Youth & Continuing Studies Courses

This course examines the fundamentals of two-dimensional design in the digital age. Students will explore principle elements of design including composition, color, and typography through a series of projects that introduce Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as primary graphic design tools. The importance of effective visual communication in both commercial and experimental design is stressed as students gain an understanding of the professional design process from the client brief to the finished digital project. Students will leave this course with a solid foundation in strategies for solving design problems, a basic design vocabulary, and an understanding of the specific role that Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop play in creating professional work. Before starting this course, students should be comfortable creating, deleting, renaming, and moving files and directories without assistance.

This course emphasizes the development of observational drawing skills and hand-eye coordination. The learning sequence progresses from simple forms and skill levels toward more complex compositions. Basic drawing elements such as line, proportion, perspective, composition, texture, and the study of light and shade are investigated through various perceptual and conceptual approaches. Open to beginning students as well as those who want to refresh their skills before moving on to more advanced studio courses.

Gain a competitive edge as a designer, artist, or maker by advancing your understanding of color theory. Learn about the variety of ways that color is considered and used as a design element. Working with current color theory principles and models, develop color plans and concepts in relationship to individual and group projects. This research is compiled in sketchbook/notebook format and is used as reference for independent projects. Studies and hands-on studio work reveal the multiple ways that color can transform concepts with cohesive and expressive results.

Joining fabrics to cover the body and create shelter has been a prized skill in the progress of civilization. Students will build on that tradition by learning fundamental seams and finishes used in modern day garment construction. Industry standards of sewing are emphasized and all techniques are taught and practiced. In addition to creating a personal library of seam samples, students will apply the techniques in two basic projects. The class will also discuss fabric characteristics and the proper copying and cutting of patterns. Once mastered, these techniques can be used to sew together garments from patterns, create original designs, or explore fabric as a medium for soft sculpture. No previous sewing experience is necessary.

Note: A sewing machine is required if taking this course online.

This course will introduce students to acrylic painting through the exploration of traditional and contemporary approaches to the medium. Through demonstrations, individual dialogue, class discussions, and critiques, students will learn how to work with the acrylic paints. Artists including Mark Bradford, Helen Frankenthaler, and Mark Rothko will provide inspiration as participants complete a series of paintings on paper, canvas, and wood.

This course for beginning to advanced students includes extensive experimentation with materials and techniques through individual painting problems. Students pursue various interests in figure, landscape, abstract, imaginary, and still-life painting and drawing. Students may choose to work with oil-based media with odorless solvents, or water-based media. Demonstrations and critiques are included.

Specifically designed for Ox-Bow, this alternative printmaking course is a combination of etching, monotype, and relief. It is the alternative print medium for painters, printmakers, and all two-dimensional visual artists who are looking for a tremendous range of line quality and color, as well as the opportunity to create multiples. Collograph printmaking allows the artist to work fast and create an entire portfolio in a short time. The class will also include a


photo-collograph process that offers the artist the opportunity to incorporate photo-imagery such as text, appropriated images and computer-manipulated images. Note: The photo process does not require any toxic chemicals or special photographic equipment. ( $60.00 materials fee)

In this course, students will make fiber-based work while developing an understanding of how the materials we use create and hold meaning. Focusing on the sustainable material; wool, students will explore a variety of treatments to create yarn, felt, cloth, and sculpture. We will build D.I.Y. handheld looms for our spun yarn, design flat works, explore dyeing, felting, and simple knitting techniques in the service of making soft works, as designed by the students. We will look at how the specific materials and techniques we use influence how we think about and create meaning in our work in relation to histories, cultures, and ecologies.
Course readings and lectures will deeply consider how we can think about materials from various perspectives, and will include artists such as Ektor Garcia, Hana Miletic, and Cecilia Vicuña, and texts by authors including T¿ai Smith and Denise Ferreira da Silva.
Assignments will guide students through processing a locally sourced sheep¿s fleece and learning the rudimentary techniques of spinning, weaving, knitting, and felting, using this fleece and other fiber materials, including sourced and foraged materials from Ox-Bow¿s campus. After learning a variety of techniques and conducting initial material experiments, students will make final works (which may take any form) that engage thoughtful and personal consideration of materials and their meanings.

This course provides students of all levels with the opportunity to work on their own projects and to improve their ceramics skills. Students will have access to all materials in the Ceramic Studio, and can choose from a variety of firing options, including the electric kiln, gas kiln, or raku. Demonstrations will include hand building, vessel creation, construction methods, proper firing methods, and encourage intermediate understanding of drying times, methods for building sound pieces, techniques for minimizing loss, and studio safety.
Taking inspiration from historical movements and contemporary ceramicists, students will engage in coil and slab building, slip casting, have time on the potter¿s wheel, and practice a variety of surface design techniques.
Assignments are designed to build understanding of each method, and students will conceive projects that reflect their interests. Instructors will be available to help facilitate individual, collaborative, and interdisciplinary projects.

Inspired by great artists like Etel Adnan and Elizabeth Bishop and the winter landscape of Ox-Bow, this assignment driven studio course will activate writing for painters and painting for writers. Class discussions and readings will be wide-ranging with an emphasis on the creative process, the development of a personal voice, exchange of ideas, and practical topics in fine arts. Individualized critiques and meetings will follow the group discussions. Students will be expected to define a contextual framework and vocabulary for talking about their work as well as resolving form, content and technical issues. Areas of studio practice as well as outside of class assignments will explore expanded definitions of painting and writing that relate to the body and things of the world, The course is designed to prepare students to pursue individual creative projects in a setting that supports critical thinking, risk-taking, and the production of a body of work on paper and other supports. Students in this course will be assigned a semi-private studio space and can work in the media of their choice.
We will take inspiration from readings and screenings from artists including; Etel Adnan, a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist. named 'arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today' by the academic journal MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States,. Elizabeth Bishop, who worked as a painter as well as a poet, and her verse, like visual art, is known for its ability to capture significant scenes, and Renee Gladman, a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersections of poetry, prose, drawing and architecture. Other readings will include Marie Howe¿s The Good Thief, Deborah Digges¿ Vesper Sparrows, Josh Ashberry¿s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and Letters to the Future: Black Women/Radical Writing, as edited by Erica Hunt.
Assignments will invite students to adapt sensations experienced in the Ox-Bow landscape through words and drawing, inspired by Richard Hugo¿s The Triggering Town, and to trade pieces of writings with confidants to develop works in watercolor or acrylic based on these writings. These exercises will require us to trust in what we can make of a synthesis of the known and unknown. Walking through the landscape, speaking to trees, looking for foxes, and screaming at the frozen lake will inform our final works.

Since prehistory, art has served as a way to make meaning of the difficult and mysterious aspects of human existence, particularly the cycles of birth, death and regeneration that structure life on this planet. For this interdisciplinary class, Michigan¿s wintry landscape will serve as a point of departure for thinking about these cycles and their mythic symbols, such as Ishtar¿s descent to the underworld and the death and resurrection of Attis. This course focuses on drawing as an archaeological and regenerative practice within the interdisciplinary field of contemporary art. Through studio projects, readings, screenings, lectures and group discussions, students will speculatively apply concepts of birth, death and regeneration to the process of making art, exploring themes of continuity, recurrence, rupture, metamorphosis, critique and appropriation. Topics will include cave painting, Mother Goddess cults, solar and lunar mythologies, alchemy, ritual, surrealism and the occult roots of modernism. Class projects will emphasize drawing as a research methodology.
We will take inspiration from artists including Leonora Carrington, Forrest Bess, Ana Mendieta, Geta Bratescu and Paleolithic cave painting, historic tarot decks and alchemical manuscripts. Selected readings will include Metamorphoses by Ovid and Prehistoric Painting: Lascaux or the Birth of Art by Georges Bataille.
Students will engage in performative and ritualistic exercises including ¿Womb of Chaos,¿ which invites them to rapidly generate drawings and raw materials for self-directed projects. Mercurial values of intuition, risk, ingenuity, trickery, theft, speed and quantity will be emphasized. Students will also create a self-guided independent project that includes a written proposal, research, sketches, material studies, and final work of art or a series of works. Artists will be encouraged to consider how site or installation, material choices, and historical references shape meaning and context within their work. Suggested themes: origin myth, cave art, time machine, underworld journey, union of opposites, mother goddess, solar/lunar cycle, rebirth.