Art asks us to focus on technical, aesthetic, and critical themes. It invokes response, recalls emotions, draws on memory, and encourages us to act. When we exhibit ourselves through creativity, we incite motion in the mind and soul.

Why study Art at Sewanee?

At Sewanee, you’ll have the opportunity to choose from six different disciplines in the art program: digital arts, drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and video. Study documentary, motion, color, material, landscape, and much more.

As an art student at Sewanee, you’ll finish the major with a comprehensive examination that includes the preparation and presentation of a portfolio, participation in a senior exhibition, writing a thesis paper, and undergoing a defense of the portfolio and thesis.

First Destinations: Art Majors

Sewanee graduates secure positions in a variety of fields. Some you would expect, others are a bit of a surprise. Sewanee prepares you for your profession and your passion. Below is a sampling of recent graduates' first jobs.

  • Therapeutic childhood specialist, Helping Hands Home for Children, Austin, Texas.
  • Editorial assistant, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  • Director of advanced media, South Kent School, South Kent, Connecticut.
GRADUATE SCHOOL & PRE-PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS: ART MAJORS

Sewanee graduates enjoy extraordinary acceptance rates to top graduate and pre-professional programs–about 95 percent to law school and over 85 percent to medical school. Below is a sampling of where Sewanee grads continue their education.

  • M.A. in clinical mental health counseling, Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Texas.
  • J.D. Samford University Cumberland School of Law, Birmingham, Alabama.
FELLOWSHIP IN THE ARTS

Students with exceptional promise in performing or studio arts can apply for a Fellowship in the Arts. These fellowships range in value and are renewable for four years.

Chronicler of Loss

Nearly a half-century after leaving his native Tanzania, Sewanee Art Professor Pradip Malde returned—with a big camera and a Guggenheim fellowship—to document lives affected by a widely condemned but culturally entrenched surgical practice.

In March 1970, Pradip Malde, now a member of the art faculty at Sewanee and an internationally acclaimed photographer, left his family home in Arusha, Tanzania, to return to the elite Anglican boarding school in India where he and his younger brother were students. The Malde family enjoyed a comfortable life in Arusha, a place he describes as a cosmopolitan town with a rich cultural and social life among the Anglo-Indian elite of the place. Malde attended an Anglican school in Arusha before being enrolled in 1969 at St. Paul’s School in Darjeeling, India, an international school in the Himalayan foothills that traces its origins back to the British East India Company—the predecessor of the British Raj. Only when he and his brother traveled to Bombay (now Mumbai) in November 1972—the first leg of a planned trip back to Arusha—did he get the first inkling that something had changed.

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A Sampling of Courses

Color, Motion, and Time: Studies in Digital Art, Painting, and Video
Art

This course establishes the fundamentals of visual literacy and communication by considering the relations among color, motion, and time. Students learn the essential technical and theoretical principles of design, structure, materials, and methods as they pertain to digital art, painting, and video. Instruction proceeds through studio assignments, writing exercises, readings, discussions, and critiques. This course introduces students to the principles of artistic production while encouraging understanding of the relationships between form and content, personal expression, and social experience.

ART 102
Drawing from Life
Art

This course explores use of observational drawing techniques as a means for translating three-dimensional realities into two-dimensional drawn images. By observing still lives, structures, landscapes, and live models, students gain heightened sensitivity to the world around them through attentiveness to the visual. In the process, they also become acquainted with various drawing materials. Through studio assignments, exercises, readings, discussions, and critiques, students learn to draw from both life and the imagination, all while honing their observational skills and their facility with drawing media.

ART 259
Seminar in Creativity
Art

This investigation of the creative process requires advanced studio skills and is based on discussion of works-in-progress. Selected readings, participation in critiques, and a semester-long studio project help establish a disciplined and systematic approach to creative practice.

ART 420
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Art

Programs of Study & Related Programs

Requirements for the Major & Minor in Art

Requirements for the Major & Minor in Art History | Website

Requirements for the Minor in Film Studies | Website

Meet some professors

Pradip Malde
pmalde@sewanee.edu

Pradip Malde teaches classes in photography, documentary photography, and electronic media. Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 1980, he has lived and worked as a photographic artist and teacher in Scotland and Tennessee. Malde has exhibited in Europe and the United States, and has works in numerous collections around the world. He is currently working with students and alumni on ways of using photography for community development in Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, and Grundy County, Tennessee.

Professor of Art
Jessica Wohl
jewohl@sewanee.edu

Jessica Wohl is an associate professor of art, teaching drawing, painting, and seminar courses. She received a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and an M.F.A. from the University of Georgia. Her work has been exhibited around the world and is collected by the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sprint-Nextel Corporation, H&R Block World Headquarters, and by numerous private collectors.

Associate Professor of Art
Greg Pond
gpond@sewanee.edu

Greg Pond teaches upper division courses in sculpture, intermedia, and film production. He is an artist, teacher, and researcher working at the intersection of art and digital technologies to make sculpture, video, images, sound, and software. Pond has screened, presented, and exhibited his work at venues in Nashville, Memphis, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Austin, Cairo, Basel, Kingston, and Galway.

Professor of Art
Leslie Todd
letodd@sewanee.edu

Leslie E. Todd received her PhD in Art History from the University of Florida. She works on early modern art history with a specialization in art of colonial Latin America. She investigates how early modern visual practice enacted and upheld the dynamic relationship between metropole and colony that defined Spanish colonialism in the Americas.

Assistant Professor of Art History
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Contact

Jessica Wohl
Associate Professor of Art; chair of Art, Art history, and visual studies

jewohl@sewanee.edu

Studio Art Building 109, Ext. 1256

News & Events

Prof. Malde's publishes: 'From Where Loss Comes'

Professor Pradip Malde's new book From Where Loss Comes explores the practice and customs of female genital mutilation in Tanzania.

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C'04 ART ALUMNUS MARY HALL DEBUTS AIRPORT EXHIBITION

Sewanee Class of 2004 Alumnus and Art Major Mary Stuart Hall recently debuted her year long installation at the Atlanta, Georgia International Airport. City as Site is an exhibition of six exhibiting artists at concourse E in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Atlanta Airport. Hall's installation, near gate E15, is called As the Crow Flies.

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THE 2022 GUARISCO MERIT SCHOLARHIP - APPLY NOW!

The Peter V. Guarico Merit Scholarship in Art provides support to senior Art majors for a year of tuition and summer research and internship travel. Candidates are eligible to apply for the scholarship during their junior year with the announcement of the scholarship recipient made at the end of March.

Apply Now

Floating Needles: Art Seniors Thesis Exhibition

The University Art Gallery and the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies of the University of the South are pleased to Present online exhibitions by the graduating Art majors of 2020.

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Exhibition Venues on Campus
Fostering artistic conversation

Along with performance venues, Sewanee also has several art and exhibition galleries on campus. The University Art Gallery, the Museum Gallery of Archives, and the Carlos Gallery house everything from contemporary art shows to archived work, featuring current students, accomplished alumni, and internationally acclaimed artists.

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European Studies
Ancient Greece & Rome or the Middle Ages & the Renaissance

European Studies is a full semester of study abroad and offers the unique experience of studying in a variety of locations in Europe. Students choose between three academic options: ancient Greece & Rome, Western Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, or Contemporary Europe.

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Tennessee Williams Center
Legacy of the south's favorite playwright

The Tennessee Williams Center provides unique, state-of-the-art facilities for the students and faculty. Created with funds from the estate of Tennessee Williams himself, the center houses a fully equipped 175-seat theatre, a 60-seat studio theatre, a drafting and design studio, a dance studio, costume and scenery studios, and dressing rooms.

On with the show!