Program Overview
The studio art program emphasizes art making as a form of creative inquiry taking place within a broad historical and cultural context. With a curriculum aimed at the development of visual skills, creative and critical reasoning, and comprehension of historical and contemporary contexts, the program prepares its students for a diversity of careers and graduate study in art. Students may take courses in drawing, ceramics, painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, graphic design, digital art, and motion picture media. While classes are generally taught within these media studio areas, the overall curricular framework supports interdisciplinary understandings and approaches. With small classes taught by a dedicated and distinguished faculty, the studio art program offers dynamic and meaningful learning opportunities within the context of a broad liberal education at UVM.
As a studio art major, you will have many opportunities available to you including gallery exhibitions in the department's Colburn Gallery or in galleries situated throughout the university's many public spaces. The department supports a variety of faculty-sponsored and independent internship opportunities, including partial funding support for select student internships at national and international sites. Through the Mollie Ruprecht Fund for Visual Arts, the department hosts visiting artists who lecture and exhibit their artwork while interacting directly with students in roundtable and individual critique activities.
The studio areas that support students taking courses in studio art are largely available 24 hours a day. The studios include:
- A drawing studio.
- A ceramics studio for wheel-throwing and hand-building.
- A painting studio.
- A printmaking studio for etching, silkscreen, risograph, and relief processes.
- A sculpture studio.
- A fully equipped wood and metal shop.
- A photography studio with silver-based darkrooms and a lighting studio.
- Digital labs to support motion pictures, photographic printing, printmaking, and graphic design.
