Resources
Exhibition, Research, and Project Spaces
The Sculpture department allows students to exhibit their work in various venues. The Base Space is a research space to extend the practice of sculpture and its critique. It can be used for documentation, installations, experimental projects, and presentations. An outdoor courtyard may be used for the presentation of objects and installations, and there are dedicated classrooms for critiques and discussions. The department also supports off-campus work, including collaborative exhibitions and community-based projects in public and environmental art contexts.
Students in SAIC's Sculpture department have access to:
- A comprehensive woodshop
- A metal shop with hot and cold fabrication capabilities that include gas, MIG, TIG, arc forging, and CNC plasma cutting
- Digital fabrication facilities, including 60 and 150 watt laser cutting machines and 3D printers
- A foundry equipped to pour bronze and aluminum into ceramic shell, sand, and classical investment molds. Iron pours take place off campus.
- Mold-making shop with rotocaster, vacuum chamber, and high-vent capacities
- Industrial sewing machines
- A PC-based computer lab with Intuos Cintiq tablets for 3D visualization, GIS, modeling, and animation development
- Indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces
- An organic outdoor garden
- Large individual graduate studios
Resources Available to all SAIC Students Include:
Libraries and Special Collections
Unique access to important libraries and special collections including a world-class museum.
Media Centers
The media centers provide audiovisual equipment and services to accommodate documentation, creation, instructional, and exhibition needs.
Gallery Spaces
The SAIC campus showcases a diversity of student artwork across multiple exhibition venues. Students can propose to exhibit their work in a variety of formats and locations.
Visiting Artists Program
Public lectures are presented by world-renowned visiting artists, designers, and scholars. Speakers meet with students through studio visits, roundtable discussions, seminars, and workshops.
Instructional Shops
From bedazzlers to sewing machines, from traditional wood/metalworking to CNC milling, the SAIC Instructional Shops are facilities that have the resources to help you realize your projects. The shops are equipped with a wide range of hand, power, and stationary tools.
What the City of Chicago has to Offer:
World class museums and galleries
Since the late 19th century, when the museum collection of the Art Institute was established as a study center for the School of the Art Institute, students have used the museum's vast holdings to inspire and inform their creative and scholarly practices. No other school of art and design can claim such a major museum as part of their campus.
Unparalleled architecture
A living laboratory of the study of late 19th- and 20th-century architecture, landscapes, and interiors—the development of the Chicago school of commercial architecture, the flowering of the Prairie style house, the progression of the City Beautiful movement in urban planning.
