Foundations Program

Overview

All first-year students in the School of Art + Design take classes through the Foundations Program. These courses help you to build a groundwork of conceptual and technical skills necessary to excel in any of the school’s programs of study. The coursework is research-based with a focus on four sections: Structure, Description, Image, and Function. You’ll participate in one lecture and four studio courses, where you’ll get to create across 2D, 3D, and 4D modes.

This is a unique opportunity to gain professional insight and direction early in your development. The Foundations instructors integrate studio practice with the history of criticism of art and design. They also promote and enact a diverse definition of artist and designer such as critic, writer, educator and provocateur.

Foundations Courses

ART 1240: Critical Perspectives
Emphasizes the historical and theoretical contexts and approaches that inform contemporary artistic practice, critical thinking and the analysis of visual culture.
 
ART 1200: Description + Drawing
This course introduces drawing and other descriptive processes as an expansive practice and a means for developing perceptual and conceptual thinking skills. Various methods of image making, three-dimensional modeling, and data mapping are used as tools for observation and expression. Through broad, hands-on exposure to materials and methods, students develop expressive, communicative and analytical capabilities.
 
ART 1230: Structure + Space
This course explores the use of structure and space as physical, conceptual, and organizational practices in contemporary art and design. Students develop their ideas through composition and fabrication, considering issues such as scale, site-specificity, repetition, impermanence, and performativity. Individual and collaborative making provide the opportunity for students to explore, define, and create organizational systems and structures.
 
ART 1210: Function + Practice
Students investigate modes of creative research and methodologies of art and design to inform and expand their own practice. Their own concepts and designs are transformed through tool explorations, shifting modalities, application of technologies, and material experimentation. Through a range of exercises, this course explores the physical, metaphorical, and cultural significance of art and design's function in society.                  

ART 1220 Image + Design
This course explores the production and design of representational, abstract, and symbolic images. Students are introduced to lens-based, digital, and analog processes for creating imagery, explorations of various techniques and technologies, as well as applications of color theory. Through the study of image systems and cultural contexts, students develop skills for various modes of image-making in art and design, an understanding of their expressive potentials, and the role of interpretation and critical analysis of images within a contemporary context.

Contact

David LaPalombara
Chair of Foundations
lapalomb@ohio.edu
(740) 566-6465