Requirements for Majors

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Visual Thinking offers an introduction and insight into the process and practice of creating visual art. The subject is explored by making images supported by lectures, discussions, and critiques. Students are introduced to the dynamics of composition, relationships of form and content, principles of color, visual analysis, and creative problem-solving. The course also seeks to provide some experience with a variety of media, develop skills in observation and technique, and encourage personal engagement in solving visual problems.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Creative Work General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course is an introduction to oil painting that emphasizes color mixing, painting techniques, and composition. The purpose of the course is to promote sensitivity to color interaction, advance technical and compositional skills, and provide a basis for creative growth and expression.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Creative Work General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to observational drawing. The coursework follows a sequence of exercises in various media that introduce basic drawing skills, techniques, and composition through observation and analysis of natural and manufactured forms. The course culminates with an introduction to the human figure.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Creative Work General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This hands-on course is an introduction to the practice of sculpture in contemporary and historical context. Using clay, plaster, wire, and cardboard, projects address material and technical processes as well as expressive, conceptual, and critical concerns.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Creative Work General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Digital Studio:Photography introduces students to the technical, conceptual, and expressive potential of digital photography as an art form. Emphasis will be placed on creative use of digital cameras and software to conceptualize and translate ideas into meaningful images. Projects will be assigned in order to advance technical skills and develop new insights and approaches to image making. Students will begin to develop an individual voice as an artist by exploring and questioning the use of photography in their work; giving special attention to its conceptual and historical underpinnings, and its material form.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Creative Work General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.

Minimum Credits: 3

Maximum Credits: 3

This course is a comprehensive exploration of painting techniques and concepts designed to expand awareness of the craft of painting and expose students to issues relevant to contemporary painting. Students have the option to work with either oil or acrylic paints. The course concludes with the development of a self-directed painting project.

Academic Career: Undergraduate

Course Component: Lecture

Grade Component: Letter Grade

Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0120 and 0130

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Drawing Studio 2 builds on the knowledge, skills and ideas practiced in Drawing Studio 1 while introducing more advanced approaches to developing content and style in drawing. The coursework therefore is roughly divided between continued practice and development of essential aspects of drawing - such as mark, tone structure, light, space, form, composition and perspective - and assignments designed to spark student explorations of the conceptual and communicative possibilities of drawing. Students will continue to develop observational drawing skills including figure drawing during class meetings; projects will be concerned with technical and formal aspects of drawing while emphasizing ideas and expression. The class will include a diverse range of examples of drawing from art historical through contemporary practices.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0110 and 0130

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
A continuation of SA 0140, this course explores in greater depth the relationship between material, technique, process, and content in sculpture. Through expanded projects in plaster, wood, and metal, students deepen their experience and develop new skills, while interpreting assignments independently.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0110 and 0140

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Intaglio printmaking is a diverse process, offering artists a variety of approaches to create marks, experiment and communicate. This course focuses on making intaglio prints from copper plates. Basic intaglio printmaking techniques are explored through the use of dry point, hard ground line etching, and aquatint. Advanced techniques are explored as the semester progresses. Experimentation is encouraged while developing techniques as well as researching printmaking as a tool to challenge studio practice and content.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0110 and 0130

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Digital Studio: Imaging is a studio designed to immerse students in the investigation of digital art practices. Emphasis will be on the history and aesthetics of art and digital technology, including screen-based imaging practices, creative coding, and digital fabrication. Throughout the course, you will acquire and enhance technical skills, but the emphasis will be on the use of the computer as an art-making tool for your creative expression. Thoughtfulness, experimentation and curiosity is encouraged.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0110 and 0180
Course Attributes: Film Studies, Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This is an upper-level writing course that is required for Studio Arts majors and may be taken by minors. Conducted in a seminar format, the course will inspect the wide range of career options in, and related to, the visual arts. Course topics and visitors will offer survival skills for maintaining a visual art practice, while course writings support preparations for professional opportunities.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0110 and 0120 and 0130 and 0140; PLAN: Studio Arts (BA); PREQ: ENG 0102 or ENGCMP (0002 or 0006 or 0020 or 0200 or 0203 or 0205 or 0207 or 0208 or 0210 or 0212) or 0213 or 0214 or ENGFLM 0210 or FP (0003 or 0006)
Course Attributes: Capstone Course, Undergraduate Research, Writing Intensive Course (WRIT)

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Senior Seminar is a course that develops critical skills necessary to take your work to the next level. Throughout the course you will develop a body of work, engage in robust discussions about contemporary issues and critique your projects. Finally, you will collaborate to create a pop-up exhibition to present your work. Additionally, students will spend time off-campus meeting with artists and exploring art in the Greater Pittsburgh region.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Seminar
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PLAN: Studio Arts; LVL: Senior

Minimum Credits: 1
Maximum Credits: 1
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Satisfactory/No Credit
Course Requirements: PLAN:Studio Arts; LEVEL: Senior

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Painting 1320 is a continuation of Painting 1220, with increased emphasis on developing a personal direction and focus in painting. Students in Painting 1320 are expected to declare a set of painting goals at the start of the course, formally and thematically related, to begin the process of creating a coherent body of work for portfolio development.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 1220
Course Attributes: Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Drawing Studio: Projects is the third level drawing class for studio arts majors. The course builds on and expands on the foundation of drawing as an expressive and conceptual practice explored in Drawing Studio 2. The emphasis is on individual student drawing-based projects. The first part of the semester includes project assignments where students respond to open-ended prompts. During the second part of the semester students develop an ambitious body of work that involves drawing as a broadly defined discipline as it is situated in contemporary practice. Student work may take many forms which might include, but are not limited to: drawings on paper; installation or drawing in space; mapping; digitally produced drawing; comics or other narrative series; or time-based works such as artist books.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 1230
Course Attributes: Capstone Course, Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Environmental art is grounded in interrelationships. These connections include not only physical and biological pathways but also cultural, political and historical aspects of any ecological system. This course focuses on the creation of metaphoric and functional artworks that reveal ecological consideration; these artistic gestures serve to enact change and as connection for the community.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 1240
Course Attributes: Capstone Course, Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This is an advanced sculpture course examining site specific and installation works as strategies in contemporary art. Continually challenged by newly revised and emerging roles in the art world and society at large, the purpose of this studio course is to provide a forum for the discussion and exploration of issues playing a role in the contemporary critical debate.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 1240
Course Attributes: Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course approaches screenprinting as a medium of artistic expression. Basic screenprinting techniques will be covered, from image generation and screen preparation to the use of screenprinting as a creative outlet. Students will learn the use of basic equipment, printing approaches, papers, a variety of stenciling processes, and photographic and computer techniques to create marks, values, and textures. As the semester progresses, students will gain an awareness of the creative and expressive possibilities of screenprinting and be expected to develop an increasingly complex body of work through their personal vocabulary with the media which may include installation and sculpture.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0110 and 0120
Course Attributes: Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This is an advanced studio designed for students to intensely experiment and explore the moving digital image in an art context. Students will explore the concepts and skills involved in working with digital video, from pre to post-production. Each student will propose and undertake a final, self-designed project during the final four weeks of the term. Major effort, time, research, imagination, productivity, and involvement are expected throughout the term.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: (SA 0110 and 0180) or ENGFLM 0590 or FILMST 0001 or FMST 0800 or FMST 0710
Course Attributes: Film Studies, Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course is designed to provide students with a thorough understanding of linear perspective and the role it plays in the development of a drawing. The focus is on how these conventions work and the role they play in developing the structural integrity of both form and space. The class will explore how to set up everything from simple perspective drawings to more complex perspectival compositions. Drawings done throughout the term will ultimately be edited and compiled into a bound text to be used as a reference guide for future studies.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0130 and (SA 0110 or ARC 0201); PLAN: Studio Arts (BA) or Architectural Studies (BA)

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
The purpose of this course is to develop skills in the representation of the human form using a variety of painting strategies. The figure will be examined using direct observation of live models and also by employing other sources such as: photography, film, and digital images. Through lecture and critique the class will study and apply concepts that focus on a variety of roles the figure plays in personal, social, and art historical contexts.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Requirements: PREQ: SA 0120 and 0130
Course Attributes: Undergraduate Research

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
Directed study is a course for art majors to promote concentrated individual development in students who have demonstrated exceptional ability in studio courses.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Directed Studies
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Attributes: Capstone Course

Minimum Credits: 1
Maximum Credits: 6
An internship is an elective which provides the opportunity for a studio arts major to obtain practical experience through on-the-job training in an art-related field. The candidate makes such arrangements for an internship under the supervision of a faculty sponsor.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Internship
Grade Component: Satisfactory/No Credit
Course Attributes: Capstone Course, Undergraduate Internship

Minimum Credits: 1
Maximum Credits: 3
This course partners advanced studio arts majors with a faculty member as a teaching assistant in a current departmental course. The partnership is intended to offer further experience to dedicated students exploring a particular media with mentorship in studio management and an introduction to teaching, will enhance the course by offering enrolled students additional support and access for skill development and questions throughout the term, and will offer faculty valuable studio management and assistance in working with students.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Independent Study
Grade Component: Satisfactory/No Credit
Course Attributes: Capstone Course

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This summer field study program will be conducted at the Allen l. Cook spring creek preserve near Rock River, Wyoming. The course will focus on studio arts topics.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Independent Study
Grade Component: Letter Grade
Course Attributes: University Honors Course

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course explores the question `what is art through a close analysis of select art works from around the globe, introducing students to the types of questions art historians bring to the images, objects and sites human beings have taken particular care to craft and conceptualize. What role has art played in a diverse range of human cultures across time?
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Cross-Cult. Awareness General Ed. Requirement, DSAS The Arts General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Global&Cross Cul GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req., West European Studies

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
The course will present a chronological survey of Western European, Russian, and American art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present (impressionism to post-modernism). In addition to charting the dramatic stylistic and conceptual changes in art during this time period, the course will consider the historical circumstances which caused a disintegration in accepted notions of what constituted a significant work of art.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Geographic Region General Ed. Requirement, DSAS Historical Analysis General Ed. Requirement, DSAS The Arts General Ed. Requirement, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Global&Cross Cul GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Soc/Behav. GE. Req., West European Studies

Minimum Credits: 3
Maximum Credits: 3
This course explores the latest developments in contemporary art in the context of changes in world visual cultures since the 1960s. The first weeks will concentrate on the transformations of artistic practice that occurred initially in pop art, and on the minimal-conceptual shift in Western art. This will be followed by a survey of the diversification of artistic practice in the 1980s and 1990s, including the emergence of new internationalisms reflecting postcoloniality, global contemporary art and digital media.
Academic Career: Undergraduate
Course Component: Lecture
Grade Component: LG/SNC Elective Basis
Course Attributes: DSAS Global Issues General Ed. Requirement, DSAS The Arts General Ed. Requirement, Global Studies, SCI Polymathic Contexts: Global&Cross Cul GE. Req., SCI Polymathic Contexts: Humanistic GE. Req.