University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · Courses
ARTS
75 courses with the subject ARTS, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
ARTS 102Two-Dimensional Design3
Studio course investigates concepts and strategies of two-dimensional image making. Introduces design elements of visual language (line, shape, value, texture, color). Considers the cultural codes that accompany visual information and how they combine with organizational structures to determine a variety of effects, influence responses, and inform meaning. Foundation requirement for studio majors.
ARTS 103 Sculpture: Introduction I (Object/Body) explores materials, methods, processes, and cultural themes in contemporary sculpture. This project-based course focuses on 3D object investigations, encouraging students to experiment with sculptural techniques, tools, and ideas as a visual language that deepens their understanding of the world through art. Students develop aesthetic sensibility, analytical capacity, and fundamental skills in sculptural media. Foundation requirement for studio majors.
Working out of an observational tradition, this course provides an introduction to the concepts and techniques of drawing. Paying attention to both representation and interpretation, the course is designed to develop fundamental skills, aesthetic sensibility, analytical capacity, and creative problem-solving in two-dimensional media.
Focusing on creative digital photography, this course provides an introduction to the concepts and techniques of digital imagery and lens-based media. Includes methods of interpretation, analysis of images, scanning, retouching, color correction, basic composition, and inkjet printing. Honors version available.
This foundation course introduces students to narrative and non-narrative moving image art through video, sound, and various software programs. Students will learn video production by filming and editing video. Through readings, discussions, screenings, and engagement with artists, projects are designed to develop an understanding of dialogues pertaining to the use of video in contemporary art. Foundation requirement for studio majors.
Sound is a physical vibration and an element of perception central to contemporary art, the transmission of information, and our sense of time, place, and space. This interdisciplinary course tunes students toward practices of listening, introduces the fundamentals of audio recording and production in the arts, and engages contemporary sound art and artists working with sound in installation, sculpture, and video. Students will develop sonic literacy by engaging with concepts, artworks, and the material world through the creation of sonic works, site-visits, and reading and discussion activities. Prior experience in sound or music production is not required.
Introduction to black and white photography in the darkroom through photograms, pinhole, and SLR cameras, processing film, and making gelatin silver prints. Concepts are developed through making, reading and writing, engaging with established and historical artists, and critiquing peers' work. B&W process and aesthetic is approached as tradition, genre, abstraction.
This course introduces students to the essential principles and practices of graphic design while developing technical proficiency in industry-standard digital tools. Students will learn to create content from various digital platforms, then transform their digital work into tangible forms through various physical production methods including inkjet printing, vinyl cutting, router and/or laser cutting. Through hands-on projects such as stencil design, wood objects, flag design, banners, and experimental zines-students will master fundamental design concepts such as vector graphics, comprehension of visual hierarchy, layout design, typography principles, color theory, and visual communication.
ARTS 132Collage: Strategies for Thinking and Making3
Collage is both an artistic technique and a way of thinking. Even though its historical roots stem from the early 20th century, it is an image-construction strategy that is almost ubiquitous today. Using a variety of conceptual and media approaches, this course explores strategies of collage in contemporary studio practice.
This class delves into the convergence of traditional drawing and technology by harnessing the capabilities of powerful drawing apps like Adobe Fresco and others, utilizing the graphic tablet as a primary tool to replicate natural mediums. Beyond technical proficiency, the course critically examines how new media perpetually influences traditional studio practices, providing valuable insights into contemporary methods of artistic production. Please note that the class exclusively covers iPad versions of drawing applications, excluding mobile apps like Procreate for iPad or Clip Studio for Android. Owning a personal iPad is not a prerequisite for enrollment.
Recommended preparation, ARTS 104. This course will introduce the fundamentals of painting and various painting techniques through studio lab activity, lectures, demonstrations, and discussions. The course intends to guide students through developing their technical, formal, conceptual, and creative sensibilities to the painting process.
An expansion on the foundations of three-dimensional artwork as taught in Sculpture I. Students will continue the research and 3D art making through materials, process and context through the application of the various sculpture media.
In this intermediate-level class students expand on video production skills including lighting techniques, blocking and staging, and sound recording. Students learn advanced post production skills including sound design, color grading and further develop skills in continuity editing and non-narrative forms. Students will deepen their creative process and artistic strategies through research and writing to develop projects, and learn how to work collaboratively.
This intermediate-level course builds upon the foundations of audio recording and production introduced in Sonic Arts 1. Students will expand their sonic literacy through advanced production and post-production practices, including mixing for various spaces, creating multi-channel sound installations, and working with specialized microphones such as hydrophones and contact microphones. The course introduces electrocrafting as a means of exploring non-conventional forms of audio generation and transmission. Through case studies, readings, and discussions, students will refine their creative processes and critical engagement with contemporary arts, culminating in a capstone project that integrates sound and visual or sculptural mediums.
Introduction to four basic approaches to printmaking: intaglio, relief, planographic, and stencil processes. Students will explore creative strategies unique to the printed process.
This class explores several techniques of 2D character animation, including storyboarding and conceptualizing, pencil testing and timing animation, animating simple sequences with Photoshop, experimenting with coloring and materials under a film camera, and compositing in After Effects.
Through the study of anatomy and observation of the human form, students develop the ability to create powerful, realistic figure drawings. Fundamental skills and concepts include expressive use of line, value, weight, and volume plus classical techniques in shading, gesture, sighting, and composition.
Continuation of ARTS 115 with advanced focus on conceptual topics and techniques of black and white analog photography. This course will provide students with proficiency in the operation of medium and large format cameras and advanced printing techniques. Concepts are developed through making, reading and writing, engaging with established and historical artists, and critiquing peers' work.
This course explores the intricacies of color theory with regard to perception, systems, and application in visual art. Further, the course considers color as subject and concept in contemporary art. Previously offered as ARTS 121.
This class examines wood sculpture from both a technical and intuitive perspective. Students are taught woodworking skills and are then encouraged to use these skills to discover their creative potential.
Recommended preparation, Any Tier I Studio Art course. An intermediate studio course focused on creating stencil-based print images. Students explore a range of technical approaches and will investigate art making concepts specific to screen printing as well as the intersections of screen printing with other two-dimensional art forms.
This class examines metal sculpture from both a technical and intuitive perspective. Students are taught metalworking skills and are then encouraged to use these skills to discover their creative potential.
This course aims to continue guiding painting students through developing sensibilities to paint handling, color, composition, and spatial design, with an emphasis on experimentation. Students will develop their work in context to themes that are significant in painting history, relevant to contemporary art, and their personal lens.
This course takes students on a tour of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, and Raleigh's grassroots visual arts scenes, exploring everything from commercial galleries to artist-run non-profits to craft fairs to artists' studios. We will use our local arts scene as a case study to map out how art worlds function. Students' final assignment is to contribute to an ongoing digital web-based - an interactive local arts map. This class is especially beneficial for student artists.
Students will explore themes in the vast history of narrative paintings by researching and responding to these themes, and create narrative paintings through their own personal lens. We will explore topics of the genre, from historical works, to how contemporary artists are interpreting and creating narratives that mirror the diverse spectrum of identities, materials, and histories in our lifetime.
ARTS 323Sculpture Garden: Art in the Public and Projects of Scale3
Sculpture Garden is a theme-based course taught through a faculty-led project as a way to develop interdisciplinary student-centered approaches to large scale/public artworks on campus and beyond. The course is centered on the Alumni Sculpture Garden as a locus for understanding space, place, and large scale contemporary art. Coursework reflects the intellectual and professional missions and research-creations of our faculty, collaboratively engaging these skill sets, from ideation to execution in projects and research presentation of scale.
This class builds on predominantly perceptually based concepts of basic drawing and introduces abstraction, interpretive, and conceptual drawing strategies. Class assignments develop understanding of the language of drawing and provide a foundation that aims to support independent investigation and personal approaches to drawing's unique capabilities.
Suggested preparation, ARTS 103. This course examines the connecting trajectories of artistic and technological developments from early modernism to the contemporary. While addressing the interconnected nature of technology, technique, craft and art, students will work with our new technologies (Laser and Vinyl Cutter, 3D Printer, etc.) to create 3D work.
This studio course will explore the vast visual language of abstract painting. Students will examine abstraction through creating paintings within a historical, visual, and cultural framework, and acquire context about the emergence and persistence of painted abstraction.
ARTS 353Phantasmagoria: Haunted Art, History, and Installation3
This course will be organized around four art making/art building projects, culminating in a class presentation of a multimedia phantasmagoria. Students will research early light/shadow, pre-cinema techniques, hauntings/horror and artists whose work is influenced by these tropes. We will work with Maker's Spaces to produce components for this course. Previously offered as ARTS 253.
ARTS 355The Practice of Representation: Portraiture in Photography3
This course examines the practical and theoretical issues of portraiture. Students will learn technical skills and conceptual strategies to engage with issues of representation and notions of identity. We will explore the history of the photographic portraiture as well as work of contemporary portrait artists working in a post-modern age.
This class explores the concepts and craft of letterpress printing. Technical skills include typesetting, linoleum carving, and digital interfaces for making image and text matrices. Projects explore the special relationship of image and word and are designed around specific text/image forms: broadside, poster, portfolio, and book.
ARTS 363At the Radical Edge of Life: Art, Space, and Ecology3
Art at the Edge of Life: Art, Space, and Ecology is a course organized around 2-3 art making/art building projects, culminating in a class presentation of a final public art installation. Part seminar and part studio, students will research early ecology, sustainability, green movements and artists whose work is influenced by these tropes. We will work with BeAM and with experts in the field to find solutions for the issues that we face today.
ARTS 364The Walking Seminar: A Territorial Investigation3
Recommended preparation, ARTS 104. This seminar engages students in a territorial investigation of the North Carolina landscape. Meandering through the landscape we will explore different art mediums while simultaneously fostering an appreciation for the natural environment. Through hiking and backpacking students will foster a means for understanding their location and documenting their experience.
This course continues an investigation of print techniques and concepts. Projects develop an understanding of print strategies, focusing on the affordances of processes unique to printmaking. This approach positions traditional techniques as a point of departure for seeking an expanded definition of printmaking.
This course is an introduction to the culture, history and contemporary context of pilgrimage and the Camino de Santiago through the lens of performance art and other embodied aesthetic experiences. Several performative projects form the core of the coursework with the Camino de Santiago-specifically, the Camino Francés, becomes the site and our studio for both cultural and artistic purposes.
This course will investigate the idea of a lived practice. As a class in studio arts, the course is organized around several perspectives on what it means to be rooted in social engagement. As a catalyst to our own art making and understanding of our mediums and fields, we will explore the proximity of art and social action and the utility of social engagement through service-learning projects set in the global landscape.
This course focuses on the historically rich practice of painting, and is designed to guide the advanced painting student through the research, conceptual, aesthetic, and technical components of a comprehensive studio practice, and developing and maintaining a studio work ethic.
ARTS 409Art and Science: Merging Printmaking and Biology3
This class explores the intersection of two disciplines, art and science. Research skills intrinsic to both include curiosity, close observation, experimentation, and visual analysis. Organized around printmaking projects informed by specific topics in biology, students adapt theory and practical skills from both disciplines to create artworks using several printmaking techniques. Permission of the instructors. Honors version available.
ARTS 414Performance as Social Practice: Exploring Artistic Expression and Social Change3
This course introduces the politics of performance art and its implications on social practice. Through a blend of seminar discussions, group workshops, and critique sessions, we will delve into various strategies for engaging with the medium. Our exploration will involve careful consideration of decolonial gestures, materiality, space, context, and intentionality. We'll analyze how contemporary artists navigate discourses surrounding race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and class. Active participation in reading discussions, exercises, and artist lectures is mandatory.
An advanced photography course for students interested in contemporary photographic practices, critical theory, art history, and experimental processes: theory and practice, formal and conceptual investigations, and historical and contemporary strategies will all be given equal attention.
This advanced level video course focuses on the conceptual development of long-term projects with a focus on advanced production skills. Students will continue to deepen their production and post-production skills through in class tutorials while expanding upon experimental and non-narrative artistic strategies such as multi-channel installation.
Cultural production and practice, theory, and criticism. Pursuit of individual visual projects, formally and conceptually, through theoretical, poetic, art historical, and autobiographical texts, critiques, collaboration, and discussion using all media.
This course is appropriate for students who have had a minimum of three semesters of prior printmaking experience. Students submit a proposal outlining technical and artistic goals for the semester.
Required preparation, one additional two-dimensional studio course (drawing, photography, or printmaking). Defining the book as a "multiple and sequential picture plane," this course considers a range of traditional approaches and conceptual departures of the book as a format for creative expression.
This course combines a technical approach (making printing matrices using photographic processes) with a conceptual framework (the photographic "voice" and its interpretation in printmaking). Artmaking projects explore salient ideas such as appropriation versus capture, documentation, truth-telling and fabrication, or narrative invention using specific technical processes such as photogravure and cyanotype.
Required preparation, 15 hours ARTS courses. Allows studio art majors to pursue unpaid practicums or internships for credit. Examples include working as a studio assistant or working in art-related fields, such as galleries, design firms, architectural firms, and nonprofit arts organizations. Work undertaken must comply with Federal criteria governing unpaid internships. Departmental approval required.
ARTS 50First-Year Seminar: The Artistic Temperament3
Class examines how to advance and sustain artistic production, focusing not only on being a successful artist, but also on the importance of creativity and hard work in any successful venture. Honors version available.
This course is a capstone course for the studio art major. Appropriate for BFA students and BA students who anticipate careers in fine art and art adjacent fields (e.g. design.) Topics covered include issues of professional development, curatorial practice, and presentation of works of art in exhibition. The culminating project is mounting the Senior Exhibition. Restricted to senior studio art majors.
Permission of the instructor. For students wishing to pursue additional media or thematic study beyond the advanced level. Students register with section numbers designated for faculty. May be repeated for credit.
ARTS 657Movie Making Machines: Learning About Cinema in the Maker Space3
This projects-based seminar will introduce students to the fundamental optical and technological principles of motion pictures. By using the Maker Space to design and fabricate pinhole cameras, zoetropes, and 16mm film strips, students will gain a deep understanding of the material and technological foundations of the cinema, and the operating principles that are behind not only the classic films of Hollywood's past, but the high-definition digital imaging technologies of the present.
ARTS 691HSenior Honors Thesis Project in Studio Art3
Permission of the department. ARTS 691H is designed to enable studio art majors to pursue serious and substantial work. In addition to working with the instructor of record for ARTS 499/691H, students work under the supervision of an individual thesis advisor and committee.
ARTS 692HSenior Honors Thesis Project in Studio Art3
ARTS 692H is taught concurrently with and by the instructor for ARTS 500. In addition to the classroom component, students continue to work with an individual thesis advisor and committee. Successful completion of ARTS 692H allows students to graduate with honors or highest honors.
M.F.A. candidates meet weekly for organized group analysis and critique of their art work. Each candidate presents work on rotating basis before a panel of faculty and peers.
ARTS 82First-Year Seminar: Please Save This: Exploring Personal Histories through Visual Language3
This class will investigate the idea of personal histories in visual art. As a studio class, the course will be organized around several art making projects. As a catalyst to our own art making, we will explore the idea of personal history and memory through readings, as well as looking at contemporary artists whose work functions in an autobiographical framework.
