Sam Jaffe

In 'I Made a Thing', a Professional Practice Experience course offering, you will engage in a wide variety of activities designed to help prepare you for life after SAIC. Course activities may include creating a website, preparing a CV, attending networking events with alumni, and writing of a project statement. The course emphasizes hands-on, real-world professional activities and opportunities for emerging studio artists.

This course will be broken into six units, each of which addresses a particular concern about what to do with studio work once it has been made. Each unit will typically contain a reading assignment, a writing assignment, and a project assignment. This course would be best suited for artists who are considering a career centered around an individually driven studio practice. Units include: I Made a Thing and I think I want to make more: how to develop a practical, long-term studio practice. I Made a Thing and I think it failed: how to embrace inevitable challenges and let your work be your teacher. I Made a Thing and I think I want people to look at it: how to cultivate a supportive creative community both physically and virtually. I Made a Thing and I think I want to use it to apply to/for stuff: how to get your work 'out there.' I Made a Thing and I think I want people to talk about it: how to engage your work with dialogue and criticism. I Made a Thing and I think I want someone to buy it: how to create your own art market.

In 'I Made a Thing', a Professional Practice Experience course offering, you will engage in a wide variety of activities designed to help prepare you for life after SAIC. Course activities may include creating a website, preparing a CV, attending networking events with alumni, and writing of a project statement. The course emphasizes hands-on, real-world professional activities and opportunities for emerging studio artists.

This course will be broken into six units, each of which addresses a particular concern about what to do with studio work once it has been made. Each unit will typically contain a reading assignment, a writing assignment, and a project assignment. This course would be best suited for artists who are considering a career centered around an individually driven studio practice. Units include: I Made a Thing and I think I want to make more: how to develop a practical, long-term studio practice. I Made a Thing and I think it failed: how to embrace inevitable challenges and let your work be your teacher. I Made a Thing and I think I want people to look at it: how to cultivate a supportive creative community both physically and virtually. I Made a Thing and I think I want to use it to apply to/for stuff: how to get your work 'out there.' I Made a Thing and I think I want people to talk about it: how to engage your work with dialogue and criticism. I Made a Thing and I think I want someone to buy it: how to create your own art market.

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.

This advanced undergraduate studio course guides students through the conceptualization, development, and completion of a single, ambitious painting over the course of a semester. Structured deadlines for each phase - concept development, studies, support construction, first layers, refinement, finishing touches, and final presentation provide a framework for sustained creative engagement and disciplined studio practice. Close study of particularly epic historical and contemporary works will provide technical and conceptual context, while selected artist writings will serve as weekly prompts for critical reflection. Group critiques and individual mentorship will help students to cultivate effective work habits, develop strategies for overcoming creative blocks, and sustain momentum on a long-term project. Particular attention will be given to the power of revision, underscoring that ambitious artistic outcomes emerge through reworking, layering, and persistence rather than immediate perfection.

This course is ideal for students seeking the time, space, and support to create a culminating work, as well as those looking for a 3-credit alternative to Advanced Painting Studio.
We will look at particularly ambitious works that involve paint by Michaelangelo, Velázquez, Géricault, Bosch, Van Eyck, David, De Cherico, Varo, Darger, Marshall, Brown, Saville, Rivera, and many more. Possible Lecture/Discussion Topics include: Compositional strategies, Artists who revise and repaint, What is a masterpiece?, Monumental paintings from ancient to contemporary, When is a painting finished?
Course requirements include active participation in class discussions, critiques, and studio sessions, consistent weekly painting, a short visual presentation contextualizing student work within contemporary and historical frameworks or a presentation on an epic, historical painting of a student's choice, three critiques, and one completed painting due on the last day of class.