BFA Ceramics students develop a strong foundation in the technical skills and ideas important for today’s artists, designers, and educators.
At MassArt, students majoring in Ceramics dig into the foundational techniques, skills, and ideas that are critical to today’s artists, designers, and educators working with clay. These include handbuilding, wheelworking, moldmaking, glazing, and kiln-firing, as well as work in ceramic casting, architectural ceramics, new technologies, and clay and glaze materials.
Students work in a wheelworking class, down the hall from the Kiln Room in the Collins building.
The Collins building houses expansive ceramics studios
Students load a kiln in MassArt’s 3,000 square-foot Kiln Room
Seminar and advanced studio courses focus on developing a professional portfolio, and emphasize critical thinking, research, lectures, and critiques. Students also further enrich their learning with visiting artists and on field trips.
The program provides students with the practical and theoretical preparation they need to pursue ceramics as a dedicated vocation, or to develop their ceramic practice as a part of their larger artistic work.
Students are required to take a professional practices course that prepares them for life after MassArt, and seniors document and present their work in a final thesis.
BFA Learning Outcomes
Students who complete the Ceramics BFA program are expected to be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes.
- Communication Skills (written & verbal)
- Studio Practice (material safety, craftsmanship, studio habits, personal research, design principles, community & collaboration)
- History of the Field (traditional, historical, contemporary)
- Connection of the field and art to the world and society
- Agency (risk-taking, personal vocabulary, )
- Analyze and “Read” works of art (able to read and analyze objects in the world, including their own art)
- Cultural Humility (not privileging and one culture or POV)
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