Art and Place: Exploring Questions of Land, Home, and Identity

In Art and Place: Exploring Questions of Land, Home, and Identity , we will explore the central question of how one makes sense of one’s surroundings. What is place and how do we interact with it? Through concepts of place we will specifically address the themes of “home” and elsewhere in a multi-centered society. How do we impact our surroundings to create a sense of home? Through experiential learning, research, and means of representation – visual and written – we will investigate our relationships to place, using art and geography, in a mutually informed and comparative analysis approach. Because each of us brings a frame of reference from which we compare and contrast new places, making the unfamiliar familiar, we will consider the subjective and culturally determined nature of representation. In representing place we will examine the physical/geographic specifics and the conceptual/aesthetic perceptions, both of which are necessary for making meaning.

Art making is a combination of craft and concept. In visual art, students will acquire 2-D skills and a general understanding of contemporary concepts in visual culture. Studio time will focus on technique, materials and critiques. This class allows for all levels of artistic experience. In geography and ecology, students will research local ecosystems and ecosystem processes, Pacific Northwest history, and cultural and physical geography. We will use local places of the PNW as a reference point to compare and contrast with ideas of home. Students will use critical and technical skills as they learn to research, analyze and interpret environments through readings, seminars, writing, field trips and studio and computer labs.

Students will synthesize and culminate their research work in a major creative project that will incorporate both a visual art perspective and an empirical geographic one. The project will be based on the idea of a personal sense of place specifically around the idea of what constitutes home.