Armando Román

This studio course focuses on themes, practices, contexts, and questions undertaken by contemporary artists and designers. Research Studio I is a course that asks students to begin to develop and connect their own work and ideas with a diverse range of artists, designers, and communities. This course engages with cultural institutions including: museums, galleries, libraries and archives as resources of critical engagement. Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems. Assignments in this course are faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary and idea based. The projects are designed to help students recognize their work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Students will experience a wide range of research methods and making strategies. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

Who has the privilege to narrate our lives? What names to we call each other? Who possesses the authority to define our futures? Together, we shall embark on a journey to disentangle, unfurl, and decipher the intricate methods by which Latino artists traverse across mediums and cultures, transcending the complex intersections of class, indigeneity, gender, race, ability, and beyond. Through personal and communal introspection, students will question their own relationship to identity, language, and authorship within their own work. We will research artists across different eras and forms. Drawing inspiration from Martine Gutierrez, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Juana Valdez, David Antonio Cruz, Elia Alba, and others, we will collectively dissect, interrogate, revere, and amplify the themes across their practices. Using these artists as a foundation to our research-based practices, we will posit new and unique ways to describe ourselves, our practices, and our futures in relation to our hybridized identities. Students will be tasked with creating 3 finished pieces during the semester, melding their artistic interests through a research-driven lens fueled by class dialogues, artist presentations, and beyond.