A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

Rachel Niffenegger

Lecturer

Bio

BFA, 2008, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; MFA, 2012, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Exhibitions: Museum for Modern Art, Arnhem, NL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Tracy Williams Ltd, NY; Asya Geisberg Gallery, NY; Club Midnight, Berlin; Bourouina Gallery, Berlin; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL. Bibliography: Studio Life; Beautiful Decay; Vogue Italia; New American Paintings; Chicago Magazine; Modern Painters; Arcademi; Chicago Tribune; Art 21 blog; New City; Art Slant. Residencies/Awards: De Ateliers, Amsterdam,2012-13; Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency Fellowship.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

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.

Class Number

1203

Credits

3

Description

This Sophomore Seminar section, Repertoire, is relevant to studio artists working across all media who are questioning and developing how meaning and material intersect in their work. We will focus on inventorying the entire stock of techniques and concepts explored in our work at SAIC until this point. Through critique and discussion we will iterate within our established repertoires with our sights set on developing studio practices that allow for both focus and innovation.

Class Number

2088

Credits

3

Description

This studio explores specific problems in each student's area of concentration and interest. Students are expected to command familiarity with problems of color, composition, and basic materials.

Class Number

2090

Credits

9