Dean's introduction

As a sanctuary for experimentation and cross-disciplinary artmaking, the School of Art provides a forum in which to set forth new ideas in art and an intellectual framework in which to understand such work. This commitment to artistic innovation and critical reflection has been the key to our enviable success in training the artists, photographers and designers who go on to make important contributions to their respective fields.

Our faculty seek out highly motivated, independent-minded students with a strong desire to make art and to challenge conventional ideas. With mentoring and one-on-one critiques at the heart of an intensive educational experience, students are guaranteed the flexibility to chart their creative development, whether in painting or video, photography or performance, typography or sculpture, digital imaging or sound installation, or, increasingly, new options in multimedia technologies. We give students the necessary room to find their own voices.

Our Programs in Art, Graphic Design and Photography & Media offer specific courses of study, and yet none is isolated from the others. We strongly encourage students to collaborate with one another across disciplines and to investigate hybrid art forms--not only within the School of Art but throughout all of CalArts.

All members of our faculty maintain active careers beyond the classroom. As a result, they are able to share insights common to working artists, even as their backgrounds, philosophies and practices are richly diverse. This level of experience provides students with the information and intellectual skills they need to fully understand the complexities facing the professional artist today. The school also invites some 75 visiting artists, designers and theorists to the campus each year to broaden the debate on contemporary art. This accumulation of expertise provides an invaluable foundation on which students can build an independent practice and expand, as many School of Art alumni have already done, the limits of artmaking.

Thomas Lawson, Dean