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

Rachel Niffenegger

Lecturer

Bio

BFA, 2008, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; MFA, 2012, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Exhibitions: Museum for Modern Art, Arnhem, NL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; Tracy Williams Ltd, NY; Asya Geisberg Gallery, NY; Club Midnight, Berlin; Bourouina Gallery, Berlin; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago; Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL. Bibliography: Studio Life; Beautiful Decay; Vogue Italia; New American Paintings; Chicago Magazine; Modern Painters; Arcademi; Chicago Tribune; Art 21 blog; New City; Art Slant. Residencies/Awards: De Ateliers, Amsterdam,2012-13; Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist Residency Fellowship.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This advanced camp invites students aged 10-11 with prior drawing experience to explore various materials and techniques that will expand their artistic abilities. While continuing to develop their technical skills, students will focus on using drawing to organize their thoughts and feelings and express their ideas. Students will work with various materials, including pencil, charcoal, pastel, ink, and mixed media. Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago will allow campers to observe and sketch from a vast collection of paintings, sculptures, and other objects to inspire their studio work. Students will explore endless possibilities in a supportive environment that fosters growth and artistic confidence¿whether experimenting with innovative processes or refining their unique style.

Class Number

1275

Credits

2

Description

This advanced camp invites students aged 10-11 with prior drawing experience to explore various materials and techniques that will expand their artistic abilities. While continuing to develop their technical skills, students will focus on using drawing to organize their thoughts and feelings and express their ideas. Students will work with various materials, including pencil, charcoal, pastel, ink, and mixed media. Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago will allow campers to observe and sketch from a vast collection of paintings, sculptures, and other objects to inspire their studio work. Students will explore endless possibilities in a supportive environment that fosters growth and artistic confidence¿whether experimenting with innovative processes or refining their unique style.

Class Number

1276

Credits

2

Description

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers.

In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership.

Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

Class Number

1371

Credits

3

Description

In this course we will focus on disciplinary and interdisciplinary art and design practices of contemporary art production. This team-taught, year-long class explores the materials and techniques of surface, space, and time (2D, 3D, and 4D), as well as the connections and interplay of these areas. Core Studio integrates the formal with the conceptual, traditional with the contemporary, and makes visible a variety of approaches in current cultural production in order to foster the development of students? emerging practices as makers and thinkers.

In this interdisciplinary studio course students will be authorized to use a variety of school shops, materials and equipment; including the woodshop, plaster studio, digital lab, sewing machine, hand tools, sound and video production, digital workflows and principles of visual fundamentals. This is a hands-on making class, faculty present artists and content related to a particular toolkit and, or project theme. Every section of Core Studio has shared learning outcomes which are uniquely realized by each Core faculty partnership.

Students should expect a fast-paced studio environment. In Core Studio students will complete short assignments as well as longer multi-week projects. Assignments are designed to help students develop their own ideas in relation to the materials, processes, and themes presented by faculty.

Class Number

1243

Credits

3

Description

This Sophomore Seminar section, Repertoire, is relevant to studio artists working across all media who are questioning and developing how meaning and material intersect in their work. We will focus on inventorying the entire stock of techniques and concepts explored in our work at SAIC until this point. Through critique and discussion we will iterate within our established repertoires with our sights set on developing studio practices that allow for both focus and innovation.

Class Number

1776

Credits

3

Description

This studio explores specific problems in each student's area of concentration and interest. Students are expected to command familiarity with problems of color, composition, and basic materials.

Class Number

1679

Credits

9

Description

This interdisciplinary critique seminar is designed to help students recognize patterns of inquiry within their studio work while proceeding toward an outward-facing practice beyond graduation. An assessment of previous projects will be the starting point for an ongoing critical examination of your creative practice, through which you will be asked to contextualize and position your work in the art-worlds of the 21st Century. This course is a forum for in-depth individual and group critiques with technical and conceptual discussions tailored to your practice and research. In addition to various readings, screenings, and field trips, class visits by local artists and curators will provide the opportunity for conversation about the lived experience of sustaining a creative practice. With an emphasis on faculty mentorship, class meetings will support the development of a focused, self-initiated Senior Project, a strong portfolio, and the tools for maintaining an independent studio practice.

Class Number

1117

Credits

3