Students in Lee Running, Associate Professor of Art, drawing class use observational drawing techniques during a trip to the Conard Evironmental Research Area

Studio Art

Stimulate your critical thinking and refine your creative potential in the visual arts.

The Grinnell College Department of Art is home to a vibrant group of artists and educators that foster a creative, inclusive community.  Whether crafting the beautiful, sublime, or the abject, we challenge ourselves and our students to take spectacular risks. We value working together with our hands, hearts, and minds as well as innovative technologies across media to explore our personal voice and generate problems in dialogue with local and global contexts. 

  • Sam drawing

    Express your creativity

    Learn what it means to be a 21st-century artist.

    As you explore the arts in context of Grinnell’s liberal arts program, you’ll also receive a well-rounded education in the humanities. The studio art major provides an outlet for your creative expression, and you’ll develop an appreciation for the arts through the interdisciplinary lens of other courses of study. As an artist, you’ll learn about and create art using both traditional and non-traditional materials. You’ll also consider what it means to be an artist in the modern world — and find your own answers to this question.

  • Haitian artist Edouard Duval-Carrié works with students while teaching a short course in which students create resin blocks

    Practical Experience

    Use the tools of the trade to expand your skill set.

    As a studio art student, you’ll be introduced to the core principles of art-making in a rigorous, hands-on studio program. You’ll have curricular opportunities for the development of technical skills, aesthetic judgment, and historical understanding, and you’ll learn though a series of practical exercises using traditional and digital tools with an emphasis on developing skills, knowledge of materials, methods of observation and translation, collaboration, discussion, and creative discipline.

  • BAX Reception

    Social Discourse

    Shape culture and society.

    Your participation in the studio arts will sharpen your creative potential. You’ll develop aesthetic, technical, and critical skills, as well as analytical and expressive proficiencies. You’ll learn to approach problem-solving with creative solutions. With these skills, you’ll be prepared to contribute creatively to the social and cultural discourses that shape contemporary society.

See What Our Faculty and Students Are Up To

  • Students holding a shadow puppet

    Jeremy Chen

    Art Collab

    Sometimes to both students and professors, Grinnell College can feel a little bit like living on an island. 

    Jeremy Chen, a senior lecturer in Grinnell College’s Art Department, set out to change that with the creation of Stew Art Studios, commonly called “The Stew,” an art studio at 927 Broad St. in downtown Grinnell, where students can share their work and collaborate on art projects with town residents. 

    Learn more about Chen's collaboration with The Stew

Faculty Chair

Andrew Kaufman

Contact Information

Phone
641-269-3064
Fax
641-269-4420

Bucksbaum Center for the Arts
1108 Park St
Grinnell, IA 50112
United States

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