Bachelor of Fine Arts - Studio Art - Sculpture

Sculpture at AUArts is a rigorous, experimental program in which students learn to shape the future of three-dimensional art. The curriculum explores everything from welded metal, cast bronze, and carved wood to kinetic installation, performance, and digital fabrication. Here, the object becomes a conversation with space, context, and culture. Whether creating immersive installations or intimate objects, students are supported to push boundaries, find an artistic voice, and engage with the big questions of our time.

AUArts Sculpture is a community of thinkers, makers, and doers. Individual studios for upper-year students, regular group critiques, collaborations with other programs, and gallery exhibitions foster a sense of belonging and healthy creative competition. Faculty and technicians are hands-on and deeply invested in student growth, and visiting artists bring fresh perspectives from across the globe. The environment challenges, supports, and inspires—every day.

Program Overview

Sculpture at AUArts is a deep dive into the possibilities of three-dimensional art, guided by both foundational skill-building and radical experimentation. Beginning with hands-on experience in traditional and new media—working with clay, plaster, wood, metal, found objects, and even electronics—while exploring core methods like additive, reductive, constructive, and reproductive processes.

As progress advances, the art of making multiples (from mold-making to bronze casting) is pursued, and material choices are examined for meaning. Experimentation extends to performance and wearable objects and site-specific installations. Courses are built around active studio projects, critical research, and peer critiques that push toward developing one's own artistic vision and voice.

The program fosters conceptual and practical strategies for building a personal practice—experimentation with methodologies, seriality, language, and play. At the intermediate and advanced levels, students pursue self-directed work, panel critiques, and seminar-style research to sharpen practice and professional readiness.

Program Highlights

• Master All Methods: Learn traditional sculpture (carving, welding, bronze casting) and contemporary approaches (installation, performance, digital fabrication, found objects, wearables).
• Material Exploration: Get hands-on with clay, wood, metal, plaster, and non-traditional media; develop processes for mold-making, replication, and large-scale projects.
• Radical Experimentation: Dive into performance art, site-specific work, social practice, and cross-disciplinary collaborations—push sculpture beyond the pedestal.
• Concept-Driven Practice: Build a practice through research-led courses on methodology, systems, language, and process as content.
• Professional Launchpad: Develop a capstone body of work, refine a portfolio, and gain real-world exhibition experience before graduation.

Learning Outcomes

Graduates of AUArts Sculpture will:

• Employ a range of critical, contextual, and technical perspectives to initiate and complete ambitious, self-directed bodies of work.
• Demonstrate advanced skill with multiple sculptural methods—welding, casting, carving, digital fabrication, installation, and more.
• Think, speak, and write about the work with conceptual and historical fluency.
• Collaborate across disciplines and engage with community, public space, and contemporary issues.
• Exhibit professionalism, adaptability, and the entrepreneurial skills needed for a dynamic creative career.

New! The Bachelor of Fine Arts program now offers emerging secondary concentrations in Comic Studies and Game Design, available as additional areas of focus alongside the primary concentration.