Undergraduate Overview

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This course offers instruction in various methods of casting, including simple plaster molds, hydrocal-cement casts, simple body casts, thermal-setting rubber molds, wax, terra cotta, and paper casting. Students are advised to bring objects they desire to cast. (No hot metal casting in this course.)

Patternmaking is at the heart of metalworking, woodworking, fashion, architecture and many other disciplines. Why? Because so many materials are available in sheet form. Students in this course will investigate a range of processes by which flat sheet materials like paper, wood, metal, fabric, vinyl, and plastic can be used to make volumetric, three-dimensional forms. Patternmaking for Sculpture will teach the student digital and analogue methods of designing, cutting, and assembling 3D work. Practical strategies as well as contemporary industrial use and the history of patternmaking will be explored to give each student a range of options for making their own work, whether it be art or design.

This course introduces the aesthetic, technical, and historical aspects of the casting process as it relates to sculpture. Students learn basic skills in waxworking, investment applications, furnace and kiln operation, metal finishing and chasing, and patination. Lost wax and ceramic shell will be the primary techniques utilized for pattern generation and molding in this course. Students develop these skills through a series of studies that culminate in a final project.

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision.

Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

Students in this course pursue assignment-based explorations in sculpture. Technical demonstrations help students develop material interests and studio skills, including innovative uses of both traditional and digital processes. Within the semester students will produce (three) projects with a focus on the artistic and social contextualization of their work. Multiple individual critiques help students analyze their work and articulate their intentions. Student presentations and readings deepen the student's theoretical groundings in the discipline. Class critiques are a workshop forum for application of the knowledge and verbal skills that define an artistic and aesthetic position.

This course is a structural and poststructural investigation of sculptural site activation. The students explore the theory and practice of how work gets contextualized and redefined through its placement within a larger social, political, and economic sphere of meaning. Students investigate options and determinants operative in both indoor and outdoor sites, installations, and environments. Although the focus of the class is contemporary, topics of discussion range from Rodin's Burghers of Calais to the public projections of Krzysztof Wodiczko. An indoor space is available for student use and cooperative interaction is encouraged. Prerequisite: intermediate level work in any media or consent of instructor.

Performing Objects is an expansive, interdisciplinary studio course that merges elements of Performance Art, Ritual, Theater, Installation Art, Body Art, Social Practice, and Sculpture. Grounded in object-making, this course invites students to explore the performative potential of their creations through physical interaction and live engagement. We will develop installations that invite audience participation, extend our work beyond the classroom into public spaces, and experiment with new ways to activate objects through performance. Emphasis will be placed on crafting dynamic relationships between performer and audience using material, movement, sound, text, spectacle, scale, and environment.

Digital Projects is an experimental sculpture studio with an emphasis on CNC (computer numerical controlled) milling, routing and surfacing. Students will be introduced to Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Machining (CAM) to produce finished works in a range of materials including wood, foam, wax, aluminum and plastic. Experience with Rhino, Fusion360, Maya, Blender or another CAD package is useful but not necessary. Students will use a range of CNC output options in the Columbus Digital Fabrication Studio, the Materials Lab and elsewhere on and off the SAIC campus. Digital Projects will give students ample time to learn new digital subtractive techniques and experiment with how to integrate them into their own critical and conceptual framework.

The figure in contemporary art has long been debated, but just as painting never died as forecasted so, too, the figure. It has morphed, become cyber, stayed representational, been found in the world and fashioned of any medium, while dissolving the line between it and abstraction, making it permeable and evocative. In this course students will be challenged to redefine the boundaries of traditional sculptural representation using the figure as a catalyst for evoking a range of content. We will consider human and animal bodies broadly, as cultural, historical, and constantly changing entities. Through an examination of diverse approaches related to figurative sculpture, students will be encouraged to engage with a variety of sculptural processes and media (such as assemblage, mold making, modeling, carving, welding, mixed media, fund object) to configure forms, as well as and conceptual frameworks in order to articulate personal and social narratives, and cultural critiques.
Addressing a range of cultures and historical periods, our inquiry will focus on: To what ends has the figure been employed (portraiture, faith, identity, gesture, embodiment, fragment, ritual, allegory, affect)? How does a work refer to without fully representing the figure? Why has it been an enduring subject/form? What are challenges and opportunities does it offer us today? Our inquiry will be guided by readings (Gordon Hall, Elizabeth Grosz, Katarzyna Trzeciak, Elaine Scarry, Sara Ahmed, and others) and viewing/museum visits of such artists as Jaime Isenstein, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Simone Fattal, Sarah Peters, Hew Locke, Rachel Harrison, Nicole Eisenman, Anna Mendieta, Yinka Shonibare, Simone Leigh, Kiki Smith, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Bourgeois, Thomas Houseago, Kimsooja, David Altmejd, Lee Bul and Cajsa von Zeipel.
Course work includes assignments, readings and in class activities that support the development of three finished projects for critique.

This course is designed for students who have prior moldmaking and casting experience. Students investigate in-depth project development, implementing and articulating ideas through class discussions and proposals. This course also aims to offer a deeper understanding of the social, historical, and aesthetic implications of replication. Such subjects as the instability and significance of object/material relationships, and the complex and expansive nature between the authentic, the surrogate, and the copy are explored.

In this course, students will explore the art and craft of working with various soft metals, such as brass, bronze, copper, and silver. The curriculum covers a wide range of techniques such as soldering, forming, and centrifugal casting, enabling students to manipulate and shape metal into intricate forms. Utilizing a combination of hand tools and specialized equipment, students will learn to transform raw metal materials into functional and decorative objects. Emphasis will be placed on artistry and craftsmanship, with students developing their unique designs. This course bridges traditional practices with modern innovations, offering a comprehensive understanding of this ancient yet continually evolving art form.
Readings will explore topics of the historic metal eras including the Bronze and Iron Age, The Forge and the Crucible by Mircea Eliade, Metalworking Through History: A Modern Encyclopedia by Ana M. Lopez, Alchemy + Mysticism by Alexander Roob, A History Of Metallography: The Development Of Ideas On The Structure Of Metals Before 1890 by Cyril Stanley Smith, and The Secrets of Metals by Wilhelm Pelikan. Some contemporary metalsmith artists will be studied such as Michele Oka Doner. This class will also include a variety of handouts from the Metal Smith Society to demonstrate specific metal smithing techniques and tools.
We will have a midterm critique to review progress and then students should expect to produce a body of work consisting of 3-5 finished pieces during the semester.

The history and techniques of bending and shaping wood are explored, from the stage coach wheel to the sculptures of Martin Puryear, from the cambered truss to the violin. Projects include a variety of practices such as laminate bending, form fashioning, steam bending, and vacuum pressing.

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.

This studio course explores the multiplicity of meanings inherent in the objectness of sculpture practices. Our weekly classes address such issues as monuments, earthworks, and performance; history and temporality; materiality and dematerialization; research, manufacturing, and consumption; tensions and connections between sculpture, architecture, and designed objects; and the ways new media, especially the internet and other virtual sites, alter our notions of the permanent and the ephemeral. Each week we'll discuss readings from contemporary and art historical texts and critique student work. Students will be given assignments and projects to be completed and critiqued throughout the semester.

This course provides students with a semester-long concentration on a sculptural project of their own choosing. Students are encouraged to focus on a cohesive body of work that shares a material or conceptual framework. Multiple individual critiques will enhance their ability to identify, develop and clearly express their artistic intentions. Image and video presentations will expand students' familiarity with a range of sculpture practices. Individual research methodologies are emphasized and structured to take advantage of the institution's resources. Class discussion of contemporary sculpture and theory will underscore students? understanding of the social production of meaning and help them to contextualize their work.

This studio course explores the interconnected nature of our physical and digital realities and their implications as technical, physical, and conceptual tools for understanding and presenting spatial ideas. This course teaches students to integrate the digital and the analog through process demonstrations including 3D modeling, 3D scanning, digital visualization, 3D printing, CNC output, mold making, pattern making, as well as metal and wood fabrication. This course covers planar and spatial construction methodologies.

This course engages themes of identity and place in sculpture and presents the idea that these concepts are expressed uniquely via this hybrid process. However, students in this course are free to choose the content of their own work. Practical application of technical demonstrations build on lectures and discussions considering works by Tauba Auerbach, Macarthur Freeman, The Long Now Foundation, Charles Ray, Spurse, Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi), Amanda Williams, and Wim Delvoye among others. Students will work individually to create 3 artworks to be presented in a final critique. Students will share these artworks in-process in 2 or 3 informal critiques. Each student will also complete a short written research project.

Advances in metallurgy and foundry practices provided the spark for the Industrial Revolution that transformed the world. In this intermediate level metal casting course, students explore how technological developments, material innovations, principles of mass production and distribution, and the mechanization of work have influenced the shape of contemporary social, economic, and political structures. While emphasis is placed on foundry techniques in this course, a variety of industrial materials and processes are explored including computer scanning, data manipulation and rapid-prototyping technologies. Students learn to access industrial services via the internet and off-campus field trips.

This advanced, interdisciplinary course provides a generative space for developing and understanding creative projects through the discourse of the field of Sculpture. Students in this course come together from various departments to enrich the content of their work through critique and conversation with Sculpture faculty and other advanced level students from across the school. Weekly readings inform the development of self-directed creative projects which form the basis for discussion and may form the basis for a thesis body of work.

Using the Columbus building?s living laboratory as a classroom and research site, students will consider ways that humans, fungi, plants, insects, animals, microorganisms, objects and architecture are enmeshed in complex ecological systems together. We will use literal explorations of decomposition and material transformation through the practices of vermiculture (worm composting) and myco-remediation (mushroom remediation) and with a metaphoric sensibility, consider the promise of cohabitation, cooperation and survival on a damaged planet. The Nonhuman Turn, a cross-disciplinary movement within the arts, humanities, and social sciences, will inform our research. Students can expect to engage in: readings, field trips, presentations, the collaborative production of artworks, the design and development of habitat for worms, microorganisms and reishi mushrooms, and a good amount of growing, eating and composting of plants.

This course provides a forum for in depth critiques and exploration of students' individual directions within the context of sculptural practice. Both technical and conceptual input will be given on a tutorial basis. Group discussions, readings, slide/video presentations, field trips and visiting lecturers may augment this class. Enrolled students will be assigned a studio space in the Columbus building. A maximum of 15 students will be admitted per semester. IMPORTANT: This course requires instructor consent. Please do not email the instructor directly. Instead, fill out the form found at this link, https://tinyurl.com/yjpm32ww, to submit your portfolio and application before the deadline.

This course provides a forum for in depth critiques and exploration of students' individual directions within the context of sculptural practice. Both technical and conceptual input will be given on a tutorial basis. Group discussions, readings, slide/video presentations, field trips and visiting lecturers may augment this class. Enrolled students will be assigned a studio space in the Columbus building. A maximum of 15 students will be admitted per semester. IMPORTANT: This course requires instructor consent. Please do not email the instructor directly. Instead, fill out the form found at this link, https://tinyurl.com/yjpm32ww, to submit your portfolio and application before the deadline.

How do we produce space and how does it produce us? More concretely, how can we think about the production of space in ways that help us develop our creative powers of resistance, invention, and transformation? This course examines the production of space through ideas about intimacy, movement, contact, accident, networking, the sacred, the virtual, enclosure, infinities, elsewhere, trespass, urban/rural, and public and private.





The course is structured around a wide variety of readings from philosophy, critical and architectural theory, and radical geography. These are combined with viewing and discussion of artworks and spatial practices, and students will engage in hybrid projects investigating actual and/or virtual spaces. Readings include selections from Samuel Delaney, Michael Sorkin, Rosalyn Deutsch, Saskia Sasken, Elizabeth Grosz, Jane Jacobs, Michel Serres, Brian Massumi, Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Mike Davis, Jonathan Crary, Raymond Williams, among others.

Liberalism is a political philosophy and tradition whose principles have guided western political practice for hundreds of years. Liberalism has given rise to the ¿liberal subject,¿ a human individual with a natural right to life, to liberty (political freedom, freedom of speech, press and religion) and to property. Certainly, under law but also within this cultural framework, many classes of human beings (enslaved people, indigenous people, people with disabilities or people experiencing houselessness, for example) have not been protected in this way, nor have been animals and plants. These prejudices are often entangled. In recent decades, within the context of ecological degradation, environmental racism and climate collapse, the rights of other-than-human beings have presented themselves as a critical cultural and political shifts to undertake. In this course we will interrogate the history of the rights of nature, and work to observe and even `model¿ an expanded political subject that is not just human, but human-in-relation to other-than-human beings. IF we are, in fact, entangled beings, and the ¿individual¿ subject is a kind of fiction, could we cast a wider net and protect this entangled being that is both us and Other? This course is a one-time offering held adjacent to an artistic project created by Associate Professor Sara Black, artist Amber Ginsburg (University of Chicago) and political theorist Sam Frost (UIUC) for the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry (https://graycenter.uchicago.edu/fellowships/untidy-objects). The course will be held off-campus at The Gray Center (Logan Center for the Arts - 915 E 60th St, Chicago, IL) and within a living sculpture produced by Sam, Amber and Sara in the field adjacent to the Center. Students may learn more about The Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry and the Untidy Objects project by following this link: https://graycenter.uchicago.edu/fellowships/untidy-objects

We will ground our work in seminar style readings and discussion with texts that explore the history of the liberal subject, the movement toward the rights of nature, indigenous philosophies, and how the visual arts have engaged in these histories. We will read from Suzaane Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Winona LaDuke, Laurence Tribe, Peter Burdon, Donna Haraway and more. We will explore the `expanded field¿ in sculpture and relational art as parallel to contemporary political theory, eco-criticism, and environmental justice.

Students will engage in daily field observations of plant and animal communities, horticultural design, creative writing exercises, discussions, reflective summaries and produce onesculptural and/or relational form in collaboration or individually.

Advanced students pursue individual casting projects while continuing to develop and refine casting skills. Alternative investment techniques are explored. Emphasis is placed on individual experimentation and development.

This course introduces students to the basics of sculpture fabrication and production. Students of this course will become authorized to use the department's facilities through a series of material projects and assignments that enable safe and competent work in three areas: Moldmaking, Metal Fabrication and Woodworking. The class will design and make molds suitable for casting models from simple and complex patterns in the mold-making studio. The class will use cutting, bending, rolling, welding and finishing techniques in the Metal Fabrication Studio to produce a project in steel. In the Woodshop, the class will learn to design a project in wood using the following machine tools: table saw, dado blades, jointer, planer, band saw, router, pneumatic brad nailer, and sanders. Upon completing Sculpture Bootcamp, students will have the authorizations and experience they need to take full advantage of the sculpture department open shop facilities.

This seminar focuses on developing a shared language for interdisciplinary critique, and on understanding one's own work better through fine-tuning how you look and talk about each other's. We will proceed with the assumption that all artworks are by nature collectively authored in that they emerge from, and contribute to, the ongoing conversation of art. This is an interdisciplinary seminar consisting of studio visits informed by selected readings and discussions, short writing assignments, and one longer piece of writing related to your work. This class aims to help you deepen your relationship to your work, and to develop an ease with, and appetite for, theoretical discourse and critical dialogue to help sustain your practice in the long-term.

Many of the most essential discourses of what we think of as contemporary art are rooted in an expanded concept of sculpture. This exit-seminar will encourage graduating students to contextualize their work within these discourses as they produce their MFA thesis projects. Professional-practice strategies are modeled, discussed and practiced in preparation for establishing a post-master?s career. This course is aimed at fourth-semester graduate students in Sculpture but will be of relevance for all graduate students in any department. Subjects are developed through conversation with visiting arts professionals, theoretical and practical readings, discussions and critiques of students work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.