The Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art program provides intensive training in art-making, critical thinking and visual problem-solving. With a strong emphasis on hands-on experience, this program prepares you for a career as a professional artist or further graduate studies in fine arts.
College of the Arts
School of Art
www.kent.edu/art
Program Coordinator:
Taryn McMahon
tmcmaho5@kent.edu
330-672-2839
The Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art is a pre-professional degree that prepares students to function in a variety of artistic roles. Specifically, the goals of the program are to develop technical skills, competence in the use of media, artistic sensibility and responsiveness to aesthetic form. Students are educated in the major achievements and achievers in the history of art and extensively study contemporary art forms and their underlying theories. They also learn to assess the quality of works of art and the intellectual value of contemporary theory and criticism.
Studio concentrations include:
Students work with traditional and non-traditional materials while learning contemporary art concepts. Our state-of-the-art facilities are located under one roof, including a new school-wide digital fabrication studio called the ARTech Studio is accessible to all majors. Students are encouraged to work across disciplines and employ a contemporary approach to art making, helping them define what it means to be an artist and a maker in the 21st century. The School of Art offers B.F.A. and B.A. degrees in Studio Art.
The Foundations Program in the School of Art at Kent State is a series of courses that reveal the underlying visual rules and artistic strategies that run throughout all of our School's majors.
Foundations projects are often faster paced, unpredictable, and are not specific to a particular material or process. Foundations projects frequently challenge students to transform cheap, free, or found materials into extraordinary new compositions and push students to work in new ways. Courses included in the Foundations Program are Drawing I, Drawing II, 2D Composition, 3D Composition, and Digital Media.
No matter what level of experience our students bring with them, by working with varying materials, sizes, time limits, and environments, each student's comfort zone rapidly expands to encompass new creative territory. Experimentation, collaboration, and online resources create a shared experience that introduces students to each other and to the breadth of experiences ahead in the School of Art.
The four core Foundations Program courses are distinct but interconnected. Each explores the same concepts and structures from the perspective of different tools and processes. Students also learn how to create their own website, archive, portfolio, and blog which help students apply for scholarships, artist residencies, and exhibitions, among other opportunities. Students have the opportunity to show the artwork created in these courses at the Foundations Show at the Center for the Visual Arts every semester. The Jack and Dora Tippens Scholarship in Foundations is announced at the spring Foundations Show in the CVA Gallery where two students are awarded $500.
Drawing I and Drawing II
Drawing is a powerful component of any artistic practice as the best way to quickly visualize any idea. Drawing I and Drawing II give every student powerful tools to capture what they see accurately through observation, and to understand better why the interaction between our eyes, brains, and hands makes this skill so challenging to beginners and so valuable to those that master it.
2D Composition
This course is a basic introduction to flat pictorial composition. Students will explore the basic principles of design and the application of line, shape, value, texture, and color to the two-dimensional surface. Students will learn to work with traditional materials as well as new technology. In addition to developing technical proficiency with a variety of materials and tools, emphasis will be placed on visual literacy and critical thinking skills throughout this course. The major components of 2D are ORDER, COLOR, ACTION, and CONCEPT. The rules explored in each of these sections apply equally to abstraction and to representational illusions of three-dimensional space.
3D Composition
This course introduces the basic principles of composition in three dimensions. Exercises and assignments are designed to heighten sensitivity to the visual environment and to provide a challenging introduction to a variety of media and methods for generating form. In addition to developing technical proficiency with a variety of materials, emphasis will be placed on visual literacy and critical thinking skills. 3D Composition brings the same ideas introduced in 2D into physical space. 3D also has four main components: FABRICATION, CASTING AND CARVING, ORDER, and REPRESENTATION. Before students get into the intro level studio courses, which delve deeply into how artists work in different materials, 3D Composition uses simple techniques to investigate how to communicate ideas through sculptural works.
Digital Media
Digital Media applies existing and emerging digital tools, techniques, and strategies to the basic principles of composition and design introduced in 2D and 3D Composition. Strategies include creating and manipulating visual information, generating time-based and narrative imagery, translating digital information into studio production, and exploring various methods of presentation. Students learn to use Adobe programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro and also use digital fabrication tools in the ARTech Studio.
Admission to the School of Art does not require a portfolio submission. If you have a scores of 4 or 5 on the Studio Art Advanced Placement (AP) exam through The College Board, you can receive credit for ARTS 14000 Drawing I, ART 10022 2D Composition or ARTS 10023 3D Composition. Students with a score of 3 on the Studio Art AP exam can receive art elective credit.
The School of Art offers a limited number of scholarships for incoming art majors; the Scholastic Art Award is made through the competitive high school competition held each January on the Kent State University at Stark campus. In addition, the School of Art awards scholarships for enrolled students from the general scholarship fund each year. Dates for submission of materials for competition are announced each spring and awards made to enrolled students at any undergraduate level. For additional scholarships and awards available through the School of Art, visit the Financial, Billing and Enrollment Center.
Art majors who also enroll in the Honors College (qualifying by meeting certain grade and ACT/SAT criteria) may apply for the Creative Artist Awards.
Those who complete the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art degree at Kent State University can benefit from specialized career opportunities in the art industry.
-0.2%
little or no change
13,100
number of jobs
$65,800
potential earnings
1.0%
slower than the average
28,300
number of jobs
$52,340
potential earnings
