Field Trip to Seattle Art Museum Tuesday April 22

We will depart from parking lot C (closest to the Com Building) to go on our field trip to the Seattle Art Museum.  Van drivers will pick up the vans at 8:30 from the Motor Pool Office.  Lucia will meet you there.  Students should meet at Parking Lot C at 8:45.  We will depart promptly at 9:00 am.  Bring:  Nature Journals, pencils, erasers, seminar paper on the second half of Art of the Northwest Coast, sack lunch and snacks or money for food.  We will return by 5:00 pm.  We have the James Luna Lecture from 6:00 to 8:00 pm in Lecture Hall 1.

First Class Meeting: Tuesday April 1 at 9:00 am Library 1412

Nature: Image and Object
Spring Quarter 2008

Faculty: Lucia Harrison, harrisol@evergreen.edu, 360-867-6486, Lab I 2026

Introduction
This studio-intensive visual art program is designed for beginning art students who would like to combine the close observation of nature and visual art. In a series of lectures and readings, we will explore how artists, in different time periods and cultural traditions, have expressed their relationship with nature. In the studio portion of this program, we will gain skills in making art from natural materials, learn how to draw from observation, and learn how to abstract from our experiences in nature. In addition, we will explore how to sequence text and images in artist books and in three-dimensional objects. This program will include field trips to draw from observation, make costumes for the Procession of the Species parade, and view art in museums in Seattle and Tacoma.
Goals
1) examine your own relationship with nature as a source of inspiration for your artistic expression
2) explore some on-going conversations about art and nature. What is nature? Why do we value wilderness? How have artists expressed these values? How does the artwork of indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest express their relationship with nature? What are contemporary artists making in response to environmental issues such as clean water and global climate change?
3) explore artistic processes such as drawing from observation, drawing from memory, visual research, abstraction, chance, collaboration, and exploring the same idea in more than one form.
4) develop basic skills and confidence in drawing from observation, visual analysis and critique of artwork, and basic techniques for book arts. We will draw from still life, human models, and nature. We will explore charcoal, ink, chalk pastel, colored pencil and watercolor. We will learn to use the dissecting and compound microscopes.