Studio Art
Academic Program Introduction
In studio art courses, students strengthen visual awareness, independent thought, and creative flexibility while using a range of fine art media. The program offers painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, video, sculpture, and digital media. Students develop a unique set of skills that allow them to question and shape the visual and physical environments around them. They learn how to relate their studio research to other areas of study, and they draw unexpected connections among different images, ideas, materials, and historical contexts.
The studio art faculty is composed of active professional artists whose teaching is highly interactive and personally directed. This involves a combination of studio demonstrations, guided experimentation, and critical feedback.
Learning goals
- Develop strong analytical observational skills to examine our visual, material, and cultural environments.
- Relate ideas, processes, materials, and histories in order to create new and unexpected connections.
- Understand the logic of materials and processes.
- Develop an exploratory studio methodology, identify problems through practice, and develop methodologies to research and produce new work.
- Locate creative practice within larger historical and cultural discussions.
Programs of Study
Studio art major and minor
Students will investigate a range of artistic media to acquire technical proficiency and develop a personal material language.
Course highlights
Life Drawing
ARTS217
Understanding the human form through sustained observational drawing, research, and experimentation. An intensive, mixed media drawing course that balances careful visual analysis with empathetic, gestural response. Tactile, experiential drawing exercises are complemented by shared readings and research addressing questions of representation in art and cultural conceptions of the body.
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Advanced Drawing (Marks, Signs, and Traces)
ARTS314
An intensive studio course for juniors and seniors, considering the visual, conceptual, and spatial issues driving contemporary drawing practices. This course explores the act of drawing as a speculative and critical thinking process as well as a visual language. Class work addresses various observational and technical methods as well as reciprocities between sound, drawing, and time, and/or drawing and materiality. In-depth studio critiques, field trips, and interaction with visiting artists and musicians augment the projects. Following a period of intense studio exploration and dialogue, each student develops and hones an independent, cohesive body of work. -
Two-Dimensional Design
ARTS109
This foundational studio course addresses the issue of composition in two-dimensional media. It focuses on the fundamental elements of visual design (e.g., line, shape, value, space, color) and their compositional impact. Studio projects emphasize visual problem-solving skills as a means of achieving more effective communication, with some attention to the issues of typography. Assignments explore a range of media and encourage creative experimentation with both analog and digital processes.
Places and spaces
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Our facilities
Students and faculty enjoy several formal exhibition and installation spaces and specialized studios for photography, video, painting, sculpture, media arts, and book arts.
Research highlights
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Professor Kathya Maria Landeros’ Dulce was exhibited at Abakus Projects in Boston in 2022. Dulce reinterprets Landeros’ childhood at the farmland edge of Sacramento, Calif., rendering suburban culture through a first-generation Latinx family, sweet and full of aspiration as U.S. Americans
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Professor Claudia Joskowicz’s videos, some of which are in the Guggenheim Museum, blend fiction and documentary as they reenact explosive and untapped violence from Bolivia’s past
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Professor Phyllis McGibbon contributed a zine piece to the Quarantine Public Library in 2020. Printmakers, illustrators, and other invited artists made eight-page single-sheet zines that visitors could print out and refold at home, allowing them to build their own zine library at a time when direct in-person artwork exchanges were not possible.
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Professor David Teng Olsen’s bold, energetic murals can be found throughout the Boston area, on old buildings, new buildings, and even the street. His largest project to date is the 170-foot-long Evo.
Photo credit: Isenberg Project
Opportunities
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Art Club
Open to all students, Art Club is a space to unwind and connect with others while exploring artistic materials and creating art outside of classes and departments.
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Summer fellowships
The Slade Summer Fellowships provide financial aid for current students to pursue educational opportunities in the summer months. Studio students apply this funding to an unpaid studio-based internship that gives them hands-on experience, such as working with an arts community organization, an artists’ residency program, an artist-run gallery, or a professional artist’s studio.
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Graduate fellowship
The Mary Clothier Slade Graduate Fellowship provides financial aid for graduating seniors and alums to pursue graduate studies in studio art.
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Funding
The Alice T. Friedman Endowed Fund supports research, travel, internships, or special projects to help art department majors and minors prepare for careers in the arts.
Beyond Wellesley
Beyond Wellesley
Most of our graduates go on to work in fine arts, design, cultural institutions, or higher education.
Alum highlights
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Zsofia Schweger ’12
Zsofia Schweger ’12
Zsofia Schweger ’12 is a painter exploring human relationships to public and domestic spaces. Honors include Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2016, Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2017, the Jealous Prize, the Griffin Art Prize, the Alice C. Cole ’42 Award, and the One to Watch Award. She has had solo shows in London, New York, Budapest, Amsterdam, and elsewhere.
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Laura Kimmel ’10
Laura Kimmel ’10
Laura Kimmel ’10 is a filmmaker, photographer, and multimedia artist. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and event spaces including Art Basel Miami/HG Contemporary, Mana Contemporary, KARST Gallery, Untitled Space, Franklin Street Works, and Project One in San Francisco. Kimmel is director of visual identity at The Box NYC and The Box Soho.
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Jiwon Woo ’09
Jiwon Woo ’09
Jiwon Woo ’09 is a designer and engineer who has worked with consumer products, health care, sportswear, and food. Her works have been exhibited in international venues, including the Istanbul Design Biennial (2016), Milan Design Week, London Design Week, Ars Electronica, Medical Museion, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481