Studio / Visual Arts

Rather than limiting themselves to one or another medium, studio arts concentrators are exposed early to a variety of different tools and materials that they may use to express themselves and explore their artistic voice within a liberal arts context.

A broad array of studio courses, critical theory, art history, and a portfolio of independent work are required components of a studio arts concentration.

This type of training not only enables students to overlap disciplines and technologies, but actually allows new forms to emerge as well. Consequently, Hampshire graduates in studio art have gained admission to the top M.F.A. programs nationally and internationally.

Alums are currently exhibiting at premier galleries and museums in New York and worldwide.

Student Project Titles

• Writing on Burned Paper
• "Shades of an Echo," a Story in Words and Images
• Uninhabitable Dimensions: Painting Space and Time
• Between the Material and the Metaphysical
• Solitary Spaces: An Exploration Through Paint and Video
• A Reflection on the American Obsession with Consumption, Expressed Through Sculpture
• Metal Dresses
• Infant Insects and Invertebrate Body Language
• 1 & 1 is 1: A Tete-a-Tete of the Interior
• Artists Aren't All Crazy: Where Psychoanalysis Meets Visual Arts
• While Walking
• Beauty and Happiness in the City
• Openings: Sculptures and Drawings about the Body
• Nos(otros): Art Questioning Borders

Sample First-Year Course

Sculpture Tutorial

Sculpture Tutorial provides students with a conceptual framework for the exploration of three-dimensional form. Fundamental sculptural principles are linked to the development of skills and ideas within a range of materials such as cardboard, clay, wood, plaster, steel, and lightweight concrete. Subject matter will include the figure, abstraction, environmental sculpture, and installation art. Readings, research projects, slide lectures, visiting artists, and group critiques will provide a theoretical framework for the development of independent work.

Sample Courses at Hampshire

• Five College Advanced Drawing Seminar
• Advanced Painting
• Advanced Sculpture
• Artists' Books
• Books, Book Arts, Artists' Books, Bibliophilia
• Collective Painting and Drawing
• Digital Art: Multimedia, Malleability, and Interactivity
• Drawing Foundation
• From Motherwell to Basquiat and Mehretu
• In Search of Character
• Intermediate Drawing
• Intermediate Painting
• Intro to Art Education
• Intro to Painting
• Multi Media Crossings: Intersections in Painting, Performance, and Installation
• Sculpture Tutorial
• Sequential Imagery
• Studio Arts Division III Concentrators Seminar

Through the Consortium

• Body and Space (MHC)
• Collaborative Art (AC)
• Digital Animation (UMass)
• Landscape Studies (SC)
• Printmaking (AC)
• Watercolor Painting (SC)

Facilities and Resources

Arts Barn
The Studio Arts building, also know as the Arts Barn, is well-equipped with two large classroom spaces for work in drawing and painting, faculty offices, a slide room/critique studio, a sculpture studio that houses equipment for working in wood, clay, plaster, concrete, rubber molds and other materials, a computer lab devoted to animation and design, and studio space for Division II and Division III studio art students.

Center for Design
Hampshire's Center for Design provides resources for students interested in working in additional media, such as metals, textiles, electronics, and plastics. Equipment includes a soft goods design area, a machine shop for metal work, and an inventions lab equipped with computer 3D modeling stations, a 3-D printer, and CAD/CAM metal working facilities.

Five College Consortium
Studio Arts students at Hampshire are able to take advantage of the art facilities at the other schools in the Five College consortium in addition to the resources available on campus. In particular, Amherst College has excellent printmaking facilities and instruction.

Five College Collaboration
The faculty in studio art collaborate to offer a unique team taught course once each year. The Five College Advanced Seminar in Visual Art aims to give upper-division students an opportunity to carry on a semester-long visual exploration of a theme as they are exposed to a multitude of perspectives and styles and mediums presented by faculty from all five campuses, many of whom are practicing artists who show regularly.

The course has space for three third-year students from each campus and sessions rotate from campus to campus each week. One faculty member serves as coordinator of instruction and meets with the class twice a week. Five other members of the faculty take turns offering one workshop a week, participate in two group critiques, and facilitate a student exhibition at the end of the semester.