FYE 101 - What is Art For?: Art Making as Practice, Not just Product

WHAT IS ART FOR? Why do we create art? Does it have a broader social or political purpose beyond personal self-expression? In this FYE, we will focus as much on process as we do on finished product, to see how the creative disciplines of art writing, image making, and performance are connected modes of thinking, each with its own means for connecting to audiences. To write, make and perform are interrelated modes of communication with histories that inform each other. One commonality in the creative processes for each is that research is required to bring ideas to concrete fruition. Any writer, practicing artist, or performer working in the 21st century is keenly aware of historical precedents for their work. It’s where artists and writers locate voices, ideas, and purpose. This FYE team is taught by an art historian/museum curator, a visual artist, and a performance artist. Collectively, we will work in teams to create original work in multiple formats, as part of a sustained and specific response to historical objects from Wheaton’s Permanent Collection. Students will work collaboratively to give these objects multiple voices, both historical or imagined.

ART MAKING AS PRACTICE, NOT JUST PRODUCT: Art is not a luxury item to be simply consumed. This course will explore the intersection between art making and activism. This class will require that you create, curate, and perform. You will actively and purposefully engage in communities both on and off campus. Together, we will explore the critical, inextricable connection between art as a process to understanding ourselves, the world around us, and the responsibility we all have as creative beings to work for, by and within communities. Art making builds bridges. Art making is a public service. Art making Is and must remain an act of creating constructive, collisions of ideals, values, social policy, politics and justice.

Credits 1

Compass Attributes
First Year Experience