Nelly Agassi

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers. In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership. Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers. In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership. Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

This course will explore the relationships between Body - Action - Space as “ingredients” and foundation for performance, sculpture and installation. The students will research these relationships through projects and contextual materials, and will be offered the opportunity to critically engage their position and research in a broader intellectual discourse. From Dada automatic writing and stage sets through performance and installation artists from the 60’s and 70’s, groups such as Fluxus, to contemporary practices and interdisciplinary examples from art, architecture, culture and design. The body is a storage space that records life experiences as material that can be translated into an image or experience, which is later transmitted in space.¿We will discuss the body as a site, perhaps a “construction site” while considering the concepts of scale (the body as a starting point, space as the extension of the body) and site-specificity by revealing and redefining the tensions between private and public, body and space, object and performance.Various audiences, political histories and contexts will be addressed. We will discuss in depth the notion of identity, gender and personal hi/stories and integrate those subjects in the research, practice and works. We are all coming from deferent background, culture, language and tradition which I will celebrate in this class and motivate the students to acknowledge this wonderful inspiration and exposure as a gift to their life and practice. The goal is to engage in the process and its different stages, from conceiving an idea to a full executed projects through research based practice which is aware of different histories and points of view.¿Students will work as investigators, they will collect and document all the “evidence” of their creative process. This research will be gathering material from inspiration and tests to contextual and intellectual framework related to the project. This way of research will provide a platform to develop their own unique “toolbox” and artistic vocabulary based on their personal biographies, anxieties, hopes and fantasies, as well as building a critical and intellectual reflection through discovering various resources which are not necessarily internet. They will be encouraged to pay attention to small details, mistakes and restrains that will emerge, and turn them into advantages, tools and material to work with. Coursework will include readings, presentations, discussions and exchange of ideas. Curiosity, devotion and creating a safe space, respect and sensitivity to one another culture and identity is crucial for the success of the course.

Throughout the course students will focus on the idea of softness and develop projects framed with readings on affect, intimacy, ?radical softness?, touch, and ?soft? identities so as to tease out ideas on what it means to be soft. Students will be introduced and encouraged to experiment from texture to form with hand manipulated and machine techniques like reverse needle felting, latch hooking, tucking, stabilizing, boning, armature building, fabric heat manipulating, natural dyeing, flocking, and fringe crocheting. Readings will include Sara Ahmed?s ?Happy Objects?, Alexander Thereoux?s ?Soft Balm, Soft Menace?, and Sianne Ngai?s ?The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde?. Two experimentation samples will be required in order to manifest these conceptual underpinnings through a variety of techniques. These samples act as playful guides that leads to two major projects with written statements. This course also require artist and reading presentations.

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.