Studio Art
Create, research, experiment.
Oberlin Artists are Thinking Artists
A Network of Creatives
Faculty, students, and alumni of the Oberlin Studio Art department are a multi-generational community of artists, curators, and designers who support each other in cities (and galleries) across the globe. Every year five recent alumni visit to meet with graduating seniors about the path ahead.
Student Exhibitions
At the end of every semester, the Studio Art program hosts Art Walk. Our galleries, hallways, and stairwells become an exhibition space and hundreds of students from across campus come to see what our artists have made that semester.
Featured Courses
Intro: Black and White Photo
This is an introductory course to B&W photography. Studio assignments are designed to contextualize photography in terms of its history, its relationships to the other art media, and its cultural implications. Besides studio assignments and group critiques there also will be slide lectures, technical demonstrations, and reading and writing assignments.
- Taught by
- Pipo Nguyen-Duy
Intro: Screenprint
This fast-paced course offers an in-depth study of serigraphy with an emphasis on conceptual and technical development. Focus is placed on both traditional and contemporary methods of screenprinting onto paper. Exploring the multiple, repetition, reproducibility, and reinterpretation through screenprinted projects, students are encouraged to investigate personal directions for their work.
- Taught by
- Kristina Paabus
Intermediate: 2D Design
This course develops technical skills and methodologies relating to design, visual communication, and fine art in both analog and digital fabrication. Student work engages postmodern strategies relevant to representation, process, materiality and improvisation with an emphasis placed on composition, concept, color, and craft.
- Taught by
- Michael Roman
Intermediate: Art as Research
All art is, in some way, a form of research. This class looks specifically at art-making practices that foreground research as a primary component of the creative process. Participants will view their scholarly research project as a premise that inspires multidisciplinary pieces of art and writing. Archives, labs, and libraries will all be seen as sites for creative production.
- Taught by
- Julia Christensen
Student Profiles
AICUO Grand Award Winner
Studio art and psychology double major Brian Tom ’20 won the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Ohio (AICUO) Grand Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts for his 10-piece sculpture submission, The Rest In Pieces, which examines human responses to death through irony and humor.
Newman Civic Fellow for Engagement
A studio art and comparative literature double major, Bridget Conway ’21 received the Newman Civic Fellowship, a yearlong program that recognizes and supports community-minded students who are changemakers and public problem-solvers on their campuses.
Art as Exploration
Originally from Berkely, California, Brannon Rockwell-Charland ’14, an Africana studies and visual arts double major, won the AICUO Grand Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts. Brannon’s project combined photography with non-traditional media such as hair and makeup to explore themes of time, sexuality and African American experience.