Who We Are
The Art + Design Department is a community of professional artists, designers, scholars and students who together inquire into visual ways of knowing and making. Within a web of historical, critical and theoretical contexts we explore the potency of visual art and how it powerfully creates and critiques culture. As artists, scholars and educators we are committed to mentoring students in discovering that art is a unique form of intelligence with which we make sense of the world. Art scrutinizes interior and exterior, inquires into self and society and constitutes an experience. Art seeks understanding, harnesses affective, perceptual, sensory and intellectual skills, and enacts through material, experiential, spiritual and textual means.
Our program, therefore, is grounded within a liberal arts core and offers visual foundations, focus in design, art history, theory and studio art making practices (drawing, painting, printmaking photography, ceramics) within a community receptive to exploring intersections between faith and art. We believe cultivating liberally educated, visually literate, cultural contributors to be at the heart of Trinity Western University’s mission. It is my experience that understanding, cultivating, practicing and theorizing around art making goes far beyond knowledge of history, skill, or theory alone. It cultivates a complex cognitive capacity that benefits the artist and society, without which the individual, society and curricula would all be handicapped. In an increasingly media–saturated society, meaning is disseminated through the visual, making this field increasingly critical to all leadership visions.
I welcome you to explore SAMC’s website, our program, our students and our faculty and to join us in this inquiring, generative, supportive and challenging community of creatives that I am honored to serve as Chair.
Erica Grimm-Vance
Chair, Department of Art + Design