Courses

In this interdisciplinary course, students will gain experience with a wide range of creative thinking practices with a focus on ideation techniques and creative problem solving methodologies, such as design thinking. Students will apply creative problem solving techniques to complex problems and personal interests while learning about the history, key players, and processes that have led to our contemporary understanding of creativity. Students will develop their capacity for flexible and original thinking, and will begin cultivating habits that support their ability to quickly adapt and innovate in our rapidly changing world.

A seminar for students in all levels of the program, this course is required for all majors each semester (concentrations and minors are encouraged to attend). The core of the class is a visiting lecture series facilitating presentations, critiques, and communication amongst local artists, faculty, and students. The class covers topical issues in art; facilitates communication regarding departmental and professional practices; creates a community of inquiry supporting one another's production; addresses issues common to students of art; and supports the integration of faith and art in preparation for a life in the arts.

This foundations level studio course invites students to explore artistic practice as a mode of inquiry and a meaning-making language. The course cultivates visual intelligence through carefully sequenced drawing exercises, illustrated lectures and readings. Perceptual, conceptual and technical skills are honed and elements of art and principles of design are explored through drawing and composition projects that give students an experiential understanding of a wide range of artmaking paradigms.

Introductory studio course that invites students into the investigation of colour and its interaction, time and space arts, and three-dimensional art. Through the immersive practice of developing of artwork, students experience art as a mode of inquiry where meaning is understood through intuitive, imaginative, creative and interpretive methodologies. Using foundational skills, students employ critical and creative thinking that reflects fluency and flexibility of imagination and expression to create art and make new connections or respond to a chosen problem, concept or question.

Through this intensive investigation into life drawing, students develop perceptual awareness, build an expressive visual vocabulary and critically examine how cultural stereotypes inscribe and politicize the body. Anatomical, aesthetic, perceptual, critical and conceptual inquiries are explored. Students examine the ways in which culture, society and theology influence imaging the body.

Do the Ten Commandments forbid Christian art? What, if anything, can images, music, architecture, dance, or film uniquely communicate about God? Does, as Hans Urs von Balthasar writes, every experience of beauty point toward the infinite? An introduction to theological aesthetics, this class queries the extent to which various aspects of Christian belief can and cannot be adequately apprehended through the senses. Engaging with a wide range of perspectives and artistic media, particular emphasis will be placed upon the history and significance of distinctively Christian works of art.

This studio course focuses on the acquisition of basic painting skills. Colour theory is used in increasingly intentional ways as students explore strategies of using picture plane, shape, plane, volume, and brushstroke. Students are involved in issues of how personal voice and concerns translate into painting practices.

An introduction to photographic art - students explore basic techniques of digital and traditional photography. These include, but are not limited to: composition, visual literacy, lighting, review of darkroom procedures, and production. Photographic theory is introduced as it relates to cultural, aesthetic, ethical, and theological matters.

An introduction to the foundational principles and practices of animation. While students will focus on 2D animation in frequent practical exercises, their acquired skills and theory will be foundational for doing 3D animation. This course is a prerequisite for any subsequent animation courses.