Studio Art, BASA

for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art Major in Studio Art

Students pursuing this major select one of seven concentrations:

The Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art (with concentrations) focuses on the study of art, design, and art history in the context of a broader program of general study offered by the diverse research and teaching activities across the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign campus. It differs from the Bachelor of Fine Arts in that it offers students rigorous education in studio art while permitting them time to pursue studies in other areas, with a significant part of the educational experience occurring in areas outside the studio. Students choose from courses that will lead to concentrations in Fashion, Painting, Photography, Sculpture, Printmaking, New Media, or (general) Studio Art. These options permit students to experience a broad range of media practices or to focus on media-specific credits. Concentrations will be noted on the student’s degree, indicating a level of expertise in a particular sub-discipline that will be useful in the pursuit of advanced study or in employment opportunities where particular material skills are needed. Students must select one required concentration. Students are not permitted to declare more than one concentration.

Foundation courses for the BA in Studio Art introduce basic materials and conceptual approaches to making art, using traditional media including drawing and painting, printmaking, clay, plaster, wood and metal, to code, digital imaging, interactive media, and time-based applications. By incorporating new and traditional strategies and technologies students will understand visual organization and communication in 2D (artworks in two dimensions, such as drawing, painting or printmaking), 3D (artworks in three dimensions, such as sculpture and installation), and 4D (artworks of a time-based nature, such as coding, video, sound and performance).

The advanced BA Studio Art student can look forward to a changing menu of courses on a variety of topics, taught by a diverse faculty with expertise in a wide variety of conceptual, material and technical strategies for making art. The BA Studio Art’s curriculum offerings are designed to reflect an increasingly dynamic culture and provide students with experiences and skills that promote adaptability after graduation.

BA Studio Art students are provided with individual studio spaces housed in a communal studio building, where they pursue a self-selected studio practice. The communal studio configuration provides the geography for a strong, vibrant community of student-artists working together as they establish their focus and participate in exhibitions, performances, and critiques.

Students in the School of Art and Design must complete the Campus General Education requirements. Some Art and Design courses will also apply toward the General Education requirements.

A portfolio review is required for admission to the School of Art and Design.

for the Bachelor of Arts Major in Studio Art

Students will understand and be able to apply basic principles of visual and material communication, including two-dimensional pictorial concepts, three-dimensional formal and spatial concepts, and a wide variety of media and formats for artistic production, and possess the ability to apply them to a specific aesthetic intent.
Students will demonstrate an ability and willingness to experiment and explore the expressive possibilities of various media, and artistic and creative strategies for self-directed art-making, and investigate the diverse activities and conceptual modes available to the contemporary artist, including work that directly addresses or engages with recent developments in the field of fine art as well as broader social questions and challenges. Students are trained in the production and critique of artworks that explore forms and technologies identified as new or emerging.
Students will gain knowledge of, understand, and be able to apply concepts of visual rhetoric in the development of content, and be able to recognize and critically analyze an evolving variety of communicative practices in art and visual culture, including those that that represent diverse cultures and sociopolitical positions, and to demonstrate openness to new social possibilities and a critical empathy towards both audiences and culture producers of differing histories, origins and identities.
Students will be willing and able to investigate and accommodate broad-ranging types of knowledge and artistic strategies for the purpose of synthesizing diverse and even disparate ideas in order to create sophisticated, unique works of art, participate in new types of collaboration, and to make innovative statements and hypotheses, or propose creative solutions to social, organizational and societal problems using aesthetic strategies.
Students concentrating in New Media create work for the new disciplinary mechanisms that have arisen to evaluate and promote artwork in digital media, but also for traditional institutional mechanisms of art distribution and art critique. As in Contemporary Art, work in New Media may take the form of performance, sound and radio broadcast, gallery exhibition, curation, public art, cinema and video, a networked event, publication, or even scientific research.
Students will develop an innovative, imaginative, and entrepreneurial self-directed studio practice, will gain a deep understanding of their own creativity, be able to apply it in any context, and will learn to independently generate thematic investigation and implementation of research in a broad variety of social locations, including art and educational institutions, activist forums, and cyberspace. Students in the BASA will produce web and print based documents that serve to market and promote their practice as independent makers.

for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art Major in Studio Art

School of Art & Design
School of Art & Design
Art & Design Faculty
Academic Coordinator of Undergraduate Academic Affairs: Michael Foellmer,
143 Art and Design Building, Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 244-8462
Academic Coordinator of Undergraduate Academic Affairs email

College of Fine & Applied Arts
Fine & Applied Arts

Admissions
University of Illinois Undergrad Admissions
FAA Undergraduate Advising
Undergrad Admissions email

Course Catalog

Studio Art, BASA

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