Micaela di Vivero, Associate Professor of Art, Sculpture.

Our Students
One of the primary goals of the Studio Art Program is to encourage independent and creative thought. Our students are hard workers and are always active in the department.  You can walk through our studios late at night and find our students working on projects round the clock. Our graduates are high achievers.  We have studio graduates studying in graduate schools across the country and working as professional artists, designers and architects.  Many of our students go on to work in the realms of fashion, advertising, media and commercial art.

Our Program
We offer two studio art degrees: the B.A. in Studio Art, and the B.F.A. in Studio Art. Our B.F.A degree is unique for a school our size. It allows students interested in both an art school and a liberal arts academic experience to have both. Allowing for more in-depth time in the studio, the B.F.A is a studio intensive program that also encourages fluidity and collaboration between the different artistic disciplines. State of the art technology continues to move our program in exciting new directions.  Our Studio courses include sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, new media/digital technology, photography, video, painting, drawing, life drawing, studio art foundations and performance art.  We also offer specialized courses in comics, film, fibers and design. These specialized courses are often taught through the First Year Studies.

Prof. Ronald Abram, Associate Professor, Printmaking and Drawing

Students and Faculty Work Side by Side
As a liberal arts college, at Denison we try to balance our students’ courses in Studio Art with their other academic interests on campus.  We encourage our BA students to consider doing a double major.  We offer small classes with a lot of personal attention, particularly for majors.  We also offer students a variety of ways to approach art activity with faculty and the community. Students work in our museum, some on art exhibitions of works taken from our extensive permanent collection, others with visiting artists helping to install shows of their work. We also generate opportunities for students to work in the Visual Resource Center. As a part of our goal of having students work closely with faculty, we have created student jobs in the department, ranging from research assistants to teaching assistants who help faculty in their studio classrooms. Our Studio faculty exhibit their work nationally and internationally in a variety of venues. We all have studios in the building next to the classrooms, so our students see first-hand the work that their instructors are making.

Denison Student Art Collective
Our art students run an art collective that is open to all Denison students interested in art. The group has over 50 members today with members majoring in a range of disciplines – not just art. They are a vibrant, active community that meets weekly, with a mission to reach out to the greater community through art. They organize and teach art workshops in our facilities for children from neighboring Newark schools and just finished a series of murals for the family visiting rooms of the Newark’s Family Services building. Last semester they raised over $2200.00 for two local shelters with their Empty Bowls fundraiser.  They recently co-organized an inaugural all-day, all-student-run, arts event this April that brought student artists from Music, Dance, Theatre, Cinema and Creative Writing together with Studio Art students in the Bryant Arts Center for a day of performances, workshops and exhibitions celebrating all the arts at Denison. 

Our Facilities
We are thrilled to be back in our newly renovated Bryant Arts Center - a 14 million dollar renovation of historic Cleveland Hall. This 102-year-old historic building has been transformed into a state of the art, truly amazing arts facility that vividly projects us all into the future.  With spacious studios and classrooms, it is the size of some small art schools. Our senior studio is a spectacular space where our senior studio art majors have their own personal space to work within an enormous shared studio. Bringing art history and studio art together within its walls, the Bryant Art Center at Cleveland Hall is a true diamond for the Arts on a national level. The building is a destination for all students, not just art majors.  There’s a piano for music classes, a dance class was taught in the building last fall and the theatre department just hosted a mask-making workshop in our ceramic studios this winter.  Our fantastic student lounge is a welcoming and relaxed place for anyone to hang out. We also are very proud of the Bryant Arts Center’s LEED GOLD Certification.  By following LEED specifications, the Bryant Arts Center is an important milepost on Denison’s path to environmental sustainability.  Denison is one of only 290 colleges and universities to make a commitment that all new campus construction will be built to at least a LEED Silver standard, as set by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system.

Link: http://www.denison.edu/offices/publicaffairs/featuredstories/leed_certification.html

Visiting Artist Series
The department is fortunate to have a very active Vail Visiting Artist Program.  In recent years the program has enabled us to host well-known artists from a variety of disciplines, including artists challenging our notions of what is art through installation, site-specific environmental work, and cutting-edge technology. Artists not only present their work through a public lecture, but also spend significant time with students, either through one-on-one meetings and critiques, or the creation of a collaborative work of art on campus. The visits are enriching for students and faculty alike. Studio Art has an endowed field trip budget line that allows us to take our seniors on an annual trip to New York City and all our students to other major cultural destinations to see art first hand. Field trips to nearby Columbus (home of The Wexner Center of Art and the Columbus Museum of Art) happen all the time. It is only 40 minutes away.

Photo/New Media Professor Sheilah Wilson and class

The Denison Museum
The Denison University Museum is an important resource for the entire Denison community providing internships and research experience for students.  It possesses a wide range of works, including a large Asian Art collection and exciting contemporary art exhibitions. In the spring, our annual senior art exhibition is held at the museum.

Working Beyond the Denison Campus
Beyond the campus our students have participated in prestigious internships through the Denison Internship Program and the Michele Myers Internships in the Fine Arts. Students consistently are accepted into competitive study abroad programs around the world with special emphasis on studio art and art history. Students often go to Italy, but also other art centers such as Amsterdam, Mexico, Senegal and Japan. We recently had two juniors accepted by portfolio to study at Goldsmith College, an internationally renowned art program in London. Other students participate in the New York Arts Program and The Philadelphia Center as interns with artists or in museums, galleries or community centers.  Still other students have participated in the Denison Internship Program. This year we created a new award that sends a studio art major to participate in an intensive summer art workshop at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado. Our faculty have been leaders for the Deuce (Denison Experience in Urban Culture and Expression), a First Year Studies pre-orientation program in Philadelphia aimed at students interested in the arts and visual culture.  We have had students intern at the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sotheby’s, ABC News, Marvel Comics and the Columbus Museum of Art, to name a few.