At each Residency, students take two courses which will vary depending on where you are in the program. These courses will be studio-based: Interdisciplinary Fundamentals and Special Topics in Studio Practices, or exhibition-base: Midway Exhibition and Thesis Exhibition. Throughout Residency, you also participate in studio visits, artist lectures, workshops and more. All Residency-based courses continually rotate themes and topics, based on who is teaching. .
During the fall and spring semesters, students continue to the work started at Residency through monthly online critique groups, attending approximately five interdisciplinary lectures either online or in-person, and an online critical-thinking seminar course. Concurrently, students work full-time in their home studios and continue relationships with faculty mentors and fellow colleagues.
*= focus at Residency
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The program consists of two, intensive ten-day on-campus residencies during summer and winter sessions over the course of 2.5 years.
Visiting faculty are invited to develop residency courses around themes integral to their concerns and expertise as artists and thinkers. View past examples of course titles in the FAQ below.
During each residency, students take two to three courses. The courses range from studio practice to critical theory. They challenge notions of site, context, and installation. As students move through the program, they work towards their own midway and final exhibitions. These exhibitions are multi-faceted, taking place on and off campus – during the residencies themselves and outside of them.
Students begin working on readings and small assignments as soon as a month prior to the residency start date. Due to the intense nature of the low-residency structure students come prepared to work long days and get the most out of our time together. Outside of coursework, students have access to open studio time, conversation and critique time, as well as time to explore the area. Days are long and productive. Both students and faculty feel that this intense and immersive experience yields amazing and unpredictable results.
Between residencies, students return to their home studios to focus on their own studio practice. As a supplement to this, they participate in one-on-one mentorships with an assigned faculty member. Each semester’s mentor guides them through this process. Additionally, students participate in an online seminar with the rest of their peers. The seminar, which varies in topic each semester, maintains the connection between classmates until they meet again in person.
The MFA-IA program is specifically geared towards people with active lives outside of school. While we are a full-time program, we consciously designed the ten-day residencies with the notion that not everyone can take off for an entire summer, or for multiple weeks at a time. We know that there are dedicated, talented, driven artists and thinkers who have children, jobs, or other responsibilities that make it difficult for them to commit to a conventional MFA program. We continue to listen and hone our program. Our program is sensitive to the needs of modern contemporary artists.
We distinguish ourselves through our emphasis on “place” as a central operating subject of inquiry. We fold in the concept of “low-residency,” not just as a convenient model, but rather as a principle of moving through today’s world. What can groups of like-minded but geographically distant artists create together? How can we activate the hunger to explore a mode of understanding via location and fuel multi-tiered inquiries?
“What can Lake Tahoe host as a specific location, beyond its tremendous beauty?” creates a structure for thinking about landscape – both natural and man-made. The Tahoe Basin does this by showing us what is present as well as what is missing. We hope to embolden students desire for more critical dialogue around our relationship to our surroundings, and the role of the artist addressing these complexities.
The program consists of five, ten-day residencies (early fall/winter/early fall/winter/early fall) with corresponding coursework between each residency. This takes place during conventional fall and spring semesters. Generally, students take 12 credits each semester, spread out over the residency and semester. During students’ third residency, they mount a series of work for a “midway exhibition.”
During their final semester, students create a culminating body of work that is exhibited within a group context at their final residency. Graduating students collaborate with a thesis exhibition curator and their cohort on the design and concept of the group exhibition.
The average age of our current students is mid-30s. However, we have had students fresh out of undergrad through to their 70s.
The Holman Arts and Media Center is entirely available to MFA students during their residencies. We have a full print shop, photo lab (both digital and analogue), a sculpture/metal shop, a ceramics studio, and access to 3D modeling software and production.
No you do not. In fact, our emphasis on “interdisciplinary” is based on our interest in cultivating conversations with people from a multiplicity of backgrounds and experience. While some of our students have come from traditional fine art backgrounds, many are coming to us with degrees in the sciences, in politics and activism, in education, or in multi-media design. We hope to collect students from even more diverse places so that we can continue to create a space for these exciting collaborative experiences.