The Studio Art department offers a variety of classes in both artistic style and content which emphasize strong skill and conceptual development. This range can be seen in faculty work and student work. The classes offered include a variety of approaches to drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, digital imaging, video, and installation art.
We have six faculty members in the studio area (and four in art history). For the number of students on campus, this means beginning studio classes usually have 15-20 students, intermediate classes are 12-15 and advanced classes have no more than 10 students in them.
All are actively-exhibiting artists who have the professional experience to help students understand the larger culture and art world. The examples on our website are just the tip of the iceberg of work they have produced.
Our students have curiosity and intelligence fueled by their liberal arts background. They bring all this to the discipline of expressive visual and kinesthetic processing producing work that is full of variety and depth.
When Horvitz Hall opened its doors at the start of the fall semester in 2012, Kenyon art students and their professors gaped and marveled, then settled in and made themselves at home. Now it's everyone else's turn to discover the superb studio-art facilities in the College's newest building. On three levels, Horvitz Hall has studios and classrooms for painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography, installation art, and digital art. Facilities range from a professional-quality lighting studio to an audio lab for video and animation projects. Expansive windows bring in the diffuse north light that artists prize. Exhibitions and receptions can be held in a lobby/gallery space inside the main entrance, and the lower-level sculpture area opens onto a spacious patio in the rear of the building.
You certainly don't have to be a major to get into art classes. The true liberal arts nature of Kenyon is at its best when those in creative writing, science, music, or other disciplines connect in an art class.
If you choose to major in Studio Art you will have a semi-private studio in your senior year to help you concentrate on your projects. This is unusual in an undergraduate liberal arts college.
All senior majors work on individual projects in whatever media they choose for a full year and learn to critique across media. This seminar also encourages an intellectual understanding of one's work in relationship to the wider contemporary art world.
As a senior major, you will have an exhibition of a cohesive body of work as part of the larger senior exhibition in the Gund Gallery. A short written and oral component add to the strength of this senior cumulative experience that our majors applaud as the most important event of their art education here. We consider it your first professional exhibition.