All Active Courses and Workshops

Do you enjoy spring in the city – colors and textures of blossoming trees and flowers next to intricate Boston architecture? Let’s go outside and see our beautiful city with fresh eyes! The focus of this workshop is on capturing the essence of spring and combining natural and urban elements … Read more

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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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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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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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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. Note: This is not a … Read more

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This intensive online studio class explores the use of vector imagery for art, design, and digital illustration. Working primarily in Adobe Illustrator, students explore techniques including pattern creation and combining pixel-based and vector images. Applications include mixed media digital illustration and creating files for laser- and die-cutting (stencils and 2D … 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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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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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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Experience design is a set of design practices that can be applied to services, products, user journeys, spaces, and events. In this class, students learn how to use design, spatial and behavioral strategies to design and project the experience they seek to deliver. Each week students learn a new set … Read more

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Beginners are welcome to join this introduction to machine woodworking and shop safety in MassArt’s well-equipped woodshop. Build confidence with woodworking equipment and gain a deeper understanding of the science of wood as a material. Practice working with technical drawings and build hands-on experience with the chop saw, bandsaw, jointer, … 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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Documentary Bootcamp is a seven-week, immersive learning experience covering the fundamentals of documentary filmmaking from pre- to post-production. Participants learn storytelling principles, the aesthetic and technical skills for image making and sound recording, scripting, interviewing, and editing. Knowledge and skills are developed through presentations, discussions, at-home or in-community exercises and … Read more

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This foundational class provides students with the skills required to work and experiment with agility in today’s digital space. Participants gain a top-down understanding of both the Adobe Creative Suite and Google Workspace, including a big-picture understanding of how the programs in each function together. Students build general best practices … Read more

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This seven-week class focuses on crafting a compelling online presence and visual identity for artists and makers. Website design and development tools available on several popular platforms are discussed, along with extended customization possibilities using basic CSS and HTML. The curriculum introduces fundamental principles of brand identity design, graphic design, … Read more

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In this workshop, you will learn various basketry construction techniques including coiling, twining, plaiting, netting, and interlacing. You’ll also learn how to create your own cordage from recycled materials. We’ll study historic basketry traditions, and also look at the way contemporary artists are using fiber construction techniques today. Using materials … Read more

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In this course you’ll learn the essentials for designing with fonts, and build typographic skills that are applicable to a wide range of visual communication design endeavors. You’ll be introduced to key typographic concepts, work between class meetings on a series of structured assignments, and get in-class feedback from peers … Read more

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An introduction to illustration with an emphasis on observational drawing skills and the process of creating an illustration from concept development to final image. Students will complete illustrations for a variety of markets. Aspects of the professional illustration business will be addressed.

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The Biological Arts and Science Engagement course explores the objective and subjective study of life and nature and examines historical and contemporary approaches to the fusion of biology and art and science-focused public engagement.  This course takes an integrative and comparative approach to examine various symbiotic relationships between Science, Technology, … Read more

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This workshop invites participants to experiment with an array of etching techniques, including multiple state open bite and etched textures. Emphasis is put on relief etching techniques: longer acid bites and deep etches. The expressive character of etched matrices are printed using viscosity methods — superimposition and juxtaposition of color. No … Read more

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This course will focus on MIG (Metal Inert Gas) Welding, and processes to cut and manipulate metal that are available to the beginning metalworker. Easily acquired tools such as Angle Grinders, hand files, and bolt cutters will be at the center of our weekend long investigations. Friday will focus on basic … Read more

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Over the course of a six hour day, students will work from a live model learning to draw and understand basic human anatomy. The first half of the day will be dedicated to linear drawing using pencil, the second  half of the day is dedicated to value drawing using charcoal. Supply List: … Read more

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In this course you will use digital and traditional media to complete a series of creative design projects that will sharpen your “design eye,” build skills for impactful use of design elements and principles, and grow your ability to develop unique and expressive graphic form. You’ll gain experience with design … 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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Building upon foundational concepts in drawing such as line, value, composition and proportions students will expand their drawing approach to address mark-making and stylization through assignments that focus on drawing from observation and invention through iteration. Through live Zoom sessions students will work from the figure, landscape and through still-life set-ups they are … 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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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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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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From creature features to cyberpunk narratives, this course is designed to help you generate complex worlds through a diverse range of animation processes and science fiction references. Pre- and post-production methods that will be covered include screenwriting, character design, background layouts, sound design, and DIY rigged maquettes and green screens. … 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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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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Why Novels Now? Create Your Own Long-Form Fiction, an LALW Summative Elective, is designed for upper-level students with an active interest in the longer forms of fiction, especially those who are completing the Creative Writing Minor. Why Novels Now? is a defense of the need for leisurely literature in our … Read more

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How might advertising be Art? How is it ideology? In this asynchronous course, we will use concepts and critical thinking strategies to study advertising and public relations as organizers and drivers of our cultural ideology. This online seminar course will include two sessions each week: One session will be made up of asynchronous assignments … 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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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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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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This workshop is a great class for beginners in the wood shop, and covers the bandsaw and some basic carving techniques. Participants in the class will build a basic box that may be then customized with a carved pull or knob, hand-carved decoration, wood burning, paint, etc. This class uses … Read more

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Introduction to the History of Art is a wide-ranging, multi-vocal introduction to the fundamentals of Art History and to many of the major moments, movements, artists, and works in the history of global art. Mindful of, but by no means limited by, traditional chronological and geographical approaches to the examination … 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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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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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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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 course treats the evolution of film music from silent movies until the present.  It introduces students to musical syntax, the aesthetics of film music, and the means by which composers synchronize music and script to convey mood and render action vivid. Working chronologically, the course explores the increasing importance … Read more

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Speculative fiction is a field of storytelling in which imaginative scenarios are created to illuminate real-life questions and problems. It encompasses many genres including science fiction, gothic novels, plays, films, and even operas and graphic novels. The syllabus ranges from *Utopia* to *Frankenstein*, Octavia Butler’s *Parable of the Sower*, *Ursula … 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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What is placemaking? If you’ve ever worked on a community art project, thought about how to make your streets safer, or wondered about how cities can be improved by better design, you’ve been involved in placemaking. This course will use the city of Boston, past, present, future, as a case … Read more

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Students are immersed in the nuts and bolts of architectural craft and construction technology practice. Through design sketch problems, hands-on demonstrations, and readings, students focus on the most common methods of constructing building systems in wood, masonry, steel, and concrete. Constructing a full-scale model of a wood-framed structure brings the … 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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Have you thought about illustrating your life? Do you sketch and make notes and observations in color pens/pencils? Do you enjoy the practice of journaling? Do you think it would be a fun creative habit to establish? In this workshop, let’s combine images and words and pay attention to design, … Read more

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The “one by chair” is a method for building simple furniture, based on the Italian furniture designer Enzo Mari. Mari wanted to create simple designs that everyone could make with basic tools and lumber. Participants begin by looking at Mari’s designs and using them as inspiration to create their own … Read more

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Over the course of a six hour day, students will paint from a live nude model twice (morning & afternoon sessions). The course focuses on color mixing (skin tones), basic anatomy, and overall composition. Some painting experience is preferred. Materials needed for Figure Painting: *Oil Paints- suggested Titanium White (120 … 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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Students are introduced to construction at a domestic scale through lectures, slides, and field trips. Structural calculations include safe selection of building parts by stress analysis, beam equations, and column computations. Students learn sufficient wood and masonry building techniques to design a small wood frame building. Assignments include structural models … 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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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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In this course we will read poems by Sappho, Verlaine, and McKay. Sappho lived around 600 BCE on the island of Lesbos in Greece. Her songs were popular then and continue to generate afterlives now, waning and gaining in popularity alongside changes in sensibilities with regard to sexuality. Paul Verlaine wrote … 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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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 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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In this drawing class, you will use the figure as a basis for understanding basic drawing elements such as line, form in space, spatial relationships, value, gesture, and composition. The instructor will guide you through drawing fundamentals and thorough observation. Beginners are welcomed and continuing students will also be challenged. … 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 … 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 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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Drawing on scholarship from the disciplines of history, art history, anthropology, and folklore, we consider the role of cloth in human experience. We will examine the use of traditional textiles in a range of historical and cultural contexts, with an emphasis on exploring social and symbolic functions as they relate … Read more

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Everyone knows that accessories make the outfit and constitute a major part of the fashion industry. Explore handbag design as a specialization. Topics and projects include a brief history of the handbag, researching present trends, and creating designs. Using industry standards, students design and construct a clutch, soft shoulder, and … Read more

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This foundational class focuses on expanding and honing students’ digital content-creation, design, and art-making skills, through exploration of a wide range of software, concepts, and techniques. Topics include digital compositing, vector design, time-based media best practices, and thoughtful use of AI tools. In addition to technical demos, presentations, and discussions, … 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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We will investigate sustainable practices in the studio by upcycling consumable materials for art-making, reducing the need for new supplies. We’ll also reimagine our own art-making by finding inspiration from guest artists who work with sustainable materials and remix our current pedagogy with new learning to bring back to our … Read more

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We will investigate sustainable practices in the studio by upcycling consumable materials for art-making, reducing the need for new supplies. We’ll also reimagine our own art-making by finding inspiration from guest artists who work with sustainable materials and remix our current pedagogy with new learning to bring back to our … 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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Reflecting diverse but interrelated cultural traditions, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean films offer a fun and fascinating lens through which to view the development of postwar Asian society.  The samurai film, Hong Kong action movies, and Japanese anime are some of the topics covered in following this development through a selection of … 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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