This year-long program will provide a studio community and critical and technical support for students ready for intermediate to advanced independent work in 3D studio arts and design.  Proposals for work in sculpture, crafts, site-specific installations, environmental art, and sustainable design are all welcome, from individuals or groups with a shared focus.

Giving shape to materials is time-consuming, intellectually challenging, and physically demanding work.  This program will emphasize informed, responsible, and skillful mastery of materials and shaping processes.  Along with individual work and communal activities, students will take part in skills workshops that may cover drawing, advanced wood and metal shop processes, carving in wood or stone, fabrication with repurposed materials, or casting in bronze or aluminum, depending on student interest and commitment.  In the first week, students will finalize plans for their independent work and supporting research and writing, sign up for workshops, and work with faculty to identify shared readings and activities.   Students will be expected to produce significant bodies of thematic studio work, supporting research, artist statements and portfolios.  They will be called on to work intensively in the studio together, to share their research through papers and presentations, and to participate in regular and rigorous critiques. Collaborative work will also include seminars, field trips, and guest lectures, to challenge distinctions between arts, crafts, and design, and tolook for commonalities of approach and meaning.   A key challenge for students in the spring quarter will be to jointly organize and mount an exhibition of program work at an off-campus venue.

Program goals include well-informed and rigorously developed 3D work, technical competency, skillful responses to site and community contexts of the work, and the ability to speak for the work in writing, presentations, and other forms of public discourse.