About Visual Arts at Evergreen

Who We Are, What We Do

We seek to educate students to be more acutely aware of and to record their visual environments, to rigorously explore their own personal visions, to speak and write clearly and persuasively about their work, to understand the pervasiveness and potency of visual images and arguments in personal, political, cultural and environmental contexts, and to give effective voice to that understanding in their communities. Critical thinking and writing skills development are part of every full-time program offered by VEA faculty. We work to advance the visual literacy and visual learning and reasoning skills of our students as well.

Facilities

If you want to acquire a skill in the visual arts, you will probably find a facility for it here.

Facilities include fully equipped Wood and Metal shops, a Ceramics studio and kiln room, Fine Metals studio, Fibers studio, Printmaking studio, Neon studio and Photography studios and darkrooms. Teaching spaces include a Life Drawing studio, Drawing and Painting studios, a 3D studio and two critique rooms. Photo studios, a Digital Imaging studio and a Gallery and gallery support spaces are housed in the Library. The sub-area also has access to two large studios and a critique room in the recently completed Seminar II Building.

Wood and metal shops, printmaking and painting studios are at your disposal whether you are part of a program, class or individual contract.

Faculty

There are currently ten full-time faculty, one full time Instructional Technician (in charge of the Wood and Metal Shops), one half-time Instructional Technician administering VEA classroom and studio space in the Art Annex, Labs I and II, and Seminar II, two half-time Instructional Technicians in charge of the Ceramics and Printmaking Shops, two half-time Instructional Technicians in photography, and a half-time Gallery Coordinator. Some of the instructional technicians teach four credit modules in their areas of expertise under the aegis of Evening and Weekend Studies.

In addition to full-time faculty and instructional technicians, there are 6-8 Evening and Weekend Studies faculty who regularly teach visual art related programs and make use of the sub-areas facilities and teaching spaces.

The VEA area fills about 200-225 seats each quarter in full-time studies. Most of our students explore the visual and environmental arts offerings as a part of their liberal arts education; 12-14% identify as arts emphasizers, moving toward future careers in the arts. We sponsor about 33 seats each quarter in individual and internship learning contracts. We fill about 25-40 seats each quarter in 8 credit EWS programs, and about 200 seats in 4 credit EWS courses. (Seat numbers are from 2003-04 Academic Year statistics.)

Quantitative reasoning skills are almost always a part of programs taught by VEA faculty, for example:

• Centering, a ceramics and science program: glaze formula testing and calculations, surface to volume calculations, mathematics of ideal forms, physics of rotational systems.
• Sustainable Design, a design, ecology, and community studies program: structural analyses of columns and beams, land surveying basics, topographic mapping, plant and animal population analyses, cut and fill calculations.
• Picturing Plants, a botany and visual arts program: proportional analysis, spreadsheet analyses.
• Light, a chemistry and visual arts program: statistical analyses, graphic and spreadsheet analyses, chemical energy calculations.

Our programs do a sound job of fostering both technical skills and conceptual understanding, while encouraging the independent visions of our students. Our students tend to find the mentors they need among us because of our direct role in the classroom and studio. We generally get to know each other well. Our program structure and our commitment promote learning in community, teachers and students challenging and supporting one another in their investigations. We regularly teach across disciplines, especially with the sciences and humanities.

We encourage and regularly seek out opportunities to engage our students in the larger community, collaborating with schools, organizations, governing bodies, and institutions to learn, to teach and to create. At the same time, we encourage students to develop strongly personal ideas and the skills and language to express them. We provide diverse cultural perspectives in our programs, with regular engagement with Asian, Latin American, Native American, Black and Latino artists and communities. We are increasingly designing programs that encourage students to put art and art making in the context of environmental stewardship and sustainability.