A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.
Dan Price

Dan Price

Associate Professor

Bio

Assistant Professor, Sculpture (2009). BA, 1994, Colorado College; MFA, 2003, Rhode Island School of Design. Exhibitions: 2739 Edwin Gallery, Detroit; i-Cubed, Chicago; Musee D’art Contemporain, de Lyon, France; RC Art Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Propeller Gallery, Toronto; Work Gallery, Detroit; Slusser Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Bibliography: Art in America, Ann Arbor News, Modern Painters Magazine, New York Times. Awards: Roman J. Witt Artist Residence Grant; The Museum Object and its Double teaching grant; Visualizing the Simulacrum teaching grants.

 

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course will allow you to learn and apply the fundamental principles necessary to create and develop meaningful and successful objects, structures, and installations. You will become competent in practicing the basic approaches and methods for translating ideas into three-dimensional form using mold making, woodworking and metalworking. This course will allow you to develop basic moves in each of our sculpture department shops, becoming comfortable working with various materials and techniques relevant to the field. You¿ll become competent in choosing materials and processes suitable to the concept of an artwork. You¿ll become familiar with the characteristics of various materials and their compatibility with each other. You¿ll discover a range of artists working today in the field of Sculpture. Who knows, maybe you¿ll get hooked on Sculpture. This class is fun, challenging, and supportive.

Class Number

1907

Credits

3

Description

This course is an introduction to the materials, methods, and concepts of sculpture. We will investigate making in relation to material, time and space. We will consider aspects of sculpture such as meaning, scale, process, social engagement, ephemera and site; and explore the formal properties and expressive potential of materials including mold making and casting, wood, metal and experimental media. We will combine the use of materials and methods with ideas that reflect the history of contemporary sculpture. Demonstrations and authorizations will provide students with experience and technical proficiency in sculptural production while readings and slide lectures venture into the critical discourses of sculpture.

Class Number

1727

Credits

3

Description

This 15-day immersive studio course invites students to investigate the dynamic intersection of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary art practice in Japan. Traveling through three culturally significant regions¿the Seto Inland Sea, Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe), and Tokyo¿participants will engage directly with Japan¿s layered histories through hands-on workshops, studio visits, and curated explorations of key cultural sites.

Program highlights include:
Intensive workshops with master artisans in traditional techniques such as washi papermaking, textile dyeing, and ukiyo-e woodblock printing
Visits to contemporary galleries, artist-run spaces, museums, and studios that illuminate Japan's evolving art landscape
Immersive encounters with cultural landmarks¿from Kyoto's contemplative temples to Tokyo's vibrant, hybrid art scenes
Through direct engagement with artists, curators, and scholars, students will critically examine how inherited craft practices inform and challenge contemporary modes of artmaking. This cross-cultural studio experience encourages experimentation with unfamiliar materials, processes, and conceptual frameworks, supporting students in expanding their own creative vocabularies through the lens of Japan¿s unique artistic context.

A six-credit option for this course is available for students who wish to extend their practice and complete portfolio-worthy work. This will require the production of a substantial body of work, accompanied by an online journal that documents the creative process and source information material as documented during our time in Japan. The experience will include additional independent studio time and culminate in a critique session held within six weeks of returning from Japan.

Class Number

1314

Credits

0

Description

This 15-day immersive studio course invites students to investigate the dynamic intersection of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary art practice in Japan. Traveling through three culturally significant regions - the Seto Inland Sea, Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe), and Tokyo, participants will engage directly with Japan's layered histories through hands-on workshops, studio visits, and curated explorations of key cultural sites.

Program highlights include:
Intensive workshops with master artisans in traditional techniques such as washi papermaking, textile dyeing, and ukiyo-e woodblock printing
Visits to contemporary galleries, artist-run spaces, museums, and studios that illuminate Japan's evolving art landscape
Immersive encounters with cultural landmarks - from Kyoto's contemplative temples to Tokyo's vibrant, hybrid art scenes
Through direct engagement with artists, curators, and scholars, students will critically examine how inherited craft practices inform and challenge contemporary modes of artmaking. This cross-cultural studio experience encourages experimentation with unfamiliar materials, processes, and conceptual frameworks, supporting students in expanding their own creative vocabularies through the lens of Japan's unique artistic context.

A six-credit option for this course is available for students who wish to extend their practice and complete portfolio-worthy work. This will require the production of a substantial body of work, accompanied by an online journal that documents the creative process and source information material as documented during our time in Japan. The experience will include additional independent studio time and culminate in a critique session held within six weeks of returning from Japan.

Class Number

1326

Credits

3 - 6

Description

Metalworks is a let's-get-to-basics class for working with steel. Join the class to learn basic metal fabrication, including: cutting, forming, forging, welding and finishing. This class will guide you as you build your projects in steel. You'll learn about structural systems and histories relevant to art and design with an emphasis on techniques and methodologies relevant to metalwork. You will integrate your learning to produce a set of finished works using historic and contemporary technologies. If it's metal, It's here. Designing, Fabricating, Forging, Finishing. Make it in metal.

Class Number

1730

Credits

3

Description

Metalworks is a let's-get-to-basics class for working with steel. Join the class to learn basic metal fabrication, including: cutting, forming, forging, welding and finishing. This class will guide you as you build your projects in steel. You'll learn about structural systems and histories relevant to art and design with an emphasis on techniques and methodologies relevant to metalwork. You will integrate your learning to produce a set of finished works using historic and contemporary technologies. If it's metal, It's here. Designing, Fabricating, Forging, Finishing. Make it in metal.

Class Number

1921

Credits

3

Description

This seminar course introduces graduate students to a set of provocative concepts and conversations relevant to the theme of transformation. From the act of creation in the studio to establishing a critical position to living a rich and evolving life as an artist, this course challenges students to integrate intention with production and to articulate, re¿ne, and develop their expressive and working methods. This theory-to-practice seminar will develop the student¿s ability to make, look, question, articulate and discuss artwork with con¿dence and intelligence.
The core of Transformation: A Seminar is an interrelated set of 12 texts. These texts engage theories of culture, art, anthropology, disability and gender. Authors include: Natassja Martin, David Getsy, Camille Henrot, Pierre Huyghe, Sheila Heti, Rebecca Solnit, Toby Siebers, Maggie Nelson, Hito Steyerl, Paul Preciado, Avery Gordon and Sky Hopinka.
Each week, students create an artwork or material reflection in response to that week's reading. The class views and critiques each response as a means of engaging a conversation on the assigned material. Each week, the assignment is the same: 'Make something that promotes your position on the assigned content. Instead of using language to promote your idea, use your creative capacity to respond with an artwork or material reflection. You can make sculptures, drawings, videos, photos, performances or collaged images to capture your position on the assigned content. You can make nearly anything, as long as it is a critical response that embodies a genuine expression of your position.'

Class Number

2249

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

2328

Credits

3 - 6