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

Steven Husby

Associate Professor, Adjunct

Bio

BFA, 2000, Minnesota State University; MFA, 2003, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Suburban, Oak Park, IL; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; devening projects + editions, Chicago; Julius Caesar, Chicago. Publications: Can I Come Over to Your House; Notes On; Say Say Say. Bibliography: Artforum.com; Chicago Tribune; Bad At Sports. Awards: Community Arts Assistance Program Grant.

Personal Statement

Steven Husby (b 1977 Huron, SD) lives and works in Chicago. Operating across multiple platforms, including painting and printing, teaching and writing, blogging and artists' books, his work investigates the relationship between the universal and the particular by collapsing the distance between the axiomatic and the idiomatic.

 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Painting Practice is an introductory painting course offering. The curriculum addresses basic skills as related to a painting studio practice. Topics and curricular goals include material, facility and technique, space and color, as well as concept. This course is a prerequisite for all Multi-level Painting, Figure Painting and Advanced Painting Studio classes.

Class Number

1919

Credits

3

Description

This studio course will provide a hands-on introduction to the fundamental understanding and use of color. Students will gain practical experience working with material color in order to improve their understanding of how color works. Assignments will be introduced in class to help students develop a working knowledge of the basic concepts of hue, value, and chroma, and the relationship between these concepts and those of color harmony and organization. By working with color in context students will gain a practical understanding of color interaction and develop strategies for approaching color with greater sophistication and specificity in their own practice.

In addition to our investigations with color in the classroom, this course will examine the ways in which artists and scholars have worked with color art historically as a medium of expression, and thought about color scientifically as an index of an underlying natural order, as well as culturally as a system of signs reflecting our biases back to us to be interpreted. Reliable perceptual phenomena like simultaneous contrast and afterimages will be considered alongside more unstable notions like synesthesia and color music, as well as the complicated history of thinking about color as evidence of that which is ?other.?

Course work will include exercises to help students develop their approach to color, and a final project in which they put their understanding to work.

Class Number

1645

Credits

3

Description

This studio course will provide a hands-on introduction to the fundamental understanding and use of color. Students will gain practical experience working with material color in order to improve their understanding of how color works. Assignments will be introduced in class to help students develop a working knowledge of the basic concepts of hue, value, and chroma, and the relationship between these concepts and those of color harmony and organization. By working with color in context students will gain a practical understanding of color interaction and develop strategies for approaching color with greater sophistication and specificity in their own practice.

In addition to our investigations with color in the classroom, this course will examine the ways in which artists and scholars have worked with color art historically as a medium of expression, and thought about color scientifically as an index of an underlying natural order, as well as culturally as a system of signs reflecting our biases back to us to be interpreted. Reliable perceptual phenomena like simultaneous contrast and afterimages will be considered alongside more unstable notions like synesthesia and color music, as well as the complicated history of thinking about color as evidence of that which is ?other.?

Course work will include exercises to help students develop their approach to color, and a final project in which they put their understanding to work.

Class Number

1944

Credits

3

Description

How big is big? Does the size of a drawing alter our ideas of what we?re about while we?re producing it? How do relationships of internal scale alter our sense of the surrounding space, and how do the sizes of the materials and the support alter our own awareness of scale? In this course we will explore the potential for large format drawing in the perceptual, material, narrative and conceptual senses. We will work towards expanding notions of Large, Format, Studio and Drawing. We will work towards specificity and developing each student's individual concerns. Bring your ambition, you'll need it.

Most time in class will be spent working on studio projects, which will be supplemented by museum visits, slide lectures, student led reading discussions and presentations, and in depth critique. Readings and artists looked at will vary, but will typically include texts which attempt a broad overview of the state of drawing within the field of contemporary art like Vitamin D2 and Drawing Now: Eight Propositions, and include contemporary artists working with drawing at ambitious scale such as Toba Khedoori, Amy Sillman, and William Kentridge, and more historical examples like Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, Lee Krasner, and Jasper Johns.

There will be a long form mid-term critique and a shorter final critique. Students will be expected to complete multiple large scale works for each.

Class Number

1885

Credits

3

Description

This course investigates painting materials, application, color, form, and ideas through contemporary and traditional methodologies. Designed to accommodate many skill levels, students can explore various creative strategies through a skill-based curriculum as well as individual projects. This course serves as a requirement and preparation for topic-based Painting Studio Multi-Level B classes.

Class Number

1613

Credits

3

Description

This course investigates painting materials, application, color, form, and ideas through contemporary and traditional methodologies. Designed to accommodate many skill levels, students can explore various creative strategies through a skill-based curriculum as well as individual projects. This course serves as a requirement and preparation for topic-based Painting Studio Multi-Level B classes.

Class Number

1616

Credits

3