Cranbrook Academy of Art

Cranbrook Academy of Art

This legacy of excellence and innovation lives on at Cranbrook every day. It’s literally all around us: the Cranbrook campus is 315 acres of rolling, verdant landscape dotted with the art of Carl Milles, Mark di Suvero, and Michael Hall, and defined by the brilliant planning and architecture of Eliel Saarinen, the famed Finnish architect who helped bring Cranbrook to life. In later years, Saarinen’s buildings have been supplemented by masterworks by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, Rafael Moneo, and Steven Holl, among others. Not surprisingly, the entire campus has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Academy shares this remarkable home with two other institutions: the Cranbrook Institute of Science and the Cranbrook Schools. Along with dozens of the Schools’ teachers, the Academy’s Artists-in-Residence all reside on campus alongside many of our students. We work here, we live here, and we play here. In other words, Cranbrook is far more than just a place to go to school; it is a community. Whether you are making art in your studio (all Academy of Art students are assigned their own personal studio space), swimming at the Williams Natatorium, attending a lecture in deSalle auditorium, or simply relaxing along the Triton pools in front of the Cranbrook Art Museum (where the work of Academy students and leading artists are both on display), you’ll find Cranbrook is an environment that has been specifically tailored to support your growth as an artist, and as a productive member of society.

Departmental Philosophy

2D Design (Graphic Design)

The 2D Department is the graduate graphic design department of Cranbrook Academy of Art. The department is actively pursuing work at the intersection of design and art. Traditional forms of design, activities where the designer acts as a conduit for the communication of a third-party message, and non-traditional forms of design, activities where the designer's agency is foregrounded, are explored in the program. In both of these approaches to design, the emphasis in the department is placed on the experimental. Work being produced in the department falls on a continuum from book, poster and letterform design, through installation, social practices and contemporary art. The results of these investigations often exist at the threshold between design and art. In our conception, the designer is a powerful cultural agent able to seamlessly engage in many forms of cultural production.

The Academic Focus of the Department
Nearly all departmental activities are designed to support the act of making. Whether it is in critique, reading group, critical studies or individual desk critiques, our departmental focus is on the notion that design is idea objectified and meaning embodied. Theory, writing and criticism all play critically important roles in the department; however, they are in place primarily to support the process of objectification and making. This focus is articulated in our weekly structure, where the lion's share of our time is dedicated to studio practice. Simply put, this means we make work (together), discuss this work and consider its cultural implications.

The Designer-In-Residence, His Work and Your Relationship to Both
Cranbrook Academy of Art as an institution is based on a model unique in American education. Each of the ten departments at the Academy is led by an Artist-in-Residence. The Artist-in-Residence is charged with mentoring each of the members in his or her studio. In the 2D department, Elliott Earls works intimately with each student to craft a course of study unique to the individual. In addition to the larger Cranbrook studio each student is deeply involved in Elliott's professional practice. An important and programmed part of the curriculum involves a sustained dialog between student and mentor concerning both parties' work. The mentoring process in the 2D department is developed further through biweekly mentoring dinners held at Elliott Earls's home.

Cranbrook 3D Design is the leading program in America for emerging intellectual and artistic voices in design. The department is an experimental laboratory to explore human needs as expressed in the furniture and products we live with. As the field of post-industrial design evolves, there is increasing recognition that human needs are multi-dimensional – they can be practical, emotional, intellectual, psychological, social, real or imagined. Experimental design ideas are finding new audiences as our discourse overlaps with the crafts, fine arts, architecture, and social sciences. As design’s audience expands, the central question of human needs remains, but with a wide lens on the aesthetic and critical potentials for a new kind of authorship that is no longer tethered to the constraints of “mass” design. Ultimately, it is designers and artists themselves who will position their work within this changing landscape of ideas, audiences, and industries. It is imperative, then, that they understand their cultural context, their methods, and the intentions of their work.

Architecture

Over the past 30 years, the Architecture Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art has developed a reputation for questioning the boundaries of architecture as a discipline. In a world where information and conversation are no longer restricted by physical boundaries, architecture is no longer restricted by its traditional disciplinary boundaries. Yet as boundaries become more fluid, the architectural delineation of boundaries becomes more significant, not less. The Department of Architecture attempts to delineate the "core work" of architects and the boundaries of architecture, artifice and discourse. The education of architects in the department reinforces the understanding that the work of architecture by its nature is always "in response to." No matter how its boundaries are re-defined, architecture still provides shelter, erects structures, organizes movement as well as ideas, stimulates perception and engages culture. At Cranbrook, the architect is engaged in, not estranged from, the profession of architecture.

Program

The studio never stands still. The open structure of our program allows students and the Artist-in-Residence to work around the clock. The studio is the essential core around which everything evolves. It is a lively place where exchange continually happens: around the kitchen table, in the hallways, in the studio, at crits, in reading groups. We are engaged with what we do and take equal interest everything that happens around us.

As a group, we have only two formal mandatory gatherings a week. Essential to the program are weekly critiques where a few students present their work to all members of the department and interested students from other areas of the school. We take the time to discuss the work thoroughly, indentify successes and deficiencies and suggest how the work could proceed. This occurs twice a semester for each student. We also run a weekly open forum to discuss relevant subjects—mostly initiated by the Artist-in-Residence, but often conducted by students—as a response to what is happening in the studios.

In addition, students have access to the Artist-in-Residence through optional individual meetings that can occur on a weekly basis. Each year, we have about six visiting artists, critics, curators and thinkers coming in from all over the world. They broaden the texture of the program, bring in new points of view and establish an essential link to the outside world. We take trips to other parts of the country and the world to see, learn and build on our engagement with the broad context of our practice. These trips occur at least once a year, sometimes more- often with financial support of individuals and foundations.

Departmental Philosophy

Lets suppose a gradient between absolute utility and absolute art: the pure extremes are only in our imagination; human products always incorporate both utility and art in varying mixtures, and no object is conceivable the admixture of both. George Kubler, The Shape of Time.

Why ceramics; why now? As one of the few materially specific departments at Cranbrook we take our position seriously. We think through objects and discuss them in their manifold expressions, appreciate the subversive qualities inherent to them and strategize their position in the world. We understand that no object is an island—the crucial question is that of context: how and where do we place these objects; with what movements and why? Always why.

We believe in the heterogeneity of ceramics and intelligently use its position currently and historically to engage with the world. The fact that ceramics still holds a central position in the world of materials—natural or synthetic—is one of its great strengths and promises. We utilize and make the most of this potential; the lack of autonomy for the material coupled with its wide-ranging history is fertile ground from which we can ask the questions worth considering.

The rich history of ceramics is the departmental backbone. We work from this position, question it and build upon it. We do so without limiting the discourse to a question of ceramics exclusively; often the work and conversation directs us into areas beyond the material-specificity of clay. As a material it’s limitless: it can be dismantled, messed-up, re-hashed, and re-configured, but never without considering context. The question of placement and relation is essential to what we do; the material serves as a way in- at times we find other ways out.

Fiber

Fiber is an ever-shifting practice that is grounded in the centuries old traditions, forms, and materials of textile production and manipulation. As artists, our intimate relationship with the traditional forms of fiber interacts with the expanse of contemporary practice in art, craft, and design, challenging the definitions of each. Whether the work we produce manifests itself as a sculptural form, garment, functional object, tapestry weaving, socially engaged community practice, digital output, or something else we cannot currently name, we embrace it as a mode of exploration.

The Fiber Department encompasses this exploration by questioning what is produced in each student’s studio. The process of questioning traditions, definitions, working methods, and basic assumptions about art and society challenges students to experiment, examine, and grow. The essential question being, “What is the relationship between materials, form, process, and the content explored by the artist?” Intrinsic to this process of questioning is an awareness of contemporary issues, historic precedents, and an understanding of professional practices.

The ultimate goal of graduate study is to build an individualized practice that can sustain each student’s development well beyond their time at the Academy. In order to attain this goal, students must be highly motivated, inquisitive, and open to discussion, challenge, and experimentation. Each student brings unique insights and skills. That diversity of viewpoint contributes to the opportunities available for the development of each member of the community.

Metalsmithing

The starting point for the work within the department is a healthy mistrust of the idea that the creation of certain kinds of artistic objects requires the use of specific materials; and that the choice of materials is prescribed, or determined by tradition and artistic conventions. Of course, a thorough familiarity with established techniques, materials, and the traditions of making is a precondition for responsible artistic work within the field. The program is focused on questioning the meaning and value of such techniques and materials through the process and practice of making, i.e., an exploration of their significance and possibilities within the context of both current artistic trends and movements, and in relation to developments in the wider context of contemporary society.

Offering a wide range of available material and technical options, the studio of each student ideally functions as a research space, a laboratory, in which knowledge and curiosity jointly fuel the search for new possibilities of making, and for ways of expanding the boundaries of the field.

Broadly international in outlook and orientation, the department is focused on innovation through tradition, urging students to move beyond their limitations. Through critiques and exchange within the department, as well through dialogue and interaction with international scholars, artists, and craftspeople, students are able to refine and extend their conceptual and technical talents and abilities.

The department offers a research environment in which to move beyond traditional skills and techniques. Students are encouraged to explore ways in which they can act as innovators in the fields of art and craft. Through individual challenge, exploration and development, the program offers each student the opportunity to develop a highly-distinctive approach to craft, a personal language, and a thorough awareness of current practices in the world of art and craft, as well an extensive professional network, and knowledge of the wider context in which to function as an independent artist.

Painting

Contemporary painting is a rich and complex activity. While existing in a continuum with centuries of painting, craft, styles, and issues, contemporary painting may encompass media that go far beyond the brush. Elements of sculpture, photography, printmaking, collage, or writing may well be part of the painter's craft. Yet, paradoxically, some provocative current painting makes use only of traditional materials and approaches. The contemporary painter must engage in a quest to locate herself or himself in today's multi-faceted context.  

The painting program at Cranbrook stresses self-exploration and independent work in an atmosphere of ongoing critical discussion involving social, political, and artistic concerns. It is grounded in the assumption that each student arrives exceptionally motivated and committed to creating art. The students themselves give form and vitality to the working environment through their energy, diversity, and interaction.

Photography

The Photography Department at Cranbrook cultivates artists to practice in a manner that is both non-traditional and interdisciplinary. Critical discussions originate from issues in contemporary photography that are inspired by documentary, tableau, or performative practices. Using these dialogues as a starting point, we look to historic as well as contemporary works to assess the direction of the medium. We evaluate production value, content and its formal translation, and the nature of practice as we establish models of critique and production that can be sustained beyond the academy and into the profession.

At the MFA program in photography at Cranbrook, approximately 15 students work closely with their artist-in-residence to find their subject matter, explore the function of form, and produce a refined and sustainable practice that generates artworks. In addition to regularly scheduled group critiques, the artist-in-residence engages the students in individual meetings and assigned readings. Part of the curriculum is generated by the students as they are expected to do field and literary research throughout their tenure at Cranbrook. Each student shares her field and literary research with her peers by conducting a seminar in which she leads her cohort through a field trip and selected readings. The program is supplemented by regular visits from outside artists and critics.

Print Media

The Print Media Department is dedicated to innovative approaches to traditional and new print media. The philosophy of the Print Media Department builds upon past and present conceptual models for printmaking in order to envision new possibilities for what a print can or will be in the future. Part of the department’s approach is based on the historic role of the print as a Democratic Voice. Since print processes allow for the potential to make multiples in an abundant and relatively affordable quantity, prints have often served as a democratic voice to enable the communication of ideas and images to a wide audience. This establishes a traditional precedent for Print Media that includes issues and processes related to mass media, commerce, and exchange in which the culture and the times are questioned, examined, or re-interpreted through personal commentary or narrative.

Other possibilities are offered by a modernist concept of the print as an Original Multiple, in which a specified number of "originals" are produced from a fixed matrix. This fixed matrix is not necessarily limited to a plate, block, stencil, or stone, but can be interpreted as a process, act, or thing that creates a reproducible record of its own making. On the other hand, Post-modernism helped to define Print Media as the perfect contemporary media for challenging the very notion of originality. Prints can now delight in their status as reproductions, copies, facsimiles, echoes, simulations, repeats, sequels, etc. – all bearing an uncanny resemblance to the questionable idea of an original.

The department is characterized by an interdisciplinary, expansive approach to art making that incorporates disparate elements of many other disciplines – traditional printmaking, painting, drawing, graphics, photography, sculpture, video and sonic arts, digital processes, performance, etc. – to be used as an open framework for building new visions that will define the future of Print Media.

The Print Media Department is a community of individuals from diverse backgrounds that enthusiastically consent to work together and contribute their efforts toward a shared purpose, which is to research, discuss and produce print-based work that will define a leading position within the vanguard of contemporary art practice. The department seeks applicants that are creative thinkers, articulate speakers and, most of all, ardent workers. The Print Media department is a mentorship program where students “get” in proportion to what they “give”; where self-motivated, independent-minded, mature, and responsible artists/citizens work together for mutual artistic growth within a constructive but demanding learning environment.

The department implements a flexible organizational structure to facilitate an intensive studio practice for each member of the program. We operate on a schedule of weekly student-run critiques and reading groups, the opportunity to meet weekly with the Artist-in-Residence for individual critiques and informal discussion of work in progress, plus mid-term and end-of-the-semester group critiques led by the Artist-in-Residence. A recommended reading list based on selected topics pertinent to the Department is introduced at the beginning of each year to encourage thought and discussion. Recent seminar topics have focused on the “Culture of the Copy,” the “Real and the Unreal,” the “Democratic Voice,” and “Utopia/Dystopia.” Visits by notable artists, critics, and curators from the print world are scheduled throughout the year, and departmental field trips are planned to augment Academy-sponsored programs including the annual thematic Humanities and Critical Studies lecture series and an active schedule of Cranbrook Art Museum exhibitions and events.

Randy Bolton "Rise & Fall" 2004, 2-panel digital print on canvas each panel is 81” x 102”  

The Print Media Department is located within two adjacent buildings. The department occupies two floors in the Academy Administration building. A cluster of semi-private studios for students, a small computer lab, a critique room, and a kitchen occupy the first floor. The lower level houses recently renovated print shop facilities for water-based screenprinting, intaglio, lithography, and letterpress processes. Additional studios and a large, communal workspace are located across the street in the Lone Pine building. The Academy’s professionally staffed and well-equipped Central Media Lab, Wood Shop and Library further enhance the department’s resources. The metro Detroit business and manufacturing community offers many possibilities for outsourcing of work if required.

Sculpture

The Academy functions as a creative bell jar, an environment to explore, define, and develop potential. The process of questioning is the personal conduit to the comprehension of our social, political, and moral environment. Sculpture is produced through the continual evolution between idea and form that embodies this spirit of inquiry. The Sculpture Department can be defined as an attempt to instigate changing perceptual experiences through three dimensions. The intent is to learn about one’s own work through criticism, dialogue, and interaction with individuals pursuing related goals with equal intensity. Artists work within a context delineated by the cultural, ideological, and political systems of their time. A critical grasp of historical issues and iconography is essential to extend and provoke the parameters of contemporary art.

The departmental emphasis is upon studio production with a full-time commitment to the expansion of ideas. The curriculum centers around individual and group critiques with the head of the department, visiting artists, curators, and critics. All students are given reading and writing assignments, to research and explore contemporary art issues. These readings and writings mirror issues raised by visiting artists, the Artists-in-Residence, and student concerns.

Ref: http://www.cranbrookart.edu/

Cranbrook Academy of Art
Visual Arts, 39221 Woodward Avenue
PO Box 801, Bloomfield Hills, MICHIGAN 48303-0801
1-877-GO-Cranbrook