Frank Piatek

This course investigates the properties and possibilities of traditional and modern media, grounds, supports, methods, adhesives, and pigments.

This course is the second part of a two-semester sequence. The first semester presents the full array of materials used in painting with an introduction to some study of methods of construction. This course puts those materials to use and carries forward the study of methods and strategies of construction, beginning with Flemish and Venetian painters and carrying through late twentieth-century painting. The subject of painting is studied from the viewpoint of the language of material and process.

This is a studio course with accompanying lectures working from a basis in the sacred, spiritual, and visionary traditions of art making. Its purpose is to assist and facilitate the students' encounters and explorations of these forms, whether representational or abstract, and to discuss the work created. This course consists of studio work, lectures, visiting artists, students' readings, visual research, journal work, and a final presentation.

Esotericism refers both to a field of knowledge hidden from common view and a moral reality suggesting secrecy, occultism, danger, conspiracy, and vast quantities of arcane lore and revelation. This course introduces students to a basic theory of esotericism in relation to the active production of art in the context of the spiritual. The spiritual has a living context in art, visible in various forms of the visionary, the sacred, and the sublime, for which the doctrines of different esoteric disciplines, such as Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Astrology, and Alchemy, can serve as keys.

The catalogue 'The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985' will serve as a master resource for this course, as well as selected readings from artists, scholars, and researchers, including Marsilio Ficino, Carl Jung, Antoine Faivre, Jeffrey Kripal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Arthur Versluis, Hermes Trismegistus, Evelyn Underhill, H.P Blavatsky, and Richard Tarnas, to name a few.

Students will generate visual art on the themes of the class during the studio portion of the course; for the symposium portion of the course, they will produce several short informative essays about figures from the history of Western Esotericism, as well as a final research project, in the form of a personal essay, work of creative fiction, poetry, or drama, or an advanced horoscope, to be presented to the class.

Studio Projects:Independent studio work under the guidance of a faculty advisor. Post-Baccalaureatee studio students receive a list of scheduled advisors. Writing Projects: Independent tutorial work with the guidance and encouragement of a faculty advisor. Post-Baccalaureate writing students receive a list of scheduled advisors. The student registers for 6 credit hours of Post-Baccalaureate Projects during each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.