Daniel Kojo Schrade

Recent and Upcoming Courses

• Vagabonding Images: Introductory and Intermediate Studio Art Practice

  This course invites students to investigate the indistinct borders between two-dimensional art, multi-media art installations, and performative art forms. With a focus on abstraction and non-representational studio art practice, students will learn how to develop an individual approach to a subject matter through research, assigned readings, and digital image lectures. While exploring visual culture from a transcultural perspective, we will as well address issues such as composition and color theory.

• Large Scale Drawing: Intermediate Drawing Projects

  This course will focus on expanded definitions and practices of marking space. The course intent is to contextualize and investigate a wide variety of drawing methods including more traditional practices (marks on paper), as well as spatially focused practices; for example, marking the landscape, and process oriented approaches including the body, action and the passage of time. This course will be built around three guided, yet self-directed projects. Studio work will be divided into three equal parts - Research (reading, writing, looking), Making (drawing, collecting, experimenting), and Critique.

• Scavenging Color & Light: Introduction to Representational Painting and Collective, Abstract Work

  This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of painting, such as composition, value, and color. Students will learn about material and the technical issues of painting. Drawings will often be produced in tandem with paintings in order to illuminate visual ideas. We will work with water based and oil based paint on various surfaces. Besides creating individual paintings, students will collectively prepare and work on large-scale canvases. This course will develop from individual representational set-ups towards collective, abstract work. Regular class critiques will assist in examining formal composition principles. The course will focus on the work of non-western contemporary artists and we will discuss historic work examples from a post-colonial perspective. Readings and one paper on an artist to be assigned will be part of this class. Assignments require students to work independently outside of class.

• The Way Things Go: Advanced Visual Art Projects

  Geared towards studio art concentrators in their third and fourth year, this course will offer space to explore production and discourse strategies concerning interdisciplinary visual art productions on an upper Division II and Division III level. The goal of this course is to conceptualize, develop, present and reflect one larger project in relation to contemporary, western and non-western art productions. Modern and postmodern movements will be introduced as a means of contextualizing studio work. Classes will consist of individual and group critiques, and studio work. Additional class time will be spent reviewing readings, lectures, films and exhibitions. Students will have to present a paper on an artist to be assigned.

• Walking the Line: Drawing Tutorial

  This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of visual art in general and drawing in particular. Focusing on perception, composition, line and materiality, students will draw from objects, the human figure, interior and exterior spaces, and from imagined sources. We will explore a variety of materials and work small and large scale. Regular class critiques will assist in developing evaluation skills of work in progress, and in analyzing formal composition principles. Assigned readings and one research project, contextualizing work and life of an artist, will be a segment of this course. Students will be expected to maintain an 'active' sketchbook.

• Multimedia Crossings: Intersections in Painting, Performance and Installation Art

  William Pope L., Yinka Shonibare, Ghada Amer, Gabriel Orozco, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Wangechi Mutu, Anish Kapoor, David Hammons, Louise Bourgeois, Jean Tinguely, El Anatsui, Hannah Hoch. Since the 1960s, the variety of an increasing choice of media has created more diverse working fields for artists. While this may make it easier for more artists to find areas of expression, it may also be more difficult for students to map their own artistic language. This course is designed for students who are starting to develop their own personality as artists. Experimenting with materials, techniques, and styles, on the basis of collective readings and written personal statements, will be central to this class. Readings, assigned slide-presentations and class discussions will be informed by the work of non-western contemporary artists. Students will be expected to complete assigned projects as well as independent projects outside of class time and to write and present one seminar paper.