A sculpture student at Cottey College (courtesy of Cottey College)
By Daniel Grant
Deciding to go to art school seems like an answer, but it is actually only the start of a series of questions. Do art schools care about my grade point average? Should I go to an independent art college or to a liberal-arts college with a studio-arts program? What are the differences between B.A., B.F.A., and diploma programs? What does the admissions department look for in a portfolio? Are there scholarships available?
For prospective sculpture students, the questions only increase. Does an admissions portfolio for a sculpture student differ from one for a painter? How broadly is sculpture, or 3D, defined? Are there dedicated facilities for glass, metal, neon, wood, paper, stone, found objects, and installations, and experienced faculty to go with them?
Most people who major or concentrate in sculpture in art school didn’t know they were interested in sculpture from the outset. Few high-school art classes offer anything more than drawing and painting, so most fine-art applicants to art schools assume that they will be painters. It is through the first-year foundation courses that students gain the opportunity to try out a variety of media, including print making and computer applications, as well as different types of two- and three-dimensional art.
At the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, for instance, perhaps two or three students entering the fine-arts program see themselves as sculptors, says Barry Parker, head of the sculpture department. However, 25 percent, or 15 seniors, in the typical graduating class of 60 students leave as sculptors. “Maybe, two or three are figure sculptors, another two or three work in video or performance.”
Fewer and fewer students, however, are exposed to intensive, hands-on sculpture as cost, safety, and pedagogical considerations decrease those offerings. A shrinking number of independent art colleges and college art departments actually have faculty and facilities to teach carving, mold making, welding, modeling, and other specialized skills.
“Many schools have closed down their foundries,” says Parker. “They are expensive to run, and they are an insurance liability.”
A foundry runs on gas that needs to be turned on all day, with a certain number of daily scheduled pours required to make the operation cost effective. Foundries also require expensive systems for venting fumes and disposing of waste.
“For schools that want to save money, a foundry is an easy thing to cut,” says Amy Hauft, chair of the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University, whose studio-art program includes complete facilities in a variety of three-dimensional media. “It’s an expensive skill set to teach.”
Several students currently enrolled in independent art colleges that do not have foundries were surprised that their sculpture options were so limited. One student, who asked not to be identified, says he asked about producing a bronze from a clay model and was told by the head of the sculpture department, “This isn’t the place to do anything like that. You might want to transfer.”
Beyond cost and safety, a growing number of programs have moved away from a focus on technical processes toward the conceptual and theoretical. The older, more traditional approach is for students to learn a specific medium in depth, their ideas developing with their growing sense of what they can and like to do. Increasingly, though, students are encouraged to develop their artistic ideas, which may be realized in two or three dimensions, and then to learn the processes through which to achieve those visions.
“We try to be idea-based and obtain the materials that students need to fulfill an idea,” says Gilles Giuntini, who heads the sculpture department at the Hartford Art School of the University of Hartford in Connecticut.
The trend toward idea-focused learning is perhaps best enunciated by the University of Virginia professor Howard Singerman in his 1999 book, Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University:
“Although I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture, I do not have the traditional skills of the sculptor; I cannot carve or cast or weld or model in clay. … It was clear at the time that the craft practices of a particular métier were no longer central to my training; we learned to think, not inside a material tradition, but rather about it.”
Not every art program takes this approach, but an increasing number of them do. There is still a place for students who like to make things with their hands, learning more about the technical aspects of production than just the available computer software. According to Bonnie Biggs, head of the sculpture department at the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, “the hot topic in the art world, particularly with sculpture, is, are you a maker or a thinker? And, do the two worlds come together?”
Prospective students and their parents, then, should investigate where a particular school falls on the spectrum.
“We are trending more to the conceptual, but we still have our feet firmly planted in the making” said Bob Smith, head of the fine art department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. He says the school has developed a two-track system for sculpture students, with the conceptually oriented steered toward installations and public art, and the more hands-on directed toward carving and casting. It is possible, however, for students to cross back and forth between the two, he says.
To get a feel for a program’s approach, students should, if possible, visit the school, examine equipment and facilities, sit in on classes, look at the student body to determine whether or not one will fit in, identify what percentage of students are majoring in fine or applied arts, look at class sizes, etc.
Some of that information, and course outlines, may be online. At times, the Web site might even seem overly specific. Virginia Commonwealth University’s art department proudly offers a detailed list of its tools and machinery, much of which would be unknown to all but professionals in the field. How many high-school seniors, after all, choose a college based on whether it has a “complete ceramic shell system including 2′ x 2′ x 5′ aerated stucco bins and 5′ x 5′ cylindrical bell-type dewaxing furnace.”
But “the point,” says Amy Hauft, “is to show that we are well equipped, even if most prospective students and their parents don’t know what this stuff is.”
If a student interested in sculpture doesn’t see a foundry, one might still be available. Cornish College does not have a metal or glass foundry, Bonnie Biggs says, but the school has arrangements with professional, artist-run foundries in the area where students may learn processes and techniques, as well as produce their own work.
There are benefits and drawbacks to this type of system. On the plus side, a professional foundry may have an apprentice system with more people on hand to teach than might be found at a school. The Hartford Art School’s Gilles Giuntini says that “some professional foundries and glass factories are better than a college foundry. Ours gets by, but money is always an issue.”
Of course, the school would need to make legal arrangements with the outside foundry concerning the health and safety of its students, and it is not as easy to enforce those guidelines as at a foundry on campus.
“My guess is that most parents would prefer that everything their children do be on campus instead of somewhere else,” Giuntini says.
Alfred University has an M.F.A. program in addition to its B.F.A., but not all do. Of the 40 members of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design, all of them award B.F.A. degrees in sculpture, but only 29 offer M.F.A.’s. Based on a 2009-2010 survey by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, which includes liberal arts colleges and universities, 83 institutions offer the B.F.A. as the highest degree in art and design while 115 offer the M.F.A. as the highest degree (most of them also award B.F.A.’s).
“It’s not shortchanging the student’s experience here not to have an M.F.A.,” says Bob Smith of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. But Amy Hauft, of Virginia Commonwealth, says that “it’s a great asset for undergraduates to be around M.F.A. students,” because the graduate students reveal the “next stage.”
That next stage can be difficult to contemplate. Graduating art school comes as a slap in the face for many students, particularly those who majored in sculpture. They leave behind a studio, instructors, mentors, discounted supplies, tools, and equipment, entering a world in which large, affordable work space is in short supply and foundries are few and far between (plus, they charge by the hour).
Perhaps, the art of our time will be defined as much by the cost of production as by the social, cultural, and political milieu.
“You see more digital work in New York art galleries these days,” Hauft said. “New York artists have a harder time finding tools, equipment and space to create sculpture, but you don’t need much space to set up a computer.”
Daniel Grant is the author of several books on the arts, all published by Allworth Press, including The Business of Being an Artist (4th edition, 2010), Selling Art Without Galleries (2006) and The Fine Artist’s Career Guide (second edition, 2004). He has been a features reporter at Newsday and The Commercial-Appeal, a contributing editor for American Artist magazine, and a regular contributor to ARTnews magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
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