Colgate University

First-Year Course Offerings — Fall 2019

FSEM 160   Introduction to Studio Art
Credits1
RestrictionsNo 2022 2021 2020 Open to first-years only
Pre-Requisites
Co-Requisites
Core Area
Area of InquiryHuman Thought and Expression
Liberal Arts Practices

Faculty Profile for Professor Godfrey

A studio-based introduction to methods artists use to model their relationships to the world, themselves and culture. Grounded in careful observation, we will examine how artists construct a point of view, physically, psychologically, socially and politically. We will investigate image construction –including exercises in composition, color, collage, translation between media, and the production of meaning; manipulating materials –stressing craft, embellishment, surface, texture, use of tools, and the use of material metaphor; time – a project that encourages students to address linear and non linear narrative; art as Idea – language and visual expression, conceptual art, art as system, chance effects, ephemeral art, art as a critical activity and alternative places and/or roles of artistic practice in our culture. We will draw on examples from disciplines other than artistic, forms other than fine art, and cultures different from our own. A series of short writing assignments and a substantial research project on an artist will be integral to the course. Students who successfully complete this seminar will receive course credit for ARTS 100 and will satisfy one half of the Human Thought and Expression area of inquiry requirement.

Professor DeWitt Godfrey, in his 17th year at Colgate University, did his undergraduate work at Yale University, was a member of the inaugural group of CORE Fellows at the MFA Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship, a Japan Foundation Artist’s Fellowship, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Fellowship. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. His commissioned work includes “Capital” in Seattle, WA; “Concordia” for Lexarts, Lexington, KY; “Quake” Cambridge Arts Council, Cambridge, MA; “Enspire” Traverse City, MI and installations at Frederik Meijer Garden and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; and the Kennedy Art Museum, Ohio University, Athens, OH. “Odin” completed in 2014 (installed between Olin Hall and the Ho Science center) in collaboration with architect and engineer Daniel Bosia and mathematicians Tomaz Pisanski and Thomas Tucker and supported by the Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute at Colgate University, marked an important turning point in his work. He continues to develop and refine these explorations in digital design and fabrication for municipal, institutional and private clients across the country.