature by working outside of the studio art classroom, opening the possibility of encounters that influence your subject matter and approaches to drawing. Students will practice and expand their skills of drawing from direct observation (not from photographs or other images) by working on-site in different indoor (non-classroom) locations on campus and working outdoors, or plein air. 

Beginning to advanced lessons in bass technique and appropriate theory.

Lessons on Tuesdays – Schedule TBA.

Advanced studies in theory relating to performance.

Students must be enrolled in Bass with Bisio (MIN4417) simultaneously, no exceptions. This class is only for advanced students and by permission of instructor.

This course will look into the use of the kiln as an integral tool and part of the creative process in ceramic art. We will explore various different kilns and firing techniques, learning the roles of fire and atmosphere in transforming glaze components into desired surfaces. We will also discuss the history of kiln technology and how it has influenced the development of wares, kiln building, and the theoretical basis for kiln design and firing. Students will be expected to develop and produce work independently outside of class time for use in the firings.

Sculpture and vessels are realized through an exchange between the medium and the self. The class will begin with the question:

What is Sculpture?

What is a Vessel?

Students in this class will read a weekly selection of Pulitzer Prize winning plays and be required to analyze and explore these plays beat by beat in class discussion and weekly critical writing exercises. This is an in-depth script interpretation class in which theme, dramatic structure, arc, character development, tone, style and extensive study of the given playwrights and their influences will be explored in detail and in a way that centers the questions one would need to interrogate in order to bring these diverse and extraordinary pieces of work to life.

This is an advanced scene study class which will explore the canon of work by Tom Stoppard. Students will be assigned scenes and monologues from this canon, and the class as a whole will read all of the plays being worked on during the term. Rehearsal techniques, character development and sensory exploration of these plays will be a large part of the focus for the actors in the class. Written analysis of the plays being worked on will also be expected. Students interested in this class must be able to commit to a rigorous out of class rehearsal commitment.

The course will be for sustained work on an animation or projection design project, and should be a space for both experimentation, ambition and consistent endeavor. The first half of the semester will be concerned with conceptualizing and framing the world of the animations or projections, by research, drawings, investigation, imagining. The second half will be creating the animation or projections.

The class will be both looking at abstraction as well as more figurative based work. The class will include a mixture of creating assemblages in a variety of means and materials, and using both digital and analogue means from paint, to sand to animated forms. Objects will be cut out with scissors or the laser cutter, animated with pins or digital pins in software (After Effects), layers will be used to create depth in three dimensions, a multiplane or using the Z axis.

In this course, we will explore the visual and spatial potential of cut paper models. The course will begin with a number of directed drawing and model-making exercises, and end with original work made with paper, knives, and glue. Students will study and do research on paper models by a variety of contemporary artists and architects–Zarina’s paper houses, Siah Armajani’s bridges, James Casebere’s abandoned tabletop constructions, Bodys Isek Kingelez’s dazzling utopian propositions, and many others.

This 2-credit course will explore working with classical and natural alternative processes including Cyanotypes, Anthotypes, and Chlorophyll prints among others. Students will learn the histories of each process and see how artists are working with those processes in today’s day and age. The Cyanotypes will be produced on fine art paper and fabric, and the Anthotypes will be produced with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and plants.

What happens when you start a rehearsal process and you are not sure what you are wanting yet? How do you present movement phrases, concepts, and structures and incorporate new information from the performers? What is it that you see? How do you change your mind?

This is an essential course for students wishing to make new work for performance this term, whether one project or a series. It is designed specifically to support each person’s artistic voice and manner of working.

Differential equations are a powerful and pervasive mathematical tool in the sciences and are fundamental in pure mathematics as well. Almost every system whose components interact continuously over time can be modeled by a differential equation, and differential equation models and analyses of these systems are common in the literature in many fields including physics, ecology, biology, astronomy, and economics.

The Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski defined his theory of “poor theatre” as the theatre that values the body of the actor and its relation with the spectator. Poor Theatre used the simplest of sets, costumes,lighting and props requiring the actors to employ all of their skills to transform a space into other imaginative worlds.

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.

Chavela Vargas has often been called “la voz de México”. An iconoclastic figure, a publicly queer woman singing rancheras and comporting with radical artists and activists, her life is a study in refusing to submit to social norms and embracing the power of art as an act of solidarity, resistance and love. 

In this course students will learn to use social science statistics to test their own research questions, while becoming more educated consumers of statistical analyses presented in research and news sources. Students will employ various inferential statistics techniques commonly used in social science, such as confidence intervals, t-tests, chi-square testing, correlation, ANOVA, and regression. Students will manage and analyze data using the Stata statistical software package.

This discussion-animated, readings-based seminar provides art historical, cultural, and critical contexts for the Visual Arts Lecture Series (VALS). In addition to our ongoing interrogation of the public lecture as such, students present their own work (in any field) and analyze the technical and stylistic aspects of structuring an effective and engaging ‘talk.’ The course provides unique opportunities for interaction with visiting artists, curators, critics, and historians.

Westworld (Season 2) HBO’s “science fiction western thriller” television series, drives a broadly-conceived visual culture/cultural studies course in which we identify and analyze various aesthetics and genres, histories and visions, typologies, theologies, and allegories on screen and off—both inside and outside the show’s narrative.

The course is for intermediate to advanced students.
Students are expected to practice daily (minimum of 45 minutes). End-of-semester performance is required.

How do cognitive neuroscientists examine words and word meanings?  What are the different ways we can remember words, such as definitions (“pollo”, “ji”, “chicken”) and lyrics, and how do words work in our brains?   Why do we sometimes struggle to remember a word that comes to mind easily later on?  Are words and images stored together or separately in our brains?  These questions and more will be addressed in this course, after an overview of the central nervous system.

The tragic protagonist is a person pushed to the breaking point- dealing with disaster, fate, suffering, unspeakable loss, and often the consequences of their own bad decisions. Greek tragedy shows human beings struggling in a world that often seems brutal, senseless, and beyond their control, where contingency is a hard fact of life. As such, tragedy raises significant philosophical questions: Does human life have purpose? How should we respond to trauma and suffering? How does one live an ethical life in a deeply flawed world?

Instrumental Study on Guitar. Continued studies from Beginning Guitar. Advanced study in fret-board harmony and theory, play in different tunings, increase chord vocabulary and repertoire.

For the experienced (3+years of playing) violinist/violist. Lessons in traditional styles of fiddling – Quebecois, New England, Southern Appalachian, Scandinavian, Cajun, Irish, and Scottish. This course is designed to heighten awareness of the variety of ways the violin is played regionally and socially in North America (and indeed around the world) and to give practical music skills for furthering personal music making. Students will be expected to perform at Music Workshop, or as part of a concert, in ensemble and/or solo.

Errol Morris is a filmmaker who is obsessed with his obsessions: his cinematic essays veer towards subjects who themselves are consumed by their own fanaticism. In this class, we will study several films and series that center on what others may simply refer to as “eccentrics,” subjects who, despite knowing that their obsessions may ultimately lead to devastation, continue nonetheless to pursue their fixations. Through viewing such works as Gates of Heaven, Tabloid, First Person, Vernon, Florida, Mr.

Chromophilia, refers to intense passion and love for color. What is it about color that has the power to induce reverie, and conversely to manipulate, or disgust? How does color work? What is the role of color in visual art? In language? How do we understand and respond to color from phenomenological, poetic, philosophical, and societal vantage points? How as artists can we become effective stewards of our passionately-loved and yet ever-shifting chroma?

This studio/ seminar invites students to engage both creatively and critically, by making work and through readings and discussions. Throughout the course, students will consider the social life of photographs, with particular emphasis on past and present ways of making and sharing vernacular images.

This intermediate level painting course will take as its platform the investigation of writing by artists about art and artists. While developing their own self-defined studio practices, students will engage with primary documents of art history - artists' essays, letters and sketchbooks.

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. 

Understanding the form of a container is an integral part of the aesthetic reconfiguration of nature in Ikebana. The concept of activating an interior architectural space with collected cut plants and their arrangement stems from ancient Japanese animism. The container is considered a mysterious receptacle for the sustainability of life and acts as a symbolic focal point in its spatial context.

This course will track the development of the long poem and extended poetic sequence as a poetic form in 20th and 21st century poetry. While the long poem does not have a narrow, succinct definition and can refer to many types (and lengths) of writing from sonnet cycle to verse novel, long poems are often associated with the ambition to write an iconic, all-encompassing, be-all end-all lyric or iconic text, allowing a writer to be encyclopedic and maximalist in how they see the world, to communicate a world view or indulge in obsessive world-building.

I would (and will) argue that Newton's Principia is the most important book yet written. It is certainly the most important book that a vanishingly small number of people have actually read.

This seminar explores the cinematic vampire as a symbolic curator, critic, and connoisseur, one who collects, consumes, and reflects cultural concerns. Through films paired with philosophical and critical texts, we examine how vampires serve as mirrors, archivists, aesthetes, and subversive observers and how filmmakers stylistically foreground or reframe aspects of the vampire mythos.

The Voice Performance Intensive is an advanced voice course designed for experienced singers looking to elevate their vocal craft and take their performances to the next level. We will explore a diverse range of singing styles, including classical, contemporary, and other genres, enabling students to develop a versatile portfolio of repertoire. 

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  

A class, a laboratory that explores the relationship between movement and sound, starting with the phenomenology of sound and acoustics, and considering the translation from sound to movement.

Incorporates listening techniques and sensory perception and encourages participants, through improvisation, to draw from movement, sound, space and memory interchangeably. They will be guided through exercises that help make decisions based on assessment, observation, listening and decision making.

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  

Muriel Spark, beginning in the late 1950s, produced a string of fiercely ambitious and savagely witty novels that harnessed the experimental power of the French nouveau roman and skewered the pieties of life in the postwar period of the 20th century.

In this course, students will work on an extended piece (10+ minutes), as well as a suite of miniatures (< 30 seconds). By playing with scale and continuity, students will be challenged to find their own way to extend their ideas while enriching their own musical language. Students can propose a piece in any style or forces, and we will work together to recruit instrumentalists or resources towards an end-of-term performance or installation.

A primer in orchestration, for students who are selected to write for Sage City Symphony. We will pore over the 19th and 20th century orchestral repertoire, getting to know instruments, ranges, and agilities. Analysis, piano reduction, and orchestration from grand staff will be used to internalize and hear orchestration. Students will be expected to create and get feedback on textural sketches of their future pieces.

This course will focus on the performance of Latin American music from all over the Americas, including South, Central, and North America, the Caribbean, and beyond. The ensemble will combine hands-on learning of diverse vocal and instrumental repertoire, traditional instruments (particularly percussion), and performance practices. Students will receive a thorough background in the cultural context of the music through in-class activities, listening assignments, and in the experience of learning the music.

This course is intended for students with some playing and reading experience, who have passed Piano Lab I or its equivalent. The goals of this course are to gain ease and dexterity at the keyboard, further developing a confident piano technique, musical expression, and the skill of reading musical notation. Students will expand upon a repertoire of scales and chords. They will study and learn to perform selected compositions.

Individual private piano lessons for more advanced students. Audition required. A weekly 45 minute lesson time is arranged with the instructor.

We can define Ndaga as the awareness of legacy and debt, border crossing, re/invention, re/creation, and the desire to create new space for time travel. This is a self-journey. This course is for students who wish to find their artistic voices by exploring an interdisciplinary approach to making work.

William Wordsworth said that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Emily Dickinson said, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Allen Ginsberg said: “Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!”  This is a poetry workshop about subverting expectations, breaking patterns, being drama queens, and generally doing too much. How do we write poems that crack through the haze of decorum? How do we say it like it is, but without being plain or cliche?

Since the killing of poet Refaat Alareer by Israeli forces in December of 2023, his now-famous poem “If I Must Die” has been read aloud at rallies and teach-ins, shared widely on social media, and written on countless picket signs. What makes a bit of language sticky and alive enough to mobilize people to take political action? What role has poetry played in liberation movements throughout history? And what might happen if we thought about the slogans that have animated social movements (e.g., “Black is beautiful,” “Nothing about us without us”) through the lens of poetry?

The Voice Performance Intensive is an advanced voice technique course designed for experienced singers looking to elevate their vocal craft and take their performances to the next level. We will explore a diverse range of singing styles, including classical, contemporary, and other genres, enabling students to develop a versatile portfolio of repertoire. 

For students with some prior singing experience. This class is designed to refine awareness and coordination of the mind and body and develop a reliable vocal technique applicable to all styles of singing and speaking performance.  

The Art of Song is a recurring voice technique class that centers around a specific topic within the vast canon of vocal repertoire.