One of our goals in the Foundations Program is to introduce students to all of the resources that we have around the School of Art including the wood shop, the metal shop, the ceramics kilns, and the photography studio. We want to give students access to that in their first year so that they know what opportunities they have as they continue on their journey in the School of Art.
-Rachel Cohn, Foundations Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art
Foundations provides all first-year students in the studio art, animation, graphic design, and art education programs with the fundamental concepts of art and design through an intensive year-long studio-based experience. This interdisciplinary program emphasizes critical thinking and making skills, conceptual development, process, collaboration, and experimentation. Students are introduced to the School of Art’s learning approaches and gain a deeper understanding of historical and contemporary practices in art and design.
The required courses in Drawing, 2D, 3D, and 4D studies push students to try new ways of observing and interpreting the world around them as they work with a wide variety of materials and ideas. The program prepares them for a future in all areas of the School of Art and beyond. It gives students a shared experience where they form lifetime bonds with a community of their peers. They also maintain close contact with their faculty for feedback and guidance as they begin their creative journey.
2D
2D Foundations explores basic elements and principles of two-dimensional design, color and visual organization. You will apply these to traditional as well as digital media, gaining skills in craft and presentation alongside conceptual development.
There are a lot of things here at the School of Art that students can get involved in outside of school. One of them was a billboard contest for March Madness. I had a billboard design featured on i-70 and it was so cool to be able to represent Indianapolis in that way! When you get into Ball State, you will start to see the development in yourself. I would suggest Ball State because they not only have such a great field for art, they have so many other majors available to you. Ball State offers a unique experience to enhance us as artists. Once you take in the benefits of the facilities and you know the professors, you're really going to shine through. Something that I would recommend is just to jump in, because when you take that leap of faith, you're going to fly.
-Abigail Clone, Graphic Design alum
3D
In 3D Foundations, you will explore how to think, visualize and design in the third dimension. This course extends the formal concepts of shape, color, composition, texture and craft into space, considering objects, scale and relationships of the body to built environments. You will gain skills in traditional fabrication techniques and materials as well as examine contemporary practices.
4D
4D Foundations is an introduction to the technical, formal and conceptual use of contemporary practices including time and space, sound, moving images, performance and interactive projects. Here, the emphasis is placed on conceptual development, process, problem solving and interdisciplinary collaboration. You will explore new ways of working that have extended the fields of art and design and are traditionally underrepresented.
We have small class sizes, and that allows the students to really get to know the faculty and their classmates. It's a really important time where students are very experimental. They're open, they're learning about new processes and it's really critical that we have that kind of small class size and close relationships to let students explore that and to build on those.
-Rachel Cohn, Foundations Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art
Drawing
In Drawing Studio, you will strengthen your perceptual skills and examine drawing as a process, an exploration and a historic and contemporary discipline. You will gain experience with a broad range of technical skills, materials and vocabulary, with an emphasis on observational drawing as a direct revelation of how you interpret and record your surroundings and subjects.