Armando Román

**This course is only for College Arts Access Program (CAAP) students and is closed to outside registrants.**

Art does not end when you finish a piece; sharing your work with the public plays a vital role in the artistic process and deserves equal consideration. In this course, students explore traditional and contemporary presentation methods, ranging from high-end galleries and museums to online exhibitions and artist-run shows. In addition to in-class examinations of what an exhibition can be and its impact on how artwork is viewed/received, students organize and assemble their exhibition, from marketing to presentation choices, artist statements, and installation to the opening reception. Visits to the Art Institute of Chicago, SAIC's Sullivan and SITE Galleries, and other Chicago venues help inform discussion and research. Students should have finished portfolio-quality work that they are ready to exhibit before taking this course, as it does not cover studio time or techniques.

In this hands-on studio course, students will develop new works of art to enhance their portfolios for upcoming college applications and select, revise, and edit their existing works. Through dynamic workshops and one-on-one meetings with SAIC faculty and admissions staff, students will discover the most effective way to document and organize their work and represent their unique points of view as artists to the colleges of their choice. This course also emphasizes studio time and faculty support in creating final projects to enhance students' overall portfolio presentation. Additional resources, such as artist presentations and visits to the Art Institute of Chicago and other cultural institutions, supplement the course curriculum.

The course Research Studio II builds on the learning outcomes from Research Studio I, asking students to continue to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities.

This spring the entire Contemporary Practice department will have a shared umbrella topic for our RSII courses: Contemporary Now. All RSII classes will engage with the present and what is happening right now. With the world moving so fast - a pandemic, fires burning across the US west, people marching in the streets across the globe, and the storms that seem to keep coming, it is critical we ask questions of ourselves as artists, designers, educators and cultural producers: What responsibility do we have at any moment in history? How can the diversity of our practices: research, study, making and actions, address the present and design the future we want to see?

In RSII courses students will investigate this shared departmental thematic through the intersection of their own practice and the pedagogical practices of their faculty. All RSII classes are interdisciplinary, faculty have provided a subtitle, and a short description to describe the lens through which their class will explore the theme of Contemporary Now.