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Graduate Program MFA Art Concentration in Pictorial Art

The Pictorial Art MFA program provides students with rigorous, formal, and conceptual training in the unique historical and contemporary practices and methodologies specific to the disciplines of drawing, painting, and printmaking. Courses in the program encourage the development of innovation and experimentation while simultaneously building a visual fluency and sensitivity to hand-rendered and digital systems of representation.

Program Overview

MFA students in the program receive private studio space and access to facilities that support the instruction and practice of a diverse range of 2-D traditional and digital printing technologies. The Pictorial Art MFA Program encourages a transformational contemporary approach to the creation of 2-D art by providing students with the opportunity to explore and combine processes like painting, drawing, lithography, intaglio, screenprinting, and photogravure with digital tools and software.

Faculty and Community Engagement

The faculty at San Jose State University are actively involved in the contemporary art community and exhibit nationally and internationally. Faculty work explores a broad range of formal and conceptual approaches. Graduate students are encouraged to develop their own creative and expressive directions through work with the faculty, individual studio projects, gallery exhibitions, interaction with the professional art community in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the investigation of current issues and concepts as presented in the graduate seminars.

Program Learning Outcomes

The program has the following learning outcomes:

• PLO1: Analyze and research visual and conceptual problems and apply and explain their sophisticated use of the elements and principles of art to solve those problems.
• PLO2: Demonstrate increased technical capabilities and skills relevant to their areas of expertise and explain and evaluate success/failure in individual and group critiques.
• PLO3: Demonstrate their commitment to valuing art's role in offering cultural critique and addressing issues of social responsibility in a global society.
• PLO4: Apply their knowledge of visual history and theory to their creative endeavors and to their professional practice.
• PLO5: Not only be capable of studio practice and exhibition at the professional level but also demonstrate the ability to organize and present technical and intellectual information and to lecture/teach on a variety of topics in pictorial art.

Teaching and Mentorship

Those students who seek teaching positions while still in graduate school will be mentored in a classroom assistant capacity for two semesters, carefully screened for a teaching pool, trained as teachers, and carefully evaluated when hired as Teaching Associates. The program expects its graduates to be experienced and professional teachers.