The Studio Art graduate program welcomes all lines of inquiry: spatial, lens-based, two-dimensional, interactive, sound, and performative. We are a multidisciplinary program using as an organizational structure the expansive territories of Painting & Drawing, Photography & Media, Print, Sculpture & Extended Media, and Transmedia.
MFA students work closely with dedicated and professionally active faculty to fine-tune existing skill sets and develop new approaches, both conceptual and technical. We have built a supportive yet stimulating community in which students are immersed in an environment of discovery, challenged to consider the depth of an individual discipline, encouraged to explore new ones, meanwhile finding overlaps in new and familiar ways.
Used to its full advantage, our curriculum is distinctive to each student's interests and particular to the assets and research strengths of the department as well as to The University of Texas at Austin. The curriculum allows for many course options giving MFA candidates progressively more studio time as their investigations become more demanding and distinct. Students develop their artist's voice, in both the ability to make images and to build intellectually upon the discourse surrounding one another's practices. Students formulate an ongoing and dynamic dialogue with faculty, peers and visiting specialists allowing for a richly informed approach and experience in art making.
Transmedia is an interdisciplinary field of study focused on conceptual, experimental, and innovative technical approaches to time-based art utilizing the tools of video, performance, digital, and interactive art. By nature, Transmedia resists conventional disciplinary nomenclature, and represents hybrid strategies and a critical approach to inquiry grounded in aesthetics, art history, theory, and contemporary issues. Students working in the area will be encouraged to consider a wide range of interests and disciplines in the development of a practice that finds articulation in the studio, the public sphere, and other contexts.