undergraduate program : foundation

In your first two years at MECA, you will acquire the language and skills vital to art making. You will be challenged to take risks and to push your limits. You will find others who share your passions, along with new ideas, materials and techniques that may ignite new passions. Critiques will give you valuable feedback, helping you to understand and evaluate your strengths and areas for growth, as you develop your individual voice in its most inventive and powerful visual form.

Your first year, the Foundation Year will provide solid training for all your future creative work, with courses in design, art history, liberal arts and studio electives. In your second year, the Transition Year, you will choose from a variety of studio electives, including drawing and 2D, 3D and interdisciplinary design, deepening fundamental skills within areas of particular interest. The Transition Year serves as the bridge to selecting and studying in your major. You will enter your major with the ability to choose what style, medium and techniques you want in order to communicate and express your vision.

The drawing curriculum at MECA is sequenced to provide progressive challenge within a flexible structure, allowing students to make an educated choice about the path of their studies within this diverse discipline.  After beginning with a common perceptual dialog in DR 100, students choose courses that match their representational, non-objective, or professional aspirations.  At each level, courses are structured to build upon what came before, culminating in advanced courses in very specific topics.  While only one class from each level of drawing is required to proceed to the next, a student may choose to expand their technical expertise by continuing to take second and third level electives at any time in their academic career. 

Faculty Adriane Herman - Chair/Associate Professor Joe Begnaud - Associate Professor (on sabbatical) Meg Brown Payson - Continuing Associate Professor Core faculty who teach in the Foundation program are also faculty who teach majors.

Drawing

DR 100 Introduction to Drawing

DR 120 Representational Drawing

DR 130 Non-Objective Drawing

DR 140 Drawing for Design

DR 227 Anatomical Drawing

DR 228 Figure Drawing: Structure, Light and Space

DR 230 Drawing in Process

DR 233 Surrealism, Chance and Accident

DR 322 Portraiture Drawing

DR 351 Advanced Life Drawing

2D Design

FE 227 Color and Drawing: Mixed Media

FE 240 Further Explorations in Color

FE 245 Applied Color Theory

FE 242 2D Image Transformation

3D Design

FE 250 3D Fabrication: Substance & Intent

FE 251 Mold Making: Form & Transformation

FE 264 Color in Form/Space

Interdisciplinary Design

FE 261 Temporal Structures: Time-based Installation

FE 263 Interdisciplinary Design

FE 265 Art and Science: Kinetic Art and the Physics of Movement

FE 267 The Art of Collaboration and Participation