The Art department is offering several special topics courses spring 2023. Check out the course descriptions below!
Course: ARTS 498A Special Topics
Instructor: Dana Fritz
Description: Landscape Photography is a seminar course that encourages students to question their preconceived notions about landscape photography. The history and contemporary practice are deconstructed through readings and student-led discussions and presentations. The course culminates in student-generated exhibition proposals of works from the Sheldon Museum of Art collection that focus on themes from the course. These are reviewed by museum staff and the best are selected for installation in the museum.
Course: THEA291Q Special Topics: Digital Art and 2D Animation
Instructor: Chris Irvin
Description: This course will explore the use of mobile devices as art creation tools. Utilizing Apple iPads, mobile devices, and applications that include Procreate, Flipaclip, Adobe Rush, and Adobe After Effects, students will gain a foundation in digital art and 2D animation. Areas of study include exploration and experimentation with storytelling, character design, digital drawing & illustration, 2D animation, digital compositing, and motion graphics. Students are supplied with Apple iPads, Pencils, and licensed versions of the required apps for the semester.
Contact Chris Irvin for permission to enroll.
Course: ARTS 291Q Introduction to 3D Computer Graphics
Instructor: Chris Irvin
Description: This class will examine 3D computer graphics as a digital art creation tool, including its use beyond the more traditional video games and visual effects formats. Students will gain a foundation in 3D modeling techniques, lighting within a 3D environment, and 3D animation. Topics include 3D modeling organic and hard surface objects, character creation, 3Dprinting, and art creation utilizing 3D computer graphics.
Contact Chris Irvin for permission to enroll.
Course: GRPH391 Special Topic: “Des(ART)ign.
Instructor: Ben Evjen
Description: With a concept-centered focus, students will create work in new 2d, 3d, and hybrid media formats. These artworks will then transition into self-guided graphic design-based outcomes.
Prerequisite: Graphic Design Major
Course: AHIS398 Special Topics in Art History
Instructor: Dorota Biczel
Topic: Ecopolitics & Poetics of Water
Description: This course examines water from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: from art, to humanities, to social and hard sciences. Specifically, we will investigate how contemporary artists have engaged with a variety of academic disciplines and different modes of knowledge production, both present and past, to address a slew of global political, social, and ecological issues related to this arguably most important, life-sustaining resource. This course takes an emphatically global perspective and will examine water from diverse viewpoints, privileging positions articulated from the Global South. We will also think through the possibilities for often-poetic approximations of water and “water issues” to intervene into policies, water management, and our own relationship to water.