Academics

Four images: person cleans ink from a copper plate, person carves a sculpture in clay, person draws with marker, person draws with charcoal

Refine Your Craft

The Department of Studio Arts offers hands-on courses with small class sizes, providing an exceptional amount of one-on-one attention from faculty within a close-knit and supportive community of creative thinkers and makers.

Studio Arts Major

The BA degree program is designed for students who desire a liberal education and may want to prepare for graduate art school or pursue a career in an art-related field. The program requires the completion of 52 credits

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Studio Arts Minor

Studio Arts' introductory-level courses carry no prerequisites and are open to non-art majors. These courses satisfy the Dietrich School's general education requirement for Creative Work and can launch your minor in Studio Arts.

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Digital Studies and Methods

This certificate program is designed to guide students through the process of gaining their own, deeply engaged, understanding of the ways in which digital technologies affect their lives on a daily basis.

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Resources for current students

Artist-in-Residence Programs

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Featured Courses

Fiber Studio 1 - SA 0150 (31309)

Monday & Wednesday 1:00 -2:40pm

In this introductory course we will explore a range of “choreographies of touch” foundational to fiber art. Techniques covered will include: Needlework (embroidery, beading/sequins embellishment), Looping (crochet, netting), and Weaving (spinning, tapestry weaving). These techniques will be applied in the creation of a final creative project.

Fiber arts have a rich and complex history in all human cultures. Examples of work from historic and contemporary sources, and the position and perception of fiber arts in contemporary cultural debates will be examined. Lectures, readings, and discussions will provide exposure to key ideas about contemporary art practice as well as providing historical frameworks to contextualize classwork.

Instructor: José Santiago Pérez - jsp137@pitt.edu

Image: Lindsay McShane

SA 0150

Featured Courses

Computational Art Practices 02: DrawBot - SA 0171 (29720)

Monday & Wednesday 6:00 - 7:40pm

Learn to create graphic designs, automate photo manipulations, generate animated type + graphic assets for web and projection, plus many other creative possibilities using python programming with the DrawBot app. Referencing a breadth of practitioners from Nam June Paik to Cory Archangel to Mariko Mori, this studio course will assist students in developing multifaceted approaches to art-based coding and digital production design. Students will critically engage with and explore the rich possibilities of digital remix cultures on the internet and blend the technological with less conventional approaches for analog simulations of the digital.

Instructor: Triton Mobley - triton.mobley@pitt.edu

SA 0171

Featured Courses

Photos Studio 2 - SA 1280 (31311)

Monday & Wednesday 10:00 - 11:40am

Photo Studio 2 builds on the skills, ideas, and approaches introduced in Photo Studio 1 while expanding the possibilities of what photography can be. Students will explore different ways of making and working with photographic images through a range of processes, materials, scales, and forms—including cyanotype, risograph printing, image and text, and sculptural approaches. The second half of the semester is dedicated to an independently developed final project, giving students the opportunity to follow their own interests and develop a more personal approach to both the form and content of their work.

Instructor: Melissa Catanese - MAC527@pitt.edu

Images: Asking About Desire ©Shala Miller

SA 1280

Featured Courses

Print Studio: Screenprint - SA 1365 (31312)

Tuesday & Thursday 10:00 - 11:40am

This course approaches screenprinting as a medium of artistic expression. Students will learn screen preparation, printing techniques, and a range of hand-drawn, photographic, and digital stencil processes while exploring color, layering, mark, value, and texture. Through both editioned and experimental approaches, students will develop personal imagery and investigate the creative possibilities of screenprinting on paper and beyond. As the semester progresses, students will build an increasingly complex body of work and consider how screenprint can expand into one-of-a-kind works, installation, and other forms.

Instructor: Sean Morrissey – seanpmorrissey@pitt.edu

Images: Emily Mattise, It’s a metaphor for pizza, 2025 + Claire Fukichi, Birch Wood Forest, 2023

SA 1365

Featured Courses

Performance Art - SA 1390 (28543)

Tuesday & Thursday 3:00 - 4:40pm

Drag is that glittery, fabulous, unequivocally queer genre of performance that is known to dazzle, inspire, or terrify its audiences. To see drag as a serious object of intellectual inquiry shows us how politics and identities become aestheticized. This new course will explore the way that drag has historically involved fantasy as a mechanism for reworking the body and identity within queer subcultures. Critical conversations will take place alongside a studio component, allowing students to research performance as an embodied practice. This will involve learning and applying theories of movement, costuming, makeup, and more - to the development of a staged drag performance.

Instructors: Scott Andrew – scottandrew@pitt.edu and John Musser – jjm183@pitt.edu

SA 1390

Beyond the classroom

Study Abroad

Many Studio Arts students study at the SACI Art School in Florence. SACI provides a stimulating educational experience that draws upon the rich cultural resources of both past and present Italy.

Go Global

Student sits in a large concrete cylinder sketching the landscape

Wyoming Field Study

The Wyoming Field Study is a collaborative program offered by the University Honors College and taught by the Department of Studio Arts. The program is a three-credit, two-week intensive field study that takes place in southeastern Wyoming.

Get in the field

Student leads a guided tour of a gallery

Internships

An internship can give you a closer look at working in a particular field, help you gain a competitive edge, help you make contacts in the marketplace, and provide credits toward your degree.

Build your career