The Art & Art History Department

PROGRAMS

* Painting and Drawing

The Painting and Drawing program offers a full range of studio courses designed to develop the student's visual awareness and critical thinking. Students progress from a rigorous and thorough fundamentals program into introductory and intermediate level courses in which a variety of increasingly sophisticated problems are explored. Teaching methods generally include lectures, specific assignments, slide presentations, and individual and group critiques. Throughout the program, the emphasis is on a balance between technical proficiency and idea and material exploration.

At advanced levels, students begin to work more independently under the guidance of an instructor, focusing on individual ideas and goals. One may concentrate in painting and/or drawing, while also working in other areas of the department. Painting and drawing courses are intended to be taken concurrently, complementing one another in content. The faculty represents a diversity of approaches and philosophies. In order to take full advantage of the program, students work with all members of the faculty. The objective of the department is to prepare individuals who are visually literate and well-versed in technical, critical and conceptual skills.


* Photography

The emphasis in the photography program is on the development of a student's vision and on encouraging fluency in the medium's special language within traditions of the fine arts and humanities. The department offers no courses in commercial photography. Instruction is by lecture, demonstration, and assignment along with individual and classroom critique. Usually 15 sections of photography are offered each semester at the undergraduate level with an average enrollment of 18.

Successful completion of this undergraduate program requires a firm commitment to work vigorously and intensively at the highest levels of creative and intellectual capacity. Self-discipline is crucial, standards of achievement are high, and substantial additional time is required beyond scheduled classroom activity. Learning is reinforced by extensive library holdings and one of the largest collections of fine arts photographs in any University Art Museum. The faculty are a diverse group and students are encouraged to work with each of them.

Facilities include beginning and advanced darkrooms for printing and film processing in both black and white and color, a non-silver printmaking area, and a computer lab for digital imaging. The department provides a limited number of special cameras and lighting equipment for advanced students. Students furnish their own primary camera, film, and paper.


* Ceramics

The Ceramics program at UNM offers an exciting and diverse choice of approaches toward the medium. The undergraduate and graduate Ceramics labs are equipped with large gas kilns, electric, saggar, raku and soda kilns, as well as access to an anagama kiln located off campus. Clay and slip mixers ,slab roller and wheels encourage the student to explore all aspects the ceramic discipline from vessels to sculpture, installation and performance. Indigenous traditions can be experienced first hand through the site based Pueblo Pottery or Casas Grandes Ceramics classes.

On the graduate level Ceramics students have studios in a shared facility with Sculpture and Small metals. This facility provides an area where students are encouraged to work across disciplines, technologies and ideologies in an exploration of spatial and material communication.


* Sculpture

The sculpture program at UNM offers an exciting and diverse choice of approaches toward working three-dimensionally. Options include techniques in woodworking, steel fabrication, additive processes, plus experimental studies in performance art, installations, and site-specific works. Well-equipped metal and wood shops are available to students.

The 3-D Area is composed of three separate but related Labs; Sculpture, Small Metals and Ceramics. The Sculpture lab has an extensive wood shop fully equipped with every variety of saw, planer and sander that you can imagine. The Metal shop includes M.I.G, T.I.G.,Oxy Acetylene and Heli Arc Welding as well a full compliment of sheet metal tools. Although primarily set up for construction techniques, carving , modeling, mold making, installation and performance are all included in as part our curriculum.

The Small Metals Lab is primarily focused on non-ferrous metal construction and casting technologies. The Lab is set up with over 20 work stations for wax, soldering, cutting, assembly and finishing work as well as a casting room with burn-out kilns, vacuum investment, and centrifugal casting machine. There is also a room for patina, forging and raising. Investigations of scale the language of detail, form and surface are central to this lab.

Small Scale Metal Construction and Casting is offered at all undergraduate levels each semester. Levels I and II are devoted primarily to fabrication/construction processes in silver, copper and brass. Included are such techniques as soldering, forming, coloring, and various finishing processes. Level III concentrates on lostwax casting in bronze and silver. Lectures and demonstrations on brazing may also be offered. At the advanced level, the student essentially writes his/her own program through discussions with the instructor. Emphasis is on form generation as it relates to intimate scale.


* Art History

The art history program emphasizes the study of visual art as a means of understanding the intellectual and cultural history of humanity. The program provides a firm grounding in both western and non-western art history within the context of a liberal arts education. Undergraduate work covers the broad range of art history while graduate work leading to both the M.A. and the Ph.D. degrees is organized into two major fields of specialization: Arts of the Americas and Art of the Modern Age. The curriculum in each area of concentration is nationally and internationally recognized.

Art of the Modern Age encompasses the history of painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative art, drawing, graphic art, photography and film in Europe and the Americas from 1750 to the present. It explores the democratization and consequent growth of intellectual and stylistic pluralism during a time of rapid technological, social, political, and aesthetic changes. Such contextual studies and wide-ranging theoretical frameworks together with more traditional studies of style, iconography and medium illuminate modern art.

Arts of the Americas brings together the arts of pre- and post-contact cultures of North, Central, and South America. Integral fields of specialization include Mesoamerican and South American art and architecture, ancient and modern Native American arts, Spanish Colonial art and architecture, and nineteenth and twentieth century Latin American arts. Along with the study of acknowledged discontinuities in form and series brought about with European invasion, this concentration also promotes the study of continuity in the history of American art and architecture. These combined viewpoints promote a clearer understanding of art within American art traditions.


* Printmaking

UNM Printmaking is a nationally recognized area in the Department of Art and Art History, College of Fine Arts. A comprehensive program is offered for under-graduate and graduate students in studio art leading to BFA and MFA degrees. The faculty emphasizes a strong foundation and diversity in aesthetic and technical direction for students.


* Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts is a newly formed area in the Art and Art History Department at the College of Fine Arts. This area is dedicated to the development and refinement of students’ skills as artists using the most current “new media” tools and building on an understanding of contemporary and historical art practice using these media. The program encourages experimentation with new ideas, forms and models for realizing and presenting artwork. The curriculum combines history, theory and practice in electronic arts, and strongly encourages interdisciplinary investigation and learning.

Classes focus on topics of interactivity, time-based applications and the integration of computer-based work into broader contexts such as Internet art, performance, installation and video. Critiques center on conceptual, formal and technical approaches to students’ work and media.

The fine arts computer lab is currently equipped with 12 Mac G4 and 4 PC workstations. Many stations include flatbed and slide scanners, as well as several stations with digital video editing equipment. The lab is equiped with a wide variety of current software.
This lab is available to graduate and undergratuate students taking Electronic Arts and Digital Photography classes, and as well as on an individual basis, contingent upon approval and payment of a lab use fee.

In addition to the computer lab, there is a computer classroom on campus for use by Art and Art History students enrolled in Electronic Arts and Digital Photography classes. This classroom includes 25 Mac G4 workstations and an Agfa flatbed scanner.

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