The Oberlin Studio Art department offers a creative platform for students who want intensive studio training combined with the intellectual rigors of a liberal arts curriculum. Oberlin artists are thinking artists, deeply engaged in their intellectual pursuits. Our world-renowned faculty offer courses in painting, drawing, color theory, photography (wet and digital), sculpture, installation, media arts (sound, video, interactive/networked art), performance, reproducible media (screenprinting, lithography, intaglio, monoprint), and all the hybrids in between. Drawing on their parallel studies at Oberlin, our students produce work at the forefront of creative fields.
Oberlin’s Studio Art curriculum is interdisciplinary in nature, and emphasizes ideas. Even skills-based courses use ideas as prompts, from the political histories of color to the concept of “nature” as it has been defined by landscape painting. Beneath our wide offerings in diverse mediums and the conceptual depth of our courses, the guiding structure of our courses is radically simple: physical dimensions. Our 2D courses focus on color, composition, design, and mediums on a flat plane; 3D courses focus on tools and techniques to build in and re-envision in space; 4D courses address time-based media, and most digital mediums. By the time a student graduates from Oberlin’s Studio Art department—regardless of their primary medium—they will be fluent in visual languages across all (known) physical dimensions, preparing them to be active participants in our 21st century visual world.