FND-115: 2D PROBLEM-SOLVING 1
Professor Mary Stewart

DESCRIPTION: FND-115 is a foundation course designed to teach creative thinking in combination with basic principles of art and design. The five class hours are devoted to demonstrations, slides, work time, and critiques. Four or more hours per week will be needed for homework.

ATTENDANCE is required. A substantial amount of work is done is class. Portfolios are cumulative, not selective and missing work counts against the grade. And, because it is impossible to contribute to class discussions you do not attend, your performance in this area will suffer every time you miss a session. Thus, if you miss more than ten hours of class this term you should expect a final grade of C- or below.

Incompletes will be granted only in cases of major illness or other serious emergency which has prevented completion for work for the term.

Any student who has special needs, such as difficulty hearing or a learning disability, please talk to me in the first week of class so that suitable arrangements can be made.

OFFICE HOURS: Tuesday, 10:30-12:30 at 050 or 116 Comart and by appointment.


EVALUATION: Four factors will be considered in the determination of grades. 1. Is the work conceptually inventive? Have you demonstrated a solid grasp of problem content? Is there a substantial engagement with ideas? 2. Is the composition visually compelling? How powerful is the visual realization of the idea? Have colors been chosen well? Is the image unified? well crafted? balanced? exciting? 3. What was the nature of your learning process? Did you use class time effectively and come well prepared? Did you take risks? How many solutions did you invent for each problem? How frequent and substantial were your contributions to critiques?
COURSE TEXTS: Design Basics by David Lauer and Roget's International Thesaurus Available at the Orange Bookstore in the Marshall Street Mall.

RESERVE LIST: Design Basics - Lauer, Whack on the Side of the Head - Von Oechs, Design Through Discovery - Bevlin, Design: The Search for Unity - Larkin, Basic Principles of Design - Maier, Principles of Form and Design - Wong, The Art of Drawing - Chaet, Mendelowitz's Guide to Drawing - Wakeham, Structure of the Visual Book - Smith, Inside/Outside - Grear


ASSIGNMENTS PLANNED: Week 1: Orientation/balance. Line studies, exploring forms of balance, focality, density. Week 2: Object lesson #1: 8x8" b/w study of interior and exterior of hand-held object. Week 3: Object lesson #2: Complex composition; layering, variations in scale, figure/grd. Week 4: Object lesson #3: Integrating word/image; uses of metaphor; work with color. Week 5: Portfolio #1 due. Start labyrinth: 18x24" b/w study of Crouse College Week 6: Introduction to visual books; visit to Rare Book room. Week 7: Further development of visual books. Week 8: Letter Labyrinth to be used as book cover. Completed books due. Week 9: Basic research for Concept Generator; work in library. Week 10: Conceptual and structural development for Concept Generator. Week 11: Concept Generator teams. Week 12: Concept Generator due. Start work on 2D design manual. Weeks 13&14: 2D design manual. Week 15: Final crit: 8:30-11:30am, 207 Shaffer.
BASIC SUPPLIES: *Always bring sketchbook, pencil, 24" ruler, pencil, exacto knife, 11x14" sketchbook.

Mars white eraser, fine point felt pen, 3 non-toxic markers: black, blue, red, exacto knife and extra blades ,black, white and copper prismacolor pencils, 2 two ply bristol 22x30," 24" cork backed stainless steel ruler, 1/2x60" drafting tape, 2 sheets black paper--coloraid or strathmore, glue stick, 1 22x30" Arches cover, Black, 1 22x30" Rives BFK, 17x22" red envelope portfolio, 12x18" self-healing cutting surface


GUIDELINES FOR ARTIST'S STATEMENT: The purpose of this assignment is to provide me with some background on your work and to give you practice writing about your ideas and intentions. Write anything you think necessary, up to three typed pages. Consider: How long and for what reason have you made art? What were your major interests in high school? What major themes appear in your work? What do you want to accomplish in this course? What are you most afraid of? What gives you most confidence/motivation? What are the sources of your ideas? Is there anything else you want me to know? Here's an example of my own writing.
THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: DEVELOPING THE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL BOOK

Proposal: To design and print four more visual books exploring personal and philosophical conceptions of knowledge and memory.

Background. The theme of loss has dominated my work for the past 10 years. From 1986-90 I dealt with personal loss using three approaches to figurative imagery:
1. figure as wall: a flat, two-dimensional shape or a volumetric, three-dimensional form, the external appearance emphasized;
2. figure as window: physically or psychologically transparent, a means by which intangible internal realities may be manifest;
3. figure as mirror: a combination of the internal and external, alternately transparent and opaque, capable of reflecting the viewer or engaging in a dialog.

An abrupt change in direction occurred during a 1990-91 assignment to the Syracuse University London Program. The day of my arrival, Iraq invaded Kuwait. I began thinking about loss in broader terms. During a Centrum Franz Masereel residency, I began visualizing environmental and cultural loss through a series of eight 35x24" linocuts. The ark appears indirectly; compasses, vortices, burning barns and rising water appear more directly.

In spring 1992 I took an extraordinary course called "Discovering the Heart." Autobiography was used to encourage non-writers to engage in powerful writing. This led to a series of images dealing with the role of memory in defining the self. Labyrinths, projections, layered voices, and exploration of multiple realities began to appear in my work.

During a summer 1993 Oregon School of Arts and Crafts residency, I began to use Platonic conceptions of life and death, memory and forgetting, as source. In the Phaedo, Socrates led his students through a series of speculations on the essential nature of beauty, the history of the soul, and the role of memory in developing identity. For Socrates, life was a process of self-discovery, a search for essential truths remembered from a pre-birth state. Combined with my previous apocalyptic imagery, these Platonic dialogs led to a larger stream of consciousness, wider, deeper, colder. My work became increasingly narrative: showing a single piece severely truncated the complex ideas I sought to communicate.

Current Proposal: My greatest strength is my ability to think, to feel, and to compose complex imagery using words and images. My purpose in this residency is to increase the breadth and depth of my work, ultimately resulting in a complete exhibition of prints, drawings and books.


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