All Courses and Workshops

An introduction to the basic glassblowing techniques used to make vessels and sculptural forms. Throughout the course, progressively more difficult assignments teach new concepts and develop students’ skills. Group glassblowing clinics encourage teamwork. Historical and contemporary glass techniques, designs, and applications are discussed and incorporated into student work. No previous … Read more

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An introduction to various genres of folklore and the methods of studying them. Students learn about how folklore exists or existed as a dynamic part of everyday life -aesthetically, behaviorally, politically, socially, and more. We consider such diverse forms of expressions as Indonesian Cinderella tales, Italian American festivals, Irish supernatural … Read more

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Imaginative – relating to or characterized by imagination: to form a mental image of something not present: lacking factual reality, fanciful, visionary, fantastic, unreal or unbelievable. Imagination is an engine for creativity. This course looks to help students explore their artistic process by considering “the imaginative” in a variety of … Read more

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Pack your bag with a sketchbook and pencils, sandwich and beverage and grab a folding stool to explore and draw the environment of your choosing. Whether you’re in downtown Boston, pastoral Vermont or anywhere in-between, there is something for everybody. Walk the ‘Freedom Trail’ of Boston recording historic Federalist architecture … Read more

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This course will provide a solid foundation in the digital skills used in the fashion industry to create the “fashion plates” that introduce a line or collection. Through hands-on projects, students learn how to use Photoshop and Illustrator to design presentation boards and fashion collections in flats. This is the … Read more

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Begin painting in this exploration of new and traditional directions and techniques. The basis of the course is studio work, primarily working in oil and includes use of models, as well as lectures and demonstrations. Color and composition theory, and the study of form, space, and light are addressed. Previous … Read more

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Screen printing is an old and versatile process with many modern uses. We present a variety of techniques and contemporary fine art applications of silkscreen printing. Students are guided through the transformation of an idea to printed image and encouraged to take a creative approach. The emphasis is on experimentation, … Read more

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Students will learn how to construct a basic pair of pants from measurements to muslin. We will also build sampler file with seam techniques, pockets, fly finishes, and a style library. Prerequisite: Completion of a basic sewing course or equivalent.

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Discover the synergy between Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign with course work based on a real-life project. Each program is approached as a specialized tool: Illustrator for digital illustrations and web graphics; Photoshop for editing images and creating special effects for web, broadcast, or print design; InDesign as a desktop … Read more

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This course introduces illustration methods for the fashion designer and creative professional.  Demonstrations and exercises cover basic anatomy to the analysis of fashion figures.  Stylized drawing skills, composition layout techniques and industry flat sketches are taught, along with methods of critique and the editing process of designer collections. Students illustrate … Read more

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This course includes an introduction to the laws of linear perspective, an exploration of how three-dimensional reality is depicted on a two-dimensional surface. Additional course content includes tools of the trade, various techniques for producing technical illustrations, informational art and instructional illustrations in sequential series.

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Through a series of collaborative and individual exercises, students explore the entire process of making a book, including inspiration for initial ideas, writing effective stories, character development, sequential flow, constructing the book, and researching potential markets. All course lectures and exercises apply to children’s books, graphic novels, animations and other … Read more

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This course is an exploration of how typographic techniques and principles are used for effective visual communications through professional typesetting, typographic layout, and expressive use of type. Students build skills for creating cohesive typographic systems, information hierarchy, and typographic grids. Prerequisites: working knowledge of Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator. For Graphic … Read more

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Students apply skills for concept development, visual design, and user-centered thinking to design projects of moderate complexity for both print and interactive media. Prerequisites: Graphic Design 1, Intermediate Typography; students should also have completed Interaction Design (or be taking it at the same time) or have some background in User … Read more

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In this course, we analyze several individual practices and group movements from 1945 to the present. Instead of adhering to the distilled summaries of a textbook, we engage art of this period at less of a remove. Students come to comprehend the difficulty and subjectivity involved in formulating a history … Read more

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Students explore the cultural and artistic responses to the major modern, social, and political revolutions between the end of the 18th and 20th centuries. The focus is on rarely covered artistic responses to political, social, and religious revolutions of the 20th century. Historical, political, philosophical currents and their impact on … Read more

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What is Sound Art? Imagine mind-bending sound pieces created with a piano filled with nails/bolts/nuts/screws, a floor tiled with LPs, a secret tone playing underneath a grate in New York City for 30 years, or nothing but the echo of a space. The course will provide a solid knowledge of … Read more

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This course introduces students to the art of the African diaspora, defined here as transnational networks of forced and chosen dispersal of people of African descent. By definition, diaspora rejects the category of the nation-state and accompanying nationalisms. Instead, we take mobility, migration, and flux across borders as a starting … Read more

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Have you ever noticed that when you look at the night sky and gaze at all those mesmerizing stars, you’re actually looking back in time? Did you know that Andromeda, the nearest galaxy to Milky Way, is 2.5 million light years away from us? This means that when you look … Read more

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Through the study of some of the representative works from World Literature we will take a panoramic look at the development of Civilization from its earliest beginnings. Through creation myths, stories of epic battles, and stories of love, we will learn more about who we are as part of the … Read more

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We round up the usual suspects: the appalling and tragic monster and his equally tragic and appalling creator; the charismatic vampire and his bevy of vamps; the traveling salesman who finds himself transformed into a giant dung-beetle. More broadly, the course studies the idea of monstrosity and the ways in … Read more

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This course will trace the lives of eight iconic film composers and their most impactful scores films which became seminal to developing story lines through music.  The class will meet four times weekly for two hours. and through a flexible combination of viewings, listenings and discussions, complemented with directed study. … Read more

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This course introduces students to the fundamental principles of animation which will be built upon a combination of traditional hand-drawn and experimental methods. Animation principles will be applied through a series of short animation projects which involve the phenomena of cycles, transformations, transitions, sequential structure, and the expression of emotional … Read more

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Time-based work is an important element of contemporary fine art and design and is fundamental to all art and design studio majors. Working in a wide range of media, students are introduced to basic concepts of art and design in time. Students will develop an understanding of temporal concerns across … Read more

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This class will be part visual journalism, part still-life illustration, part sequential art and part creative writing class. Students will be given prompts throughout the semester to explore and express a variety of socio-cultural and personal issues through the lens of food stories. This course will explore the different communities … Read more

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Students are introduced to visual principles, as the basis of graphic design communication, and elements and issues of visual language. The course covers the manipulation of graphic form to convey meaning, strategies for idea generation and development of unique concepts, and the designer’s role as visual storyteller. Prerequisites: drawing skills, … Read more

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Interactions are a core part of our everyday experiences. We interact with the world, each other, and with dynamic systems. This class explores the design process, prototyping, and evaluation of interactive experiences. Through project-based curriculum, students are exposed to various dimensions in design of interactive experiences, including user experience, information … Read more

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Students bring advanced skills for concept, design, and design thinking to planning, designing and prototyping dynamic screen-based interactive experiences. We investigate complex systems of information emphasizing organization, navigation and usability. We focus on designing a valuable experience for the user while creating portfolio-quality prototypes for the web. Prerequisites: Interaction Design … Read more

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This course introduces a variety of concepts and techniques used in contemporary ceramic object-making. Demonstrations and studio activities include hand building, mold making and wheel working. Each student researches and designs a series of pieces which reflect their personal interests. Projects may include work in tableware, sculpture, or designed objects. … Read more

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In this studio course, we will create abstract paintings using a variety of media while exploring aspects of form, color, composition, and format. We will also discuss a range of historical, technical, and conceptual approaches to abstract painting through slide lectures with a particular emphasis on current developments and trends … Read more

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The goal of this course is to design portable play component systems in a 9-day intensive studio session. A design brief will be shared at the outset and used along with other parameters to guide this studio. Our collective goal is to examine ways that play can be a means … Read more

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“Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.” Paul Cezanne The class will paint from a live model for a four-consecutive day period. It is not a how-to class, rather it will be a space to ask “what if..?” It will not be presented in … Read more

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The course explores the art and composition of the graphic novel and examines its many sub-genres, from superhero tales to memoirs to manga. The textbook is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Other texts include Watchmen, Contract With God, Sandman, Maus, and Persepolis. For the final project, students create and make preliminary sketches for an original graphic novel.

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This is a project development course for students working in Digital Lens-Based Media, including Photography, Digital Collage and Digital Time-Based Media. Through one on one work sessions, technical demos, and group critiques, students develop and technically refine a personal project or body of images, with the guidance of the instructor and … Read more

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Design and fabricate individualized place settings, serving dishes, teapots, and vases. Employing hand-building, the potter’s wheel, plaster molds, and various kiln-firing techniques (stoneware, soda, low-fire) students are able to create pottery that is useful as well as personally expressive. Frequent demonstrations, lectures, and dialogue with the instructor enable beginners as … Read more

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Metalshop 1 is a comprehensive introduction to steel fabrication techniques and processes. It includes various welding processes, such as the venerable oxy-fuel process, the lost art of “stick” welding, and an emphasis on MIG welding, better known as the “hot glue gun for steel” (just point and shoot!). The more precision oriented TIG welding process is … Read more

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 A rigorous and immersive intellectual experience designed to introduce the first-year student to college-level inquiry and university culture. This seminar-size course emphasizes close reading, critical analysis, information literacy, research skills, and oral communication. Course sections will vary in emphasis, assignments, and activities but will incorporate one or more common texts, … Read more

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How might advertising be Art? How is art ideology? This online seminar course will share journal assignments and respond to each other during one class time and meet as a class for discussion via video conference once each week through “Google Meet.” Students will use critical thinking strategies to study advertising and … Read more

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The documentation and communication of ideas require fluency with symbolic and illustrative methods; a language. This course develops and refines the basis of this language, the “alphabet and grammar” used to communicate the characteristic of objects and systems. Through the exploration of various media using architectural or industrial design contexts, … Read more

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For students who want an intensive day-long studio experience that provides individual instruction. Students work within a continuum from realism to abstraction, and formal concerns are emphasized and tied to personal expression. Includes use of the model. Class critiques, slide talks and field trips enrich the painting experience. Some painting … Read more

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For students who want an intensive day-long studio experience that provides individual instruction. Students work within a continuum from realism to abstraction, and formal concerns are emphasized and tied to personal expression. Includes use of the model. Class critiques, slide talks and field trips enrich the painting experience. Some painting … Read more

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For students who want an intensive day-long studio experience that provides individual instruction. Students work within a continuum from realism to abstraction, and formal concerns are emphasized and tied to personal expression. Includes use of the model. Class critiques, slide talks and field trips enrich the painting experience. For senior … Read more

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Drawing, painting, and sculpting using found objects, appropriated images, letterforms, texts, and personal memorabilia. Slide lectures and class discussions concern the history of collage and assemblage.   MassArt BFA students. This course is a Drawing Projects foundation year equivalent. Contact Academic Resources for more information. ARC@massart.edu

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Do you like to solve mysteries?  Are you good at figuring out who done it?  Then this class is for you!  Match wits with Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Sam Spade, and a host of other all-time great detectives in this omnibus tour of detective fiction from its origins to the present.  Assignments include some … Read more

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This course provides an introduction to architectural design as a social art that emphasizes form relevant to use, and design with an appreciation of site, landscape, and materials. The course is foundational, using observation of existing built environments to support basic design skills through families of form, attending to the … Read more

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This writing course focuses on skills for thinking and writing about artwork. Writing helps to develop the ability to reflect on creative processes. The course uses an interdisciplinary approach—crossing boundaries and integrating insights from visual art, writing, library science and other disciplines— for research.  Students learn to tell the story … Read more

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Explore the art of personal expression through landscape photography. Tsar Fedorsky, a fine arts photographer whose own work draws on images found near home, will encourage students to discover their own visual voice by choosing to take landscape photographs close to home. Nature is all around us. You don’t need … Read more

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In Trickfilm Toolbox, we will explore the interweaving of stop-motion and digital animation, live-action video and experimental storytelling. Sampling from the palette of animation tools available to us across the Adobe suite, as well as video, A.I. generation/ extrapolation tools, and the tricks and illusions of motion that came before … Read more

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Rich and expressive, monotype joins the graphic qualities of printmaking with the spontaneity of painting. This hands-on workshop teaches the basics of chine colle, pronto plate, collagraph, as well as other processes, and explores the sequential possibilities of monotype to develop images conceptually and formally. Image-making methods, ink handling, print … Read more

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Explore a variety of tools and practices to enhance the gestural qualities of your mark making vocabulary. This workshop will help students get to a more inspired level of mark making, using techniques and tools to make intentional work and express ideas. We’ll be working with a new medium in each workshop, which will … Read more

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Students undertake an investigation of Italian art in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Students will concentrate on those artists whose works signal the transition from the Early to the High Renaissance, a brief period when Western culture finds a spectacular climax in the artistic productions of Florence, Rome and Venice, … Read more

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Exploring changing conceptions of the individual in modern society. Topics include gender, race, ethnicity, and ideas concerning society, culture, work, and leisure. Readings are selected from psychology, sociology, Buddhism, existentialism, linguistics, anthropology, and popular literature. While we focus on the experiences in and of the modern West (including the implications … Read more

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Traditionally, watercolor is a light-to-dark medium. Light washes are built up gradually in order to achieve rich tones. The focus of this course is to explain that when beginning a painting with the application of pre-mixed, middle value, transparent wet-on-wet watercolor washes, artists can create images that exude “instant” atmosphere, … Read more

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In this course we trace the physical, physiological, and psychological investigations of experimental filmmakers over the last seventy years. Studying these three trajectories-matter, body, and mind-reveals “film” to be a complex interplay between what Paul Sharits described in 1969 as “celluloid, two-dimensional strips; individual rectangular frames; the nature of sprockets … Read more

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By examining the varied traditions in portraiture, through the lens of time and culture, this course will investigate a rich diversity of expression, spanning the frescos of Rome, the psychology of Alice Neal, the beauty of Leonardo, the technique of Ingres and the vulnerability of Vincent Van Gogh. We will … Read more

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Are you tired of a long winter and staying indoors? Let’s get outside and see our beautiful city with fresh eyes! Let’s sketch whatever catches our eyes: buildings, intricate architectural details, trees, flowers, street lamps, road signs, bus stops, trains, people walking, running, having a good time in the cafes, enjoying … Read more

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This course will explore the transition from modernist thought as exemplified by the Abstract Expressionist movement to such postmodern notions of appropriation, parody, and fragmentation as they manifest themselves in the art of the 1970s and beyond. We will focus on such concepts and genres as minimalism, performance, video, installation … Read more

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This Summative Elective course seeks to build a bridge between the artistic aesthetics in Cinema and the scientific rigor of naturally plausible phenomena. In doing so, and through analyses of scientific foundations of scenarios portrayed in different genres of cinema, including but not limited to sci-fi and superhero, students will … Read more

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The emphasis of this workshop will be on creating basket forms using the extremely versatile and popular basket weavers’ material of rattan reed. In this workshop, you will gain familiarity and confidence with the materials and techniques while learning how to make four different types of baskets. We’ll also look … Read more

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This course will trace how a dozen works and genres transformed the course of modern music, modern history, and society.  The class will meet four times weekly for two hours and through a flexible combination of viewings, listenings, discussions, and directed study, students will achieve an in-depth understanding of these … Read more

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MaxMSPJitter is an amazing graphical programming environment for interactive sound, graphics and video. In this course you will quickly master the basics of Max and learn the “survival skills” you need to help you achieve the technological artistic works you’ve been imagining.  You will learn to use Max for real-time … Read more

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Students will learn basic principles of business and entrepreneurship and create a business plan for their own creative entrepreneurial ventures. Tools used for marketing, finance and strategic planning will be explored. Lectures will include case studies on the strategies being employed by both established players and newer startups. The class … Read more

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What makes a children’s book a classic? We’ll find out as we read, analyze, and enjoy the best of the field–fantasies from Peter Pan to Harry Potter, realistic novels from Anne of Green Gables to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and stories falling somewhere in between, like The Secret Garden. Though our emphasis will be on … Read more

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This course introduces illustration methods for the fashion designer and creative professional.  Demonstrations and exercises cover basic anatomy to the analysis of fashion figures.  Stylized drawing skills, composition layout techniques and industry flat sketches are taught, along with methods of critique and the editing process of designer collections. Students illustrate … Read more

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Working from personally selected still life objects, students will learn techniques to capture the object’s form, value structure, and temperature shifts using built up layers of conte crayon. Students will complete two still lifes, the first using naturalistic colors. For the second still life students will choose to either exaggerate … Read more

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This course explores the multifaceted nature of working with moving images beyond the Hollywood understanding of a ‘movie’. Students will be encouraged to take an experimental approach to recording their own videos, animating short sequences, capturing audio, and editing it all together as they create unique time-based artwork. This course … Read more

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Thinking about a career in graphic design? Do you currently “dabble” in graphic design for personal projects? Have you found yourself designing flyers, webpages, brochures or other graphic design work professionally without any design training? This one-day workshop is specifically targeted for those with no graphic design background, to understand what makes a design “work” visually … Read more

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In this three-day workshop, you will learn how to use a a variety of tools to burn nuanced and expressive drawings into wood.  Whether used to decorate furniture with designs, to create architectural installations or to complete large scale drawings, pyrography has been a method of drawing for eons. The … Read more

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Cultivating Creative Communities explores the practices and habits that set the stage for thriving classroom studios where students feel welcome, safe and know their ideas matter. We will also address fostering relationships with colleagues, parents, caregivers and the larger community to support meaningful learning opportunities for both our students and ourselves. … Read more

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Cultivating Creative Communities explores the practices and habits that set the stage for thriving classroom studios where students feel welcome, safe and know their ideas matter. We will also address fostering relationships with colleagues, parents, caregivers and the larger community to support meaningful learning opportunities for both our students and ourselves. … Read more

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Cultivating Creative Communities explores the practices and habits that set the stage for thriving classroom studios where students feel welcome, safe and know their ideas matter. We will also address fostering relationships with colleagues, parents, caregivers and the larger community to support meaningful learning opportunities for both our students and ourselves. … Read more

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In this introductory, course participants will learn how to design and carve wooden utensils. Students will be shown how to safely and efficiently use the bandsaw as well as hand tools such as gouges, rasps, files, scrapers, and a variety of handsaws. Whether it’s spoons, spatulas, forks, knives, or something … Read more

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Do you pay attention to humor, richness and complexity of everyday life? Do funny phrases you or other people say catch your attention? Do you have challenging experiences that you would like to record? Do you find ordinary interactions fascinating? In this workshop, let’s transform your everyday experiences into comics. Let’s take … Read more

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Individual attention in a supportive environment is the focus of this comprehensive figure drawing course designed for students of all levels. We will examine the works of historic and contemporary artists to understand the common principals of sound figure drawing. The foundations of gesture, proportions, and anatomical structures will be … Read more

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This course is designed to de-mystify abstract art through a series of exercises and projects that focus on line, shape, color, and texture. Abstract drawing and painting represent a shift from recording the visible to expressing our impressions of what we see. The possibilities of finding inspiration for abstract works … Read more

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In this workshop students will have the opportunity to explore form and function through the practice of brush making. With wood as our main material we will practice how to safely and efficiently use the bandsaw and drill press as well as hand tools such as gouges, rasps, files, scrapers and power drills. After … Read more

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