What will I learn?
The Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art allows students to explore a studio area or areas of interest, including ceramics, metals and jewelry design, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture, allowing students to create a hybrid experience as they apply their artistic interests – and aspects of their broader liberal arts education – to a contemporary studio art practice. The Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art has six different concentration choices for students: ceramics, metals, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. Students pursuing a B.A. in Studio Art become fluent in the practice of visual arts. Students will gain critical and analytical thinking skills, as well as conceptual rigor, technical expertise, and methods as a means to explore intellectual and human experience through visual arts modes. Students pursuing a B.F.A. in Studio Art will choose in-depth study in one or more studio areas, learn traditional areas of artistic craftsmanship as well as innovative trends and technologies, and develop a professional portfolio for their career or post-graduate study. (Students cannot earn both the BA in Studio Art and the BFA in Studio Art.)Our studio art graduates seek careers in many areas. Some become professional artists, such as art directors, web designers, illustrators, graphic designers, photographers, printmakers, painters, sculptors, metalsmiths, and ceramists. Graduates may also go on to graduate school to prepare them to be university faculty, private-sector teachers, art therapists, gallery directors, museum curators, or art critics.Our metals program offers introductory through advanced study in metalsmithing and jewelry design at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. You will develop a strong design and technical foundation in a broad range of metalworking processes and experimental applications such as basic fabrication, casting, die-forming, enameling and stone-setting to raising, lathe-spinning, anodizing, and plating. You will develop professional portfolios and be highly prepared and strongly encouraged to enter competitive exhibitions, apply for grants, fellowships, and scholarships, seek internships or apprenticeships, and pursue advanced graduate education. A wide range of career opportunities exist for you as a metals graduate: as an entrepreneur, as a teacher, within a museum or gallery setting, or within industry as a designer or technician.
