Youth & Continuing Studies Courses

This course examines the fundamentals of two-dimensional design in the digital age. Students will explore principal design elements, including composition, color, and typography, through projects introducing Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as primary graphic design tools. The importance of effective visual communication in commercial and experimental design is stressed as students understand 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 Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop's specific role 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 and 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 various ways that color is considered and used as a design element. Working with current color theory principles and models, develop color plans and concepts for individual and group projects. This research is compiled in sketchbook/notebook format and is used as a reference for independent projects. Studies and hands-on studio work reveal how color can transform concepts with cohesive and expressive results.

Gain a competitive edge as a designer, artist, or maker by advancing your understanding of color theory. Learn about the various ways that color is considered and used as a design element. Working with current color theory principles and models, develop color plans and concepts for individual and group projects. This research is compiled in sketchbook/notebook format and is used as a reference for independent projects. Studies and hands-on studio work reveal how 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 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 proper copying and cutting patterns. Once mastered, these techniques can be used to sew 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 is an introduction to using SketchUp, a 3D modeling and visualization tool, for interior design. Learn how to model and modify rooms, furniture, cabinets, and other elements related to interiors. Any version of SketchUp can be used for the class, including Free, Shop, Pro, and Studio. Subscription information is available at sketchup.com/plans-and-pricing.

This course will introduce students to acrylic painting by exploring traditional and contemporary approaches to the medium. Students will learn to work with acrylic paints through demonstrations, individual dialogue, class discussions, and critiques. Artists including Mark Bradford, Helen Frankenthaler, and Mark Rothko will inspire 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.

What happens when we pick up a stick of charcoal or a brush dipped in ink? This course takes as its starting point William S. Burroughs¿s dictum that ¿all art is magical in origin. . . . Paintings were originally formulae to make what is painted happen.¿ Magic offers artists a set of imaginative tools with which to think otherwise about the work they do. Following an examination of concepts and imagery from witchcraft, hermeticism, alchemy, and the occult, students will explore the materials, processes, and psychic investments of the studio through the lens of spellcraft. Drawing will be emphasized as a research methodology and unique medium of expression.
As part of a larger inquiry into symbols, we will study various examples of ¿unknown languages,¿ such as the myth of Odin¿s discovery of the runes, Austin Osman Spare¿s sigil magic, the Martian scripts of the 19th-century spiritual medium Hélène Smith, asemic writing, and the automatic techniques of the surrealists, through slide lectures and guided drawing exercises. James George Frazer¿s principles of sympathetic magic will be used to think differently about both figurative representation and the specificity and history of materials and tools in drawing, collage, and painting. Additional themes will include ritual, sacrifice, divination, chance, and hauntology. We will look at the work of artists including Jesse Bransford, Atis Rezistans / Ghetto Biennale, Judith Noble, Marjorie Cameron, Wifredo Lam, and František Kupka. Readings will include ¿Reclaiming Animism¿ by Isabelle Stengers and excerpts from ¿Splinter Test¿ by Genesis P-Orridge; screenings will include films by Maya Deren and Harry Smith.
Using James George Frazer¿s ¿Law of Similarity¿ to think about figurative representation and wish fulfillment, students will make ¿cave drawings¿ with tools created from found materials in the landscape and inks we make together in class. The course will culminate in an indoor or outdoor installation of finished pieces.

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.

In this class, students will explore the two-dimensional and pictorial possibilities in clay by working on slabs. Students will learn effective slab rolling techniques, drying strategies, and explore a variety of mark-marking processes including carving, printing, underglazing and other painterly and graphic applications to solve traditional painting considerations including figure, ground, composition, color, and mark making in clay.
The work of artists Betty Woodman, Ruby Neri, Haylie Jimenez, and Manal Kara among other historical and contemporary ceramic artists and painters will act as a primary point of departure for our work in this course. We will explore exhibitions such as ¿Strange Clay¿ to glean inspiration for our work and strategize installation strategies for our objects. The class will also discuss a variety of catalog essays and artist statements including ¿Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art.¿
Assignments will invite students to consider the interaction between form and surface by combining slab/hand building with painting techniques using underglazes and image transfer. The course will culminate in a presentation of wall based works.

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.