Program Overview

MFA in Sculpture Program

The MFA in Sculpture program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture is a two-year, 60-credit program that leads to the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree. The program offers personal mentorship from faculty and visionary visiting artists in state-of-the-art facilities, encouraging experimentation with media, interdisciplinary projects, and public art to ignite social change.

Program Description

In Tyler's MFA in Sculpture program, students learn through a cross-disciplinary, exploratory approach to multidimensional artmaking that inspires experimentation and risk-taking. Students pursue a diverse range of creative pathways, including material and object-based practices, film and video, sound, performance, socially engaged art, large-scale architectural installation, research-based practices, digital fabrication, and time-based media.

Guiding Principles

The MFA in Sculpture is centered around four key principles that define the approach:

1. Research-based: The MFA in Sculpture is deeply rooted in an expansive approach to research, including written, aural, somatic, observational, historical, and contemporary methods.
2. Limitless Potential: Sculpture exists at the nexus of contemporary art practice, with no conceptual, material, or technical boundaries.
3. Community-focused: Tyler Sculpture is renowned as a close-knit and deeply supportive community of thinkers and makers.
4. Challenging the Status Quo: Working in Tyler Sculpture means pursuing tough questions about the intersection of art and culture, and the ever-changing role of artists in society.

Studio Space and Facilities

Tyler's state-of-the-art sculpture studios are housed in 16,000+ square feet of space, featuring dedicated metal, wood, and mold-making shops, and a 1,000 square foot outdoor assembly pad. Each MFA candidate is assigned a generously sized private studio with 24-hour access to the facilities. The facilities include:

• Wood Shop
• Metal Shop
• Welding
• Forging
• CNC Routing
• Two 2-ton gantry cranes and smaller hoists
• Direct access to freight elevator
• Video, sound, and projection equipment
• Large crit spaces

Career Opportunities

Tyler Sculpture MFA alumni are self-starters who are socially and culturally motivated. They bring a broad and unique set of skills to anything they undertake, and have gone on to become:

• Exhibiting artists
• Community-based artists
• Educators in higher education
• Arts administrators
• Activists
• Fabricators
• Studio technicians

Faculty

Tyler Sculpture faculty are actively exhibiting, award-winning artists with diverse approaches to their studio practices. The faculty includes:

• Sharyn O'Mara, Associate Professor and Program Head of Sculpture and Director of Graduate Studies
• Karyn Olivier, Professor
• C.T. Jasper, Assistant Professor
• Adjunct faculty members, including Daniel Cappello, Charlotte G. Chin Greene, Nicolo Gentile, Ollie Goss, Jacob Hammes, and Rachel Hsu

Alumni Spotlight

The program features alumni spotlights, highlighting the work and achievements of graduates, such as Rachel Hsu, who creates interdisciplinary art that explores absence, relational ruptures, and slippages in translation.