Concentrations
Course Concentrations
The Department of Sculpture is situated at the defining edge of contemporary practice and discourse, focusing its broad offerings through four curricular themes:
Permanence/Ephemerality
Addressing making and materiality, this area encompasses traditional materials and processes and their continuity with newly evolving technologies, including 3D digital production and video/new media.
Public Practice
Encompassing participatory engagement with social situations and groups, as well as with a wide variety of exhibition contexts, audiences, publics, and places, including outside of the city of Chicago and the United States.
Space and Place
Focusing on places, spaces, and scales, this area encompasses site-based explorations, including relations to landscape, digital model and map-making, and geography, as well as installations, large-scale projects, and web-based practices.
Systems
Studying the intersections of the organic and inorganic worlds with human activity, including the human body, its needs and failures, as well as the evolving tradition of figure studies, which extends into bio-mimicry, prosthetics, and robotics.
In addition to the department’s areas of focused study, you are encouraged to consider your art-making process as an interdisciplinary practice that can range across various departments including, but not limited to, Fiber and Material Studies, Performance, Fashion Design, and Ceramics. We encourage you to confer with faculty and graduate advisors to map a course of interdisciplinary study that reflects the latest developments in contemporary practices in these fields.
