Visual Vocabularies: Exploring the Canons of Art and Literature

Description

How does culture inform art? How does art inform culture? How are the practices of art and writing informed by place? What are the relationships between the message and the medium, any genre and its practice? In this program we will explore these and other questions by investigating the materials, media, messages, and composition of the tangible world. As far as possible, we will honor the primacy of place, our campus, our homes, parks and special places, always alive to the textures of the known world.

We will consider many ways of seeing, ways of knowing, ways of creating, and ways of interpreting reality.

As readers, we will study the compelling theories of art and culture. As writers, we will carefully craft personal essays, academic essays, stories, and poems. As artists, we will explore new ways to make art and communicate ideas, especially through 2D and 3D art explorations. We will collaboratively focus on these themes in lectures, workshops, studio work, seminar discussions, and creative projects.

In fall quarter we will begin our quest by introducing John Dewey’s Art as Experience and Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. These classics will light the way. Further, we will explore new ways to make art and communicate ideas. Our inquiry may take us into the world of drawing, painting, photography, letter-press, book-making, ceramics, mixed-media art, installation art, and layers of meaning embedded in the ordinary. Material transformations will spring to life. The relationship between art and literature, making and communicating will be a daily focus in the program. Each student’s own forays into the world of art will build on these foundations. Similarly, structure, characterization, imagery, and theme in stories, plays, and poetry will stimulate our writing. Literary works include The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov and Where I’m Calling From, the stories of Raymond Carver. Films and short pieces by Robert Coles, Eudora Welty, Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver, Stanley Kunitz, James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton, and Kay Boyle will broaden our discussions.

The relationship between art and literature, making and communicating, will be a daily focus in the program. Guest artists will join us on occasion for lectures and workshops during both quarters of the program.

In winter quarter we will study more complex artistic and literary approaches to visual vocabularies. We will further our reading, writing and art projects by dividing into intensives, four-week concentrations leading to a culminating art and writing presentation at the end of the quarter. Faculty will mentor students as they bring these creative projects to fruition.

In addition to punctuality and participation in all program activities and assignments, students are expected to work about 40 hours per week including class time.