Program Overview

Introduction to the BFA Pictorial Art Program

The Pictorial Art BFA 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

Students in the program receive ample 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 Program promotes a transformational and trans-disciplinary, 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 state-of-the-art software including Adobe Creative Suite, Procreate, Wacom Tablets, and Digital Drawing in AR/VR and XR.

Program Learning Outcomes

The program is designed to achieve the following learning outcomes:

• Analyze and research visual and conceptual problems and apply and explain their use of basic design principles, concepts, tools, techniques, media, materials, formats, and visual languages to solve those problems.
• Demonstrate increasing skills in the use of diverse materials, tools, and media, and be able to explain and evaluate success/failure in individual and group critiques.
• Demonstrate their commitment to valuing art's role in offering cultural critique and addressing issues of social responsibility in a global society.
• Apply their knowledge of visual history and theory to their creative endeavors and to their professional practice.
• Demonstrate their readiness for careers as creative professionals by completing a more sequenced and specialized course of study in sculpture, installation, and other three-dimensional art forms.

Admission Requirements

Admission to the BFA requires students to demonstrate their ability to work independently as artists. This includes:

• Successfully developing and presenting for review by the Department's faculty a unified body of work (10 images).
• Submitting an artist statement (of purpose).
• Securing the support and commitment of two area faculty members willing to serve on that student's BFA committee.
• Successfully completing the professional BFA seminar.
• Scheduling and mounting in one of the Department's student exhibition galleries a solo exhibition (as the work for ART 199) that meets the approval of the student's BFA committee.

Career Opportunities

Our BFA graduates will embark on professional careers as practicing artists and creative professionals and/or apply to MFA programs for further instruction and certification for college/university teaching. The program prepares students for a lifetime of self- and professional employment in a variety of careers, equipping them with the skills to identify and solve problems, and to assume leadership roles in engaging with social and cultural change.