Alex Cohen

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.

1) In this course we will look into the ways that play shapes our everyday lives and it's use in language development. Play is self chosen and self directed. Students will be encouraged to turn the classroom into a place of experimentation where they will engage in self-directed acts where they will be asked; 'can we foster new forms of play that will lead us to develop new structures of belonging?'.
2) We will look at the bodies of work by artists Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, Chris Johnson, Thomas Hirschorn, Louise Bourgeois, Diane Thater among others and how they have used art to construct and develop imaginative worlds that represent community through experimentation and exploration of form. We will also engage with the play theories of Peter Gray, Brian Sutton Smith, Johan Huzinga, and Michael J Ellis. As well as 'belonging' by bell hooks. We will bring as many things together to look at the ways that play shapes us and is essential for the development of 'worlds'.
3) True in Play form students will engage in self-directed projects where I as Faculty will serve as Facilitator of all experimentations in the name of Play and Learning. There will be three prompts throughout the semester where students will be asked to generate self directed projects that address these specific issues. The three prompts are: How Do You Move, Whats the best way to organize that?, and These are my intentions.

Painting Practice is an introductory painting course offering. The curriculum addresses basic skills as related to a painting studio practice. Topics and curricular goals include material, facility and technique, space and color, as well as concept. This course is a prerequisite for all Multi-level Painting, Figure Painting and Advanced Painting Studio classes.

This drawing studio serves as a broad introduction to historical and contemporary drawing practices. This course presents drawing as an organizer of thought, experience, and image.

Students will investigate a full range of drawing materials and supports. Lectures and exercises introduce various concepts of drawing, possibly including illusionistic form and space, gesture and expressive mark-making, or collage and found imagery, depending on the instructor?s emphasis.

Designed to accommodate many skill levels, students can explore various creative strategies through technical drawing exercises, material explorations, and individual projects. Structured classroom critiques will bring drawing concepts into personal student work.