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School of Art + Design
528 Seigfred Hall
Athens, Ohio 45701
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Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture + Expanded Practice
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Sculpture + Expanded Practice — Master of Fine Arts

What You’ll Learn

Sculpture + Expanded Practice Area has a deep commitment to exploring a broad variety of materials, equipment, techniques, and forms free of imposed ideology. Students are encouraged to chart their individual path as skilled makers and shapers of objects within public, private and digital spaces, from traditional sculpture approaches to sound, performance art, and cyber explorations. Students participate fully with the School of Art + Design's extensive and prestigious visiting artists program, attending presentations and receiving individual critiques with artists like Vito Acconci, Charles Ray, Jessica Stockholder, Luis Jiminez, Jenny Holzer, Faith Ringhold, and Burt Barr, to name only a few.

Facilities The Sculpture + Expanded Practice Area is housed in a 5,900 square foot sculpture building which contains fabrication space with assorted tables, hoists, and cranes; metal working equipment; SoftLab including floor looms, embroidery and sewing machines; plaster area; conference room; and a fenced sculpture yard.

In the adjacent Seigfred Hall, the Sculpture + Expanded Practice Area has two rooms dedicated to semi-private graduate studios (approximately 250 square feet for each student) and faculty offices. Seigfred Hall also contains the School of Art + Design's wood shop & tool room. The wood shop is available for use to all School of Art + Design students, and is an instructional space for sculpture classes. The shop contains a wide variety of stationary and hand-held power tools for cutting, shaping and bending woods and plastics, an industrial sewing machine, and an extensive collection of specialized hand tools, jigs, and clamps.

Explore These Topics

  • Casting, persona, performance, ethnicity, identity, environment
  • Bio-narrative, structure & alchemy
  • Interactive installation, technology, coding
  • Alternative processes such as, 3-D printing, laser cutting, vinyl cutting
  • Aesthetics, place, ecologies, collaboration
  • The role of design in sculpture practices, materiality and sustainability
  • Politics, social practice, entrepreneurship
  • Pedagogy and professional practices in Sculpture

Career Opportunities

Recent graduates are now actively participating in the art field by attending Fulbright programs, working as artist's assistants, and showing their work across the US and abroad in noteworthy exhibitions. Our graduate and undergraduate students have found employment as professors and visiting artists at colleges and universities, as artists in public schools, and as museum and gallery workers across the US.

Areas of Focus

  • Professional gallery representation; site-specific public works
  • University teaching positions
  • Artist-in-residencies
  • Fulbright awardees
  • Arts administration/museum and/or non-profit positions
  • creative director, studio technicians, industrial design
  • Gallery manager, owner, curator, exhibition designer
  • Art writer, librarian or consultant
  • Studio assistant

Faculty

All faculty in the Sculpture + Expanded Practice area are working artists who exhibit actively and serve as visiting artists and lecturers at colleges and galleries across the country. 51 and the Sculpture Department are committed to the creation of a diverse community of artist scholars.

The faculty of the Sculpture area have an impressive collection of professional accomplishments including two National Endowment for the Arts Grants, three Regional NEA Rockefeller Foundation New Forms grants, and seven State Arts Board Grants, as well as both public and private permanent public art commissions in several cities around the US. Their work has been reviewed in major newspapers across the country and in both regional and national art magazines. Members of the sculpture faculty have been selected to participate in prestigious residencies, including Art Park in upstate New York; The Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco; The Ragdale Foundation, Chicago; and Sculpture Space, Utica, New York.

“Both Art and Teaching can be acts of generosity-- an earnest sharing of those things cared about--an eager receptivity to what we don’t yet understand.”

Connect with us

Kate Hampel
Area Chair, Associate Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practice
 
Duane McDiarmid
Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practice
mcdiarmi@ohio.edu
 
 
 
 

  • Applying to the program

    M.F.A. in Sculpture + Expanded Practice


    Deadline: February 1

    To apply to this MFA program you'll be required to submit the following:

    Application Fee: $50 for US Citizens, $55 for International (credit card or electronic check only)

    Official set of transcripts: These may have to be sent by us postal mail, or depending on your prior institution, may have an electronic record that can be submitted with your online application. Please review the definition and requirements for official transcripts here

    Statement of Intent: This is typically 1-2 pages. Why are you applying for graduate school? Why 51? What are your future goals? Is there any information about your past experience/skills that is not reflected on your resume?

    Artist Statement: This is typically one page. Tell us about your current research interests, influences, and artwork.

    Resume/CV

    Portfolio: Documentation of original artwork

    Submit 20 images or other documentation (video, audio, etc) of recent, original artwork.

    Along with each artwork, include artwork information and descriptive text where appropriate

    Detail slides are acceptable where necessary.

    Three Letters of Recommendation: Submit the contact information for three references. Our system will automatically send recommenders a request via email for their submission. Their responses should be submitted by the February 1st deadline.

    Note: Except for the official transcripts, NO materials should be sent through standard mail. Portfolios on CD or DVD will not be considered.