Laura Davis

Core Studio is a year-long course that introduces students to both disciplinary and interdisciplinary art practice. Students learn about the methods, materials, tools and concepts in the areas of Surface (2-dimensional), Space (3-dimensional), and Time (4-dimensional), both independently and in relationship to one another. Students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials and themes being presented by faculty. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, historical with the contemporary, and makes visible the possibilities and variety of approaches in contemporary cultural production.

Core Studio is a year-long course that introduces students to both disciplinary and interdisciplinary art practice. Students learn about the methods, materials, tools and concepts in the areas of Surface (2-dimensional), Space (3-dimensional), and Time (4-dimensional), both independently and in relationship to one another. Students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials and themes being presented by faculty. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, historical with the contemporary, and makes visible the possibilities and variety of approaches in contemporary cultural production.

The continuation of Core Studio Practice I.

The course Research Studio II builds on the learning outcomes from Research Studio I, asking students to continue to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities.

This spring the entire Contemporary Practice department will have a shared umbrella topic for our RSII courses: Contemporary Now. All RSII classes will engage with the present and what is happening right now. With the world moving so fast - a pandemic, fires burning across the US west, people marching in the streets across the globe, and the storms that seem to keep coming, it is critical we ask questions of ourselves as artists, designers, educators and cultural producers: What responsibility do we have at any moment in history? How can the diversity of our practices: research, study, making and actions, address the present and design the future we want to see?

In RSII courses students will investigate this shared departmental thematic through the intersection of their own practice and the pedagogical practices of their faculty. All RSII classes are interdisciplinary, faculty have provided a subtitle, and a short description to describe the lens through which their class will explore the theme of Contemporary Now.

How is it that art can be one of the most valued things on earth and yet totally common? In this course we will explore ways that art objects move through capitalism and can command value in ways that often question or contradict this very system. Some of the scholars/artists we will study in this course include Rose Salane, Liz Magor, Nina Katchadourian, Rashid Johnson, and Do Ho-Suh. This course will have 3 projects. The first will explore the legacy of the readymade, the second will focus on art as a form of exchange, and the third will be the creation of value through time, repetition, skilling, accumulation, time-lapse, craft, and/or mastery.