Expressive Arts
The Performing, Visual and Media Arts have a strong presence on campus. Performances, exhibitions and screenings are a regular part of campus life and learning. Expressive Arts programs and classes include intellectual and artistic exploration as well as technical development, providing disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary breadth. Entry-level work takes place in interdisciplinary programs while advanced students may focus on more sophisticated projects in arts-specific programs and individual contracts.
Media Arts emphasizes experimental, documentary and hybrid modes of production. We study the practice, history, and theory of film, video, animation, installation, sound design, and studio production. We focus on critical engagement with media in cultural and political context, through screenings, reading, writing and discussion as well as production. Students develop collaborative skills necessary to real-world production in an environment where multiple forms of expression are supported. They engage deeply with questions like: How do images shape our understanding of the world? How have image-makers resisted commercial models? How can we develop our own ways of seeing?
Beginning Media Arts programs vary each year, are interdisciplinary and generally open to everyone. Mediaworks, or Nonfiction Media, is offered every year to sophomores, juniors and seniors who seek intensive learning in production, history and theory. Student Originated Studies in Media, or Media Artist’s Studio, is for more advanced students with a strong foundation of coursework in media who have demonstrated their ability to work independently and collaboratively.
The Performing Arts consist of three areas: Theater, Dance and Music. In Theater, Evergreen students study and explore traditional theatrical performance practices, avant-garde experiments in theater, and Chinese Opera. Under the guidance of faculty, upper-division students working in groups have written, directed and mounted their own works, as well as works from the traditional and avant-garde repertory.
Dance at Evergreen ranges from contemporary experiments in Dance to classes in Ballet, to performances of Orissi dances from India. Our faculty have been and continue to be active as professional dancers and choreographers, and bring their experiences to bear on directing and coaching student soloists and ensembles.
The Music faculty range in expertise from Ethnomusicology to World Music, to contemporary composition and performance, to the recording sciences, to working with digital and analog sound synthesis. Students have gone on to graduate work in Ethnomusicology, and into professional work in recording studios and sound design. Our faculty are active as composers, scholars, performers and recording engineers.
Faculty in the Visual Arts emphasize the linkages between art making and cultural contexts and have an integrated presence in the liberal arts curriculum. Students studying visual art are provided with the tools and instruction necessary to produce artwork in a variety of media, and the critical language and writing ability to critique and discuss it. We believe that visual literacy, the ability to incorporate multiple disciplines to perceive and interpret visual images, is central to the process by which students become informed image-makers.
Pathways in Visual Arts emphasize experimentation, skill development and concept building. Beginning students can take lower division or all level interdisciplinary programs or thematic studio-based programs. Intermediate and advanced students can take upper-level interdisciplinary programs or thematic studio-based programs. Student Originated Studies in Visual Art and Independent Learning Contracts are offered for students ready for more independent studio work.
Evergreen has well-equipped shops and studios where students work across a range of media. These include fully equipped wood and metal shops, ceramics studio and kiln room, fine metals studio, digital video editing lab, printmaking studio, electronic music lab, an 8-channel digital audio studio, a new dance lab/theater, a theater (with a fully-equipped scene shop and costume shop), animation labs, photography, digital imaging studio and darkrooms, an HD production studio for live filming, performance and/or television production. Teaching spaces include a life drawing studio, drawing and painting studios, a 3D studio and two A/V equipped critique rooms. The Evergreen Gallery and the annual Artist Lecture series bring artists, their works and contemporary concerns in the arts to the Evergreen community.