Major in Studio Art

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Agents of change

Engaging your hands, eyes, and mind, the studio art major is about developing your creative talents by working closely with our talented practitioner faculty. You’ll express your individual perspective on the world around you through drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, and graphic design.

With every work you produce, you’ll place another marker on your path to a creative career. The portfolio you’ll assemble at Clark will enable you to pursue an advanced degree at leading arts and design schools, or begin your career as a fine or commercial artist for diverse industries and institutions, including arts organizations and print, digital, and broadcast media.

Requirements for:

Major

Minor

Why Major in Studio Art at Clark?

Make art in a supportive liberal arts environment that not only provides options for double-majoring, but also offers a variety of perspectives to fuel your creativity.
Create and collaborate in the wider context of Clark’s Visual and Performing Arts Department (V&PA), a tight-knit community that includes students majoring in art history; media, culture, and the arts; music; screen studies; studio art; and theatre arts.
Immerse yourself in the Worcester arts scene, connect with local artists, and show your work in a professional gallery setting at the annual ArtsWorcester show.
Gain inspiration — and/or intern — at museums such as the Worcester Art Museum; Boston’s world-renowned Museum of Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in nearby Lincoln; and the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton.

Our Stories

View All Studio Art Stories

Helen Perham sitting in front of her art

Something greater than her selfie

Helen Perham studies art, life, and social media via Instagram posts

Alumni treated to an evening at MOMA

Professor Kristina Wilson speaks about historic cyanotypes exhibition

Students have an eye on Worcester arts scene

Professor Kristina Wilson's class works with ArtsWorcester, local artists

View All Studio Art Stories

Your Will. Your Way.

The Major Path

Clark studio art majors greatly appreciate anchoring their art studies in a broad liberal arts curriculum, recognizing that a good artist is a good thinker and an engaged citizen. Here you can make connections across disciplines and learn how to use “visual language” to express your ideas, make social commentary, effect change, or celebrate beauty. Students also enthusiastically participate in the cultural life of the campus, city, and region.

Courses in the studio art major offer you an opportunity to engage in the study and practice of visual language. Since art is a way of communicating human experience, you learn both to read this language and to visually represent your own ideas. Training in artistic methods and media is provided in the context of intellectual inquiry and critical analysis.

If your only major will be studio art, you will take 11 studio art courses and three art history courses. If you decide to double-major, eight studio art courses and two art history courses are required.

You begin the major by taking Visual Studies: 2D Design and Color and/or Drawing: Eye, Mind, Hand. These foundation courses introduce you to the nature of visual language and the creative process while encouraging the development of visual expression. After exploring various media, you may concentrate in one area and seek out particular faculty members for personal mentoring. Areas of specialization within studio art include drawing, painting, graphic design, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. You also can study video production, set design, and lighting through related courses in screen studies and theatre arts.

The capstone course for the major, Studio Topics, oﬀers you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise with an independent project, guided by a faculty member.

The campus home for studio art majors is Clark’s Traina Center for the Arts, a renovated 19th-century Romanesque Revival building that contains studios for design, painting, drawing, and printmaking; darkrooms for analog photography; and a digital photography lab, equipped with state-of-the-art software and fine-art pigment-based color printers that can accommodate large format images. On-campus opportunities for additional involvement in artistic activity, including ceramics, are available at the University Center’s Craft Studio. Just over a mile from campus is C. C. Lowell, which has been providing art supplies to local artists since 1852.

Skills you will learn include:

Visual communication using various media and tools
Creative problem-solving
Employing art as an agent of change
Aesthetic discernment

Students with a strong commitment to intensive study, and who receive departmental approval, can elect to undertake a senior honors thesis project, which culminates in an exhibition of work in the Schiltkamp Gallery — along with honors consideration — in the final semester. The honors thesis in studio art requires the creation of an original project, with a supporting paper, under the mentorship of a faculty member. Examples of supporting papers include:

An Exploration of Art History, Memory, and Contextualization (a discussion of how to read an artwork and its formal presentation as a primary text)
Reflections on Dreaming (a meditation of the translation of an abstract idea into a tangible work of art)
Stand Still, Close Your Eyes. (an exploration of the conventions of photographic portraiture across time)

The LEEP difference

An education merging knowledge, action, and impact

With Liberal Education and Effective Practice, lessons begin in the classroom but never end there. Your learning includes world and workplace experiences that forge your skills and shape your path.

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At Clark, your education extends beyond the classroom. LEEP Center advisers can help you choose from a range of opportunities that complement your coursework and put your studio art knowledge into practice.

The studio art major is designed to help you learn outside the classroom. Many students take advantage of internship opportunities during the academic year or over the summer to connect what they’re learning with their professional development.

Other opportunities include:

In alignment with Clark’s LEEP philosophy, participation in a Study Abroad and Away program is an opportunity to gain world and workplace experience to complement your on-campus work. Clark approves semester, yearlong, and summer opportunities to earn credit through academic coursework, internships, community-based learning, or research. Explore our Study Abroad and Away page, where you can search programs by academic interest, location, and language; after you’ve identified some appropriate programs, ensure they fit into your four-year plan by talking with your faculty adviser as early as possible.

You also can complement your academic work by participating in Clark’s many clubs, organizations and athletic teams. Here are some student organizations that might be of interest to you as a studio art major:

Internships

Worcester Art Museum
Worcester, Mass.
ArtsWorcester
Worcester, Mass.
Fitchburg Art Museum
Fitchburg, Mass.
Museum of Fine Arts
Boston, Mass.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Hartford, Conn.

Clark is committed to action-based learning, which means as an undergraduate you can join faculty and graduate students in their creative work. Our faculty have expertise in the following studio art subfields: drawing, painting, graphic design, photography, printmaking, sculpture, web design, typography, and video production.

You also can apply for funding to support your own research on a project of your choice during the academic year or during the summer.

Collaborate with faculty
Some students co-produce creative work with a faculty mentor. Some examples include:

Working with Professor Elli Crocker, a student secured a summer studio in Boston, developed a new body of paintings that informed his senior thesis project, and created a public mural for the Newton Free Library.
Working with Professor Stephen DiRado, a student visited New Orleans to create a photographic essay documenting the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
Working with Professor Toby Sisson, a student worked with low-income and disabled individuals in Maine to make artists’ books, a project that furthered her interest in expressive art therapy.

Present your work

Clark’s annual Fall Fest and Academic Spree Day are opportunities to share your research or creative work — often a LEEP project — with the Clark community. The Studio Art program celebrates Academic Spree Day with an opening reception for its annual Senior Thesis Exhibition in the Schiltkamp Gallery. The exhibition hosts hundreds of visitors while showcasing the creative work of graduating seniors majoring in studio art. Works on view can include video shorts, oil paintings, artists’ books, photographic series, sculptures, and graphic designs.

At the culmination of each fall semester, the studio art program holds an open house to highlight the work of current students. The Traina Center for the Arts becomes a hub of activity as the workshop classrooms display the students’ semester projects.

Off campus, you can explore opportunities to show your artwork in a professional gallery setting at the annual ArtsWorcester College Show.

At Clark you’ll get more than a great education; you’ll also be prepared for a long, productive career and life of consequence. And once you’ve completed your degree, you can join other Clark alumni who have gone on to work for great organizations and attend some of the best graduate schools in the world.

Graduate School Placement
Graduate schools attended by studio art graduates from Clark include:

Harvard University, Graduate School of Design; MLA (landscape architecture)
Rhode Island School of Design; MFA in graphic design
Savannah College of Art and Design; MFA in photography
Maryland Institute College of Art; M.A. in art education
Otis College of Art and Design; MFA in new media

Career Outcomes

Boston University
Adjunct Professor of Photography; Regional coordinator for the Flash Forward Festival
Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (grants to organizations), Providence, R.I.
Program director and grants manager
City Arts For Youth, Providence, R.I.
Teaching artist
Self-employed
Photographer
College of the Holy Cross
Designer and art director

We’ve Got It Covered

Featured Courses

ARTS 162

Exploring the Natural World

“Seed” your imagination! Journey into the natural world to hone your observational skills and experiment with field-drawing techniques and materials. You’ll create a final project in one or more of the media used.

ARTS 296

POP

Special Topics: Gallery Culture and Practice

See what it takes to curate an exhibit. You’ll work on all aspects of planning and preparing for on-campus shows and related programming, while considering how the decisions you make impact the way art is perceived.

ARTS 136

PLS

3D Form and Sculpture

Through a learning-by-doing approach, and emphasizing process (the acts of making, looking, evaluating, and remaking) over product, experiment with the fundamental elements common to all three-dimensional artwork.

ARTS 124

PLS

Introduction to Graphic Design

Through exercises and applied problems, you’ll explore the language, process, and potential of graphic design as a powerful form of communication, while you make use of both analog and digital technologies.

Explore what the Department of Visual and Performing Arts has to offer.

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Major in Studio Art

Why Major in Studio Art at Clark?

Our Stories

The Major Path

Facilities

Skills You Learn

Honors Program

Related Programs