This course provides an intensive exploration of the foundational elements of drawing and painting through the practice of direct observation. Subjects of study will include; still life, the figure, interiors, and the landscape. The development of perceptual skills and the capability to translate visual relationships onto a two dimensional surface is central to this course. No prior painting or drawing experience is necessary. Throughout the semester we will engage in frequent discussions addressing historical and contemporary painting problems. The purpose of these discussions is to provide art historical context and concrete examples of the painting issues we confront in class. In addition to learning about the formal principles of painting, the class will provide an overview of practical tool usage and techniques. An emphasis will be placed on good studio habits, making the environment safe, clean, and productive for everyone.

The purpose of this class is to introduce students to film-based photography as the primary image-making medium. Students will learn how to develop negatives in the darkroom, scan, and process the image with industry-standard software, then output to a digital printer. In the class, we will discuss design principles that will help students develop a personal vision for their work and explore creative ways of thinking and talking about photography. We will travel to various places off-campus to take pictures. Guest speakers and weekly research presentations on historically significant photographers will round out the experience.

This course serves as an introduction to the foundational materials, techniques, and concepts associated with sculpture. Students will compose three-dimensional objects and spaces through studying the elements of form, scale, orientation, context and parts-to-whole relationships. Sculpture I emphasizes the development of skills in wood and other fabrication techniques available in Swarthmore's MakerSpace. Hands-on demos and exercises culminate in creative studio projects. This course also introduces students to the expression of sculptural ideas developed through iterative studio practice. Each major course project will involve brainstorming, drafting, mocking-up, and reworking ideas. Sculpture I prepares students to move onto a variety of Sculpture II courses, where specific technical skills can be further developed and individual concepts are explored in greater depth.

Eligible for ENVS.

With discourses of infrastructure making their way from engineering into the social sciences and the humanities, the workshop equips students from across these and other disciplines with tools to think infrastructurally and is oriented around three main axes. First, is an engagement with the "shape" of infrastructural systems through an introduction to digital, GIS mapping techniques. These techniques will be used to construct drawings that spatialize infrastructural dispositions. Second, are readings from across disciplines that situate infrastructural thinking within a framework for the diversity of this thought and its potential application. Third, these two abstracted modes of considering infrastructural thinking will enter into relation with visits to thenodal points of multiple Philadelphia infrastructures and discussions with the people who ensure their upkeep. Over the course of the semester, each student will identify a mapping project that puts infrastructural systems - for example, drainage networks, urban farms, or elder care centers - in relation to social, economic or temporal forces that help situate the movements and exchanges they make possible.

Eligible for ENVS.

The design studio will work at the scale of the neighborhood to identify strategies for strengthening the civic realm. While "public space" is most often imagined to comprise parks and green-spaces set-off from the city, neighborhoods offer multiple chances for encounter, rest and gathering that play an important role in the articulation of community. Using observation and close drawing of a selected district in Philadelphia, the studio will identify small-scale transformations that can strengthen the public realm. Close drawing is here understood as a method to attend to those aspects of what is underfoot that otherwise go unexamined. This analysis and the knowledge that it builds will help to generate ideas for transformation that could address, for example, issues of accessibility, soft infrastructure, safety or transport mobility; ideas could challenge the priority of automobiles and the upkeep and design of sidewalks and elements of the street. Students will develop skills to develop these ideas using drawing and physical models into specific, situated propositions. The objective of the studio is to attend to the city in a way that recognizes that its spaces comprise a public home. As extensions of our private world, they offer the possibility of a civic realm that makes the social possible.

This course is focused on subtractive color interaction as it pertains to painting. Students will be expected to build a color study sketchbook/journal. This collection will evolve in meaning and direction as the projects develop. We will explore ways color can be used to create light, space, structure as well as emotional and symbolic meaning in painting. We will use gouache, colored paper and found objects throughout the semester to execute our projects. Feedback will be given in the form of individual and group critiques to address the formal, technical and conceptual properties of color usage and other elements of the work. 

ARTT 003A 

This course offers an introduction to the materials, methods, and chemistry of buon fresco: the ancient craft of wall-painting with earth and mineral pigments onto freshly applied lime plaster. Working from recipes and instructions gleaned from artists' accounts and painting manuals, students will gain hands-on experience with every step of the fresco painting process: we will grind earth and mineral pigments, mix and apply lime plasters, and paint with pigment suspensions using bristle brushes. While each student will be invited to explore fresco-painting independently on portable wooden panels, this course will also emphasize the collaborative and site-responsive nature of fresco painting through the planning and development of a large-scale co-authored buon fresco mural that will be painted on a prepared wall in Old Tarble. Occasional lectures will provide an historic overview of fresco painting and its uses across cultures. Considering a wall-painting as a part of a dynamic whole that includes an architectural substrate and a geographic environment, we will look at varied examples of site-bound wallworks, and will discuss their connection and vulnerability to social, infrastructural, and climatic conditions.

Painting I or II or permission of the instructor.

This course will focus on a variety of methods for working with metal in contemporary sculpture. Students will first move through a series of demos specifically designed for learning to cut, bend, weld, shape, and finish steel.  The class will work on short-term technical exercises, meant to develop skills introduced in demos and build confidence on a variety of metal shop machines. Following this initial skill-building, students will embark on longer term sculpture projects in metal. Cumulatively, there will be a great deal of hands-on, experiential learning. Studio work will be complimented by group critiques, visiting artists, and a field trip.

Sculpture I or 3D Design I or permission of the instructor. 

Contemporary Art Practice is a course for art majors designed to provide structure for an intensive independent studio practice while also exposing students to the broader art world. This course builds critical and theoretical skills through the iterative process of critique, creative research, and disciplinary writing. In order to broaden students' contexts for contemporary art-making, the class will routinely visit exhibitions and artists' studios in Philadelphia and New York, as well as host visiting artists on campus. Contemporary Art Practice prepares students for the Senior Capstone within the art major.

This course provides an intensive exploration of the foundational elements of drawing and painting through the practice of direct observation. Subjects of study will include; still life, the figure, interiors, and the landscape. The development of perceptual skills and the capability to translate visual relationships onto a two dimensional surface is central to this course. No prior painting or drawing experience is necessary. Throughout the semester we will engage in frequent discussions addressing historical and contemporary painting problems. The purpose of these discussions is to provide art historical context and concrete examples of the painting issues we confront in class. In addition to learning about the formal principles of painting, the class will provide an overview of practical tool usage and techniques. An emphasis will be placed on good studio habits, making the environment safe, clean, and productive for everyone.

This course serves as an introduction to the foundational materials, techniques, and concepts associated with sculpture. Students will compose three-dimensional objects and spaces through studying the elements of form, scale, orientation, context and parts-to-whole relationships. Sculpture I emphasizes the development of skills in wood and other fabrication techniques available in Swarthmore's MakerSpace. Hands-on demos and exercises culminate in creative studio projects. This course also introduces students to the expression of sculptural ideas developed through iterative studio practice. Each major course project will involve brainstorming, drafting, mocking-up, and reworking ideas. Sculpture I prepares students to move onto a variety of Sculpture II courses, where specific technical skills can be further developed and individual concepts are explored in greater depth.

Eligible for ENVS.

This design studio takes the Crum River Watershed as a site of infrastructural movement. We will begin the semester by walking along the Crum River to the Delaware and identifying different layers of development that have transformed the watershed's disposition. Dams, highways, streets, sewers, bridges, hard-surfacing, embankments --- these different constructions all represent historic efforts to reorient the watershed for different priorities. Their coexistence comprises a sedimentation of human history that begins with the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people that occupied the area before European colonization. With this understanding of the Crum, students will develop analog maps that help to identify a specific issue and site that are of interest. These analog maps overlay historic information with the visual outputs of GIS data, entering into a dialogue with the Crum and the diverse agents and interests that depend on, and influence the watershed. In the second part of the semester, each student will develop design methods through the articulation of a proposal for their chosen site. These projects imagine a new future for the Crum, can be oriented toward specific human or non-human communities, and work toward a more general renewal of the watershed's ecological equilibrium.

In this advanced course in painting and drawing the human form, emphasis will be given to the methods, thematic concepts, conventions, and techniques associated with multiple figure design and composition.

ARTT 003A or instructor approval.

This advanced level course is designed to give a broad, practical introduction to various painting media and tools while simultaneously addressing the individual technical needs of each student.  An abbreviated history of painting mediums, significant changes to the processes and practices, as well as specific tools and applicable techniques will be covered. The materials and methods introduced over the semester will include: the preparation of grounds and sizes, oil paint, acrylic and traditional egg tempera. The class will be structured around lab-like demonstrations, assigned readings, critiques and visits to artist's studios and pigment/paint producers. 

A Painting I and Painting II course or consent of instructor.

What is required to create a long-term photographic project? This course will focus on assembling images into a visual narrative in the documentary tradition. Students will be guided through the various stages of a documentary project, from its history, equipment, and research decisions, to strategies for sharing work with the broader community. Individual and class critiques will provide guidance through the process. Examples of successful projects will be shared.

Photo I or by permission of the instructor.

Enviornmental Sculpture  is a studio-based inquiry into conetmporary sculpture and three-dimensional art practices that engage in enviornmental issues. Through a series of hands-on creative projects, we will consider how visual art can be a tool for envisioning a more sustainable and enviornmentally just future. Each major studio project will focus on a specific strategy for engaging enviornmental content in three-dimensional artworks. We will often respond to a particular landscape, considering how an artwork reolates both formally and conceptually to the site. We will develop an ethos of working with primarily salvaged, recycled, and reclaimed materials. Within those constraints, you will have a great deal of agency to choose what materials you would like to work with for each project. You will also be invited to bring knowledge from other EVS courses/relevant disciplines to bear on your creative work. To build context for our work, we will look at a variety of individuals and groups across time, speace, and cultures who have made land and place-based artwork. Studio projects will be informed by visiting artists, slide presentations, readings and films/videos. Creative practices that foreground community, land, agriculture and ecology will be emphasized. This course will collaborate with RAIR (Recycled Artists in Residence) in Philadelphia, Swarthmore's Office and Sustainability, and the Scott Arboretum. We will use the MakerSpace in Whittier Hall as a resource for prototyping and fabrication. You will receive in-depth, frequent feedback on your work through full class critiques, small group discussions, and 1:1 meetings.

Student required to have completed an introductory Sculpture or 3D Design course.
ARTT 005A  or ARTT 002A 

This course will explore a variety of different casting methods, techniques, and concepts. Students will learn techniques for making one- and two-part  molds and will be encouraged to work from both found objects and sculpted forms.  Over time students' molds will become more complex and intricate. The class will also experiment with life casting; algisafe will serve as our initial material. Over the course of the semester students will have the opportunity to explore a range of materials. This course will include a field trip to a foundry and an introduction to the process of metal casting. 

Sculpture I or 3D Design I or permission of the instructor. 

Models have traditionally been used in architecture as tools for the conception, development and communication of a design project. They have also played an important analytical role - working to abstract and take apart complex systems to allow for study or make an argument. The workshop introduces students to this analytical mode through the development of a series of models that take apart a significant example of 20th century domestic architecture. We will work with cardboard, wood, plaster, 3-D printing, and in combinations of these materials to master traditional methods and develop new ones. By the end of the semester, students will develop a repertoire of model-making skills and a capacity to use models as discursive tools for analysis and argumentation.

The Senior Capstone is the culminating credit of your concentration in the Art major. The Senior Capstone is designed to strengthen critical, theoretical and practical skills related to your studio practice. The success of your experience in a large part will be due to how you handle the level of independence. You will be responsible for structuring your studio time, maintaining a supply budget and coordinating meetings with the faculty member leading the course. The faculty person will guide and assess the development of work. You may reach out to other faculty to seek feedback during their scheduled office hours. The Senior Capstone culminates in a curated group exhibition in the List Gallery. As was the case in the fall semester, you will have your own studio space in Whittier Hall.

This course provides an intensive exploration of the foundational elements of drawing and painting through the practice of direct observation. Subjects of study will include; still life, the figure, interiors, and the landscape. The development of perceptual skills and the capability to translate visual relationships onto a two dimensional surface is central to this course. No prior painting or drawing experience is necessary. Throughout the semester we will engage in frequent discussions addressing historical and contemporary painting problems. The purpose of these discussions is to provide art historical context and concrete examples of the painting issues we confront in class. In addition to learning about the formal principles of painting, the class will provide an overview of practical tool usage and techniques. An emphasis will be placed on good studio habits, making the environment safe, clean, and productive for everyone.

The purpose of this class is to introduce students to film-based photography as the primary image-making medium. Students will learn how to develop negatives in the darkroom, scan, and process the image with industry-standard software, then output to a digital printer. In the class, we will discuss design principles that will help students develop a personal vision for their work and explore creative ways of thinking and talking about photography. We will travel to various places off-campus to take pictures. Guest speakers and weekly research presentations on historically significant photographers will round out the experience.

This course serves as an introduction to the foundational materials, techniques, and concepts associated with sculpture. Students will compose three-dimensional objects and spaces through studying the elements of form, scale, orientation, context and parts-to-whole relationships. Sculpture I emphasizes the development of skills in wood and other fabrication techniques available in Swarthmore's MakerSpace. Hands-on demos and exercises culminate in creative studio projects. This course also introduces students to the expression of sculptural ideas developed through iterative studio practice. Each major course project will involve brainstorming, drafting, mocking-up, and reworking ideas. Sculpture I prepares students to move onto a variety of Sculpture II courses, where specific technical skills can be further developed and individual concepts are explored in greater depth.

The design studio takes the room as a contemporary module for dwelling. Rooms can organize and reflect the functioning of our interior world: the articulation of space and surface, color, light, dimension and material all modulate the way memory organizes itself around the affective life of the rooms we inhabit. We will take advantage of this intimate scale to go deeply into the development of an architectural design. In the first part of the semester, structured exercises will lead students through the analysis of: a spatial memory, an architectural artifact, and a work of literature in which a room plays an important role. These exercises will serve as guide for the translation of sources into material for architectural projection and design. Each of you will work iteratively between drawing and physical models to consider details and speculate on materials and construction. By moving between memory, measure and a close reading of the spatial and syntactic structure of the selected literary work, each student will build up an idea about inhabitation and the nature of dwelling through the design of a room.

The workshop introduces students to drawing and observation through a series of exercises that combines analog and digital mark-making. Students will consider issues central to architecturalrepresentation - scale, measure, survey, vision and the body, drawing's relation to fabrication, and the codes and norms that regulate architectural drawing. We will work with techniques (collage, stencil, print-making, digital drawing) that introduce new skills while challenging thestatus of the drawing itself within architecture. Weekly freehand figure-drawing sessions willsupplement studio exercises and independent directed work dedicated to exploration.

This course offers an introduction to the materials, methods, and chemistry of buon fresco: the ancient craft of wall-painting with earth and mineral pigments onto freshly applied lime plaster. Working from recipes and instructions gleaned from artists' accounts and painting manuals, students will gain hands-on experience with every step of the fresco painting process: we will grind earth and mineral pigments, mix and apply lime plasters, and paint with pigment suspensions using bristle brushes. While each student will be invited to explore fresco-painting independently on portable wooden panels, this course will also emphasize the collaborative and site-responsive nature of fresco painting through the planning and development of a large-scale co-authored buon fresco mural that will be painted on a prepared wall in Old Tarble. Occasional lectures will provide an historic overview of fresco painting and its uses across cultures. Considering a wall-painting as a part of a dynamic whole that includes an architectural substrate and a geographic environment, we will look at varied examples of site-bound wallworks, and will discuss their connection and vulnerability to social, infrastructural, and climatic conditions.

Painting I or II or permission of the instructor.

This course will focus on a variety of methods for working with metal in contemporary sculpture. Students will first move through a series of demos specifically designed for learning to cut, bend, weld, shape, and finish steel.  The class will work on short-term technical exercises, meant to develop skills introduced in demos and build confidence on a variety of metal shop machines. Following this initial skill-building, students will embark on longer term sculpture projects in metal. Cumulatively, there will be a great deal of hands-on, experiential learning. Studio work will be complimented by group critiques, visiting artists, and a field trip.

Sculpture I or 3D Design I or permission of the instructor. 

Contemporary Art Practice is a course for art majors designed to provide structure for an intensive independent studio practice while also exposing students to the broader art world. This course builds critical and theoretical skills through the iterative process of critique, creative research, and disciplinary writing. In order to broaden students' contexts for contemporary art-making, the class will routinely visit exhibitions and artists' studios in Philadelphia and New York, as well as host visiting artists on campus. Contemporary Art Practice prepares students for the Senior Capstone within the art major.

This course provides an intensive exploration of the foundational elements of drawing and painting through the practice of direct observation. Subjects of study will include; still life, the figure, interiors, and the landscape. The development of perceptual skills and the capability to translate visual relationships onto a two dimensional surface is central to this course. No prior painting or drawing experience is necessary. Throughout the semester we will engage in frequent discussions addressing historical and contemporary painting problems. The purpose of these discussions is to provide art historical context and concrete examples of the painting issues we confront in class. In addition to learning about the formal principles of painting, the class will provide an overview of practical tool usage and techniques. An emphasis will be placed on good studio habits, making the environment safe, clean, and productive for everyone.

Collective living continues to be an important subject for architectural experimentation in many parts of the world. New ways of living together implicate thinking differently about program, socio-economic diversity, construction systems and a building's relationships to the city and its environment. The course introduces students to these questions through a close of analysis of contemporary collective housing projects from different parts of the world. Students will learn to use drawing and model-making to understand how the spatial and material organizations of selected projects relate to the issues identified above. This analysis will comprise a shared knowledge that will be gathered together in a mid-term publication with contributions from every student. This work and the identified issues will inform the design of a collective housing project. Students will work with a common program - for example, a student dormitory - and specific constraints for accessibility and fire safety to develop ideas about unit type, spatial configuration and a mix of activities. Through drawing and physical models, each student will elaborate their design and make an argument for what collective living can mean in the American city today. For interested students, the course includes a week-long, spring-break workshop at Westbeth Artists' Housing in New York City's West Village that explores intersections between architecture and dance.

What is required to create a long-term photographic project? This course will focus on assembling images into a visual narrative in the documentary tradition. Students will be guided through the various stages of a documentary project, from its history, equipment, and research decisions, to strategies for sharing work with the broader community. Individual and class critiques will provide guidance through the process. Examples of successful projects will be shared.

Photo I or by permission of the instructor.

Installation Art is a studio-based inquiry into the fundamental concepts, visual elements, critical language, and fabrication processes relevant to the creation of contemporary installations. Installation Art is a porous term used to describe mixed-media artworks designed for a specific space or for a temporary amount of time. Installation has been a prevalent mode of expression within contemporary art since the 1960s, and today is more often a strategy for articulating a particular set of ideas than an all-encompassing genre.  Throughout the course, students will explore how they might respond to aspects of their physical surroundings and the built environment through installation. This course will begin with a series of studies, in which students practice their capacity to think both spatially and temporally- beyond the making of discrete objects. These initial studies will each trace a specific line of thinking and making within installation practices, such as spatial drawing, light and space, and video projection, and will build towards an expanded installation made by students on campus.

Student required to have completed and introductory Sculpture or 3D Design course.

Sculpture I or 3D Design 1

This upper-level studio course will focus on the development of advanced techniques, independent concepts, and the ability to frame studio work within the vast landscape of contemporary sculptural production. Sculpture III will structure and scaffold students' transition from assignment-based making to an independently motivated sculpture practice. Students will learn how to conduct their own creative and material research. The class will begin with weekly exercises and research to develop ideas, building towards a long-term, independent project in sculpture. Class critiques will be critical to the development of students' trajectories and growth over the course of the semester.  Demos offered will be based on students' interests, but could include joinery, wood bending, CNC, welding, and mold-making techniques more advanced than the technical skills offered at the Sculpture I and Sculpture II levels.

The workshop introduces the relationship between drawing and full-scale fabrication, resulting in a collaborative construction on grounds not far from Swarthmore campus. Exercises in the first part of the semester address techniques for the fabrication of different material assemblages, making use of wood working equipment in the Swarthmore College Makerspace. Sketching and model making will be introduced as methods for the study and design of these elements. Working with the idea of architectural re-enactment and the needs of the site, a design will develop collaboratively through tests with fabrication and drawing. After the mid-semester break, the workshop will move weekly sessions to the work site where we will prepare the ground and develop foundations. Using material and construction as regulators of the preliminary design, we will build on the site collectively as an act of continued learning. Each student will take on different responsibilities including organizing equipment, ensuring safe working procedures, verifying drawings and coordinating collective decision-making. The course meets over a long block of time on Wednesdays, with the majority of each week's learning activities taking place during class time. For interested students, the course includes a week-long, spring-break workshop at Westbeth Artists' Housing in New York City's West Village that explores intersections between architecture and dance.

The Senior Capstone is the culminating credit of your concentration in the Art major. The Senior Capstone is designed to strengthen critical, theoretical and practical skills related to your studio practice. The success of your experience in a large part will be due to how you handle the level of independence. You will be responsible for structuring your studio time, maintaining a supply budget and coordinating meetings with the faculty member leading the course. The faculty person will guide and assess the development of work. You may reach out to other faculty to seek feedback during their scheduled office hours. The Senior Capstone culminates in a curated group exhibition in the List Gallery. As was the case in the fall semester, you will have your own studio space in Whittier Hall.