Special Topics for Summer 2026

**cross-listed w/ CRAM-303, INDD-330
Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00am-3:50pm
Instructor: Justin Novak
Topic: Factory

Through the medium of ceramics, this studio class seeks to explore the poetic resonance of small-scale production. Taking inspiration from the efficiency of industrial process, the ethos of labour movements past and present, and Andy Warhol’s legendary experimental studio of the same name, our explorations will seek to bridge contemporary art’s culture of inquiry with the mass appeal of commercial practices. Although production will be confined to modest-sized editions that are either “limited” (numbered as with an edition of prints) or “unlimited” (whereby the extent of production is unspecified and indefinite), emphasis will ultimately be placed on the potential circulation and societal function of those multiples. Surface design and the use of plaster molds and slip-casting processes will be the key methods employed, but a diversity of other techniques and approaches may be integrated with these. Students taking the class at an advanced level might also consider specific entrepreneurial strategies and the benefits of collaboration with local community.

**cross-listed w/ CRAM-208, INDD-330
Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00am-3:50pm
Instructor: Justin Novak
Topic: Factory

Through the medium of ceramics, this studio class seeks to explore the poetic resonance of small-scale production. Taking inspiration from the efficiency of industrial process, the ethos of labour movements past and present, and Andy Warhol’s legendary experimental studio of the same name, our explorations will seek to bridge contemporary art’s culture of inquiry with the mass appeal of commercial practices. Although production will be confined to modest-sized editions that are either “limited” (numbered as with an edition of prints) or “unlimited” (whereby the extent of production is unspecified and indefinite), emphasis will ultimately be placed on the potential circulation and societal function of those multiples. Surface design and the use of plaster molds and slip-casting processes will be the key methods employed, but a diversity of other techniques and approaches may be integrated with these. Students taking the class at an advanced level might also consider specific entrepreneurial strategies and the benefits of collaboration with local community.

PNTG 316 SU01 – Painting: Special Topics (3 credits)
Term 1: Wednesdays and Fridays 1:00-3:50pm

PNTG 316 SU02 – Painting: Special Topics (3 credits)
Term 1: Wednesdays and Fridays 9:00-11:50am

Instructor: Rebecca Brewer
Topic: Is all painting embarrassing?

This course will join together various discourses on the theme of embarrassment as it pertains to art-making and specifically painting. Difficult to define, embarrassment somewhat defies intellectual investigation. Meanwhile, the topic opens up a highly varied space in the realm of emotion. This course will explore this undetermined concept through imagery, discussions, readings, interviews and more that I find embarrassment-adjacent. Though commonly associated with negative affects such as disgust and shame, embarrassment can equally often lead into the more ambiguous regions of cringe and humour. Arguably, embarrassment is a useful starting point in the pursuit of self-knowledge and the acceptance of life’s absurdity.

The themes raised are intended to deepen student understanding of artistic motivation and creative processes, and to provide insight into meaning production in art beyond the aesthetic.

Please note: students are in no way obligated to engage in emotional processing or self-disclosure in this course. This is fundamentally a studio course and participants are welcome to determine their own relationship to the subject matter when developing their painting practice.

Cc/ COMD-325-SU01C
Term 1: Wednesdays and Fridays 1:00-3:50pm
Instructor: Liz Knox
Topic: Independent Publishing

In this studio based art course, students are introduced to the craft and conceptual foundations of artists’ books and bookbinding. This course presents an introduction to materials, formats, archival concerns, and binding techniques. Weekly discussions centre on the book as a distinct contemporary art form, while technical demonstrations will provide experience in hand-binding methods.

Assignments will reinforce the interdependent relationship between form, materiality, and content.

Term 1: Wednesdays and Fridays 1:00-3:50pm, in-person
Instructor: TBA
Topic: 2D Digital Practice: Image + Mediation

This course provides students with a core understanding of key software and tools used in 2D based digital image production, focusing on image-making processes that bridge traditional and contemporary art practices. Grounded in the concept of remediation—the reimagining of content through shifts in media and format—students explore how digital processes influence the ways artists reshape, reinterpret, and extend established creative methods. Participants will develop essential skills for conceptualizing and rendering 2D digital works, including creating, scanning, formatting, and processing both vector and raster images for digital display, art printing, and publication.

Coursework may include experience with a range of digitally automated tools such as plotters, laser engravers, digital printers, CNC routers, and other computer-aided drawing systems as extensions of drawing, mark-making, and print workflows. Through demonstrations, discussions, and hands-on studio practice, students build both technical fluency and critical responsiveness, examining how digital mediation and material choices shape artistic intent. Rather than treating machines as neutral instruments, students consider how digital practices create a dynamic dialogue between concept, process, and image.

Course Learning Objectives:

• Demonstrate an awareness of contemporary artists and practices that engage with digital fabrication tools.
• Develop proficiency in 2D digital image creation, rendering, and iterative experimentation through various software applications.
• Format images effectively for digital display, art printing, and publication, with attention to resolution, color profiles, and file types.
• Gain hands-on experience with digital fabrication tools, including equipment in the Digital Output Center and Digital Fabrication Lab.
• Engage in an iterative making process using digital fabrication tools, reflecting on how tools shape and respond to artistic decisions.
• Use digital technologies to support artistic inquiry, experimentation, and creative development.
• Learn to visualize and communicate intent through renderings and output.
• Critically integrate open-source and proprietary technologies into broader creative and conceptual practices.

Term 1: Wednesdays and Fridays 1:00-3:50pm, in-person
Instructor: TBA
Topic: 3D Digital Practice: Form + Fabrication

This course investigates the role of digital technologies in expanding 3D based creative approaches to generate forms, object making, and material fabrication. Through hands-on work with 3D design software, participants develop essential skills in conceptualizing, modeling, and producing digitally fabricated works. Students engage with key software and fabrication tools, integrating these methods into their individual studio practices. Grounded in the concept of remediation – the reimagining of content through shifts in media and format – the course examines how digital systems reshape, reinterpret, and extend approaches to materiality, construction, and spatial design. Coursework may include experience with CAD (computer-aided design), object scanning, and working with digital fabrication tools such as CNC routers, laser cutters, 3D printers, and robotic arms.

Through demonstrations, discussions, and hand on studio practice, students engage directly with these technologies, developing both technical fluency and creative responsiveness. Emphasis is placed on thinking through tools—encouraging students to examine how digital processes and material choices shape artistic intent. Rather than treating machines as neutral instruments, students consider how digital fabrication practices create a dynamic exchange between concept, process, and material outcome.

Course Learning Objectives

• Demonstrate an awareness of contemporary artists who utilize digital fabrication in their work.
• Develop proficiency in 3D modeling, rendering, and prototyping using a range of digital software tools.
• Gain hands-on experience with 3D printers, scanners, laser cutters, and CNC routers in the Digital Fabrication Lab.
• Engage in an iterative making process using digital fabrication tools, reflecting on how these technologies shape and respond to artistic decisions.
• Apply digital software for both design development and artistic exploration.
• Visualize and effectively communicate design intent through 3D rendering and physical output.
• Critically integrate open-source and proprietary technologies in ways that support and expand creative thinking and artistic intent.

Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:00-3:50pm
Instructor: Chelsea O’Byrne
Topic: The Observational Eye

This course will focus on developing observational drawing, writing and sketchbook-keeping methods to translate your unique point of view into your illustration style. Drawing from real life, narrative and the imagination, students will create a body of process work that combines approaches to observing and translating the world with practical illustration applications. This class will be focused on traditional media, but some use of digital interfaces is welcome.

Embracing a sketchbook practice as a way of observing and processing life, the delivery method of this class will combine field trips, life drawing, real-world illustration assignments, and building personal research methodologies.

Course learning objectives:

• Create a sketchbook using a wide range of mini-assignments geared towards building a unique illustration style and point of view
• Field trips and life drawing exercises will build drawing skills and approaches to translating life into illustrated works
• Students will be encouraged to work with materials that are new to them
• Students will experiment with methodologies for building an illustration research practice that combines observation, inquiry and reflection
• Students will identify their goals as illustrators and approaches to translating their interests into real-world applications
• Students will engage with emerging dialogues in artistic research and contemporary illustration
• Students will develop critical faculties to investigate the relationship between contemporary illustration practice, Decolonization and the climate crisis

**cross-listed w/ ANIM-350
Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00-11:50am
Topic: Life drawing, gesture and short poses

Term 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00-11:50am
Instructor: Sophia Zarders
Topic: Portraiture + Illustration

This course will introduce students to portraiture as a genre within illustration. Through this course, students will apply traditional and digital skills to portray the human figure effectively and creatively. Assignments and exercises will explore the function of portraiture within different illustrative fields, including editorial, educational, self-expression and character design. Class discussions and lectures will cover the politics of representation, contemporary issues of portraiture, and analyzing historical and contemporary figurative artists within illustration.

Cc/ILUS 208 SU01

Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 1:00-3:50pm 
Instructor: Chelsea O’Byrne
Topic: The Observational Eye

Description:
This course will focus on developing observational drawing, writing and sketchbook-keeping methods to translate your unique point of view into your illustration style. Drawing from real life, narrative and the imagination, students will create a body of process work that combines approaches to observing and translating the world with practical illustration applications. This class will be focused on traditional media, but some use of digital interfaces is welcome. Embracing a sketchbook practice as a way of observing and processing life, the delivery method of this class will combine field trips, life drawing, real-world illustration assignments, and building personal research methodologies.
 
Course learning objectives:
• Create a sketchbook using a wide range of mini-assignments geared towards building a unique illustration style and point of view
• Field trips and life drawing exercises will build drawing skills and approaches to translating life into illustrated works
• Students will be encouraged to work with materials that are new to them
• Students will experiment with methodologies for building an illustration research practice that combines observation, inquiry and reflection
• Students will identify their goals as illustrators and approaches to translating their interests into real-world applications
• Students will engage with emerging dialogues in artistic research and contemporary illustration
• Students will develop critical faculties to investigate the relationship between contemporary illustration practice, Decolonization and the climate crisis

Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00 – 11:50am
Topic: Practicing Neighbourly Responsibility: Water Systems
Instructor: Laura Kozak, Jean Chisholm

Learning within the context of place – that is, within active social, institutional and ecological dynamics on unceded territory – how might we collectively determine our learning space; critique and trouble hierarchical and exploitive structures; and take up the work of neighbourly and place-based responsibility? Drawing from mutual aid practices and community stewardship models that respond to the immediate needs, concerns and capacities of a community in conjunction with social movements demanding transformative change, this class is intended to be emergent and responsive to the needs and pace of community work. Together and with neighbours and existing community networks, we will ask:

What are our responsibilities, reciprocities and commitments to land?
How can we as individuals and also as a collective come alongside the work of community stewards and place-based knowledge holders? What can each of us offer? What would a creative practice look like if it were in service of relationships?

The focus of this class is on water through the lens of place-specific watersheds; interconnected systems; and as a force of resistance and resurgence. The outcomes of this course will draw from students’ own experiences in combination with contextual and community-based initiatives.

**cross-listed Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00 – 11:50am
Topic: Practicing Neighbourly Responsibility: Water Systems
Instructor: Laura Kozak, Jean Chisholm

Learning within the context of place – that is, within active social, institutional and ecological dynamics on unceded territory – how might we collectively determine our learning space; critique and trouble hierarchical and exploitive structures; and take up the work of neighbourly and place-based responsibility? Drawing from mutual aid practices and community stewardship models that respond to the immediate needs, concerns and capacities of a community in conjunction with social movements demanding transformative change, this class is intended to be emergent and responsive to the needs and pace of community work. Together and with neighbours and existing community networks, we will ask:

What are our responsibilities, reciprocities and commitments to land?
How can we as individuals and also as a collective come alongside the work of community stewards and place-based knowledge holders? What can each of us offer? What would a creative practice look like if it were in service of relationships?

The focus of this class is on water through the lens of place-specific watersheds; interconnected systems; and as a force of resistance and resurgence. The outcomes of this course will draw from students’ own experiences in combination with contextual and community-based initiatives.

Term 1 only: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00 – 3:50pm
Topic: Practicing Neighbourly Responsibility: Water Systems
Instructor: Laura Kozak, Jean Chisholm

Learning within the context of place – that is, within active social, institutional and ecological dynamics on unceded territory – how might we collectively determine our learning space; critique and trouble hierarchical and exploitive structures; and take up the work of neighbourly and place-based responsibility? Drawing from mutual aid practices and community stewardship models that respond to the immediate needs, concerns and capacities of a community in conjunction with social movements demanding transformative change, this class is intended to be emergent and responsive to the needs and pace of community work. Together and with neighbours and existing community networks, we will ask:

What are our responsibilities, reciprocities and commitments to land?
How can we as individuals and also as a collective come alongside the work of community stewards and place-based knowledge holders? What can each of us offer? What would a creative practice look like if it were in service of relationships?

The focus of this class is on water through the lens of place-specific watersheds; interconnected systems; and as a force of resistance and resurgence. The outcomes of this course will draw from students’ own experiences in combination with contextual and community-based initiatives.

Term 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:30 – 7:20pm, online
Instructor: Miriam Libicki
Topic: First-Person Graphic Narrative

Why do explorations of identity or lived experience and sequential art go together so often? From BAREFOOT GEN (an eyewitness account of the Hiroshima bombing) introducing manga to North America, to MAUS bringing comix mainstream (and remaining controversial 30 years later) to the modern movements of confessional webcomics and graphic medicine, graphic narratives may be the strongest medium for conveying true and intimate stories. In this class we will examine the question from historical, psychological, cultural and visual theory perspectives, and investigate new pathways for the self in sequential art going forward.

Course Learning Objectives:

Students should gain an understanding of the depth and breadth of graphic memoir published in North America, Japan and beyond. Students will analyze graphic memoir through many lenses, including experientially, by creating research-intensive first-person comics.

Term 1: Wednesdays and Fridays, 9:00 – 11:50am
Instructor: Tatiana Mellema
Topic: Art and Labour

This course will examine the intersection of art and labour in the history of art since 1950. Looking to historical shifts in art and industry, the process of de-skilling, and the rise of the “art worker,” we will consider the complex of artistic labour and productive labour. Through critical texts that extend and challenge traditional Marxist analysis, we will look to how artists have addressed exploitation and the concealed conditions of underpaid and unpaid labour, and how artists index the specificities of global capitalism today.

Term 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:30 – 7:20pm
Instructor: Jeffrey Swartz
Topic: TBA

Term 1: Wednesday and Fridays, 1:00 – 3:50pm, online
Instructor: Amanda Lastoria
Topic: TBA

Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00 – 3:50pm
Instructor: Joe Clark
Topic: The Stuff of Cinema: Materials, Materiality, and Materialism

Recent years have seen a wealth of new film and media studies focused on what we might broadly call the materialist turn – that is a move away from the scholarly focus on language and representation and towards a renewed interest in the material world: objects, the body, and the environment. This course takes up this new scholarship in order to theorize the material relations of film and media production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption.

This course is divided into three thematic sections: materials, where we consider film objects, including the archive, the apparatus, and filmed space; materiality, where we consider the film labour, surface, and haptics; and materialism, where we consider post-humanism and ecomaterialism as alternative approaches to film and media.

Course readings will examine the material conditions of film and media workers, the development and use of various media technologies, as well as the material impacts these technologies and this work can have.

Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00 – 3:50pm
Instructor: TBA
Topic: TBA

Term 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 4:30 – 7:20pm, online
Instructor: TBA
Topic: TBA

Term 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00 – 3:50pm
Instructor: TBA
Topic: TBA

Term 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:00 – 3:50pm
Instructor: TBA
Topic: TBA

**cross-listed w/ FMSA-350-SU31A – Special Topics in Film + Screen Arts and ANIM-338-SU31A

Term 1: Tuesdays/Thursdays, Block 3, Hybrid
Instructor: Lucas Green
Topic: Motion Graphics

This studio course introduces students to motion graphics concepts and visual effects techniques in the context of digital animation production. Creative projects in the course will incorporate complex layering, transparency and mattes, motion and timing, and the animation of text and visual effects. Through a series of presentations, tutorials, related assignments and projects, individual and group critiques, students will learn basic production techniques and develop an understanding of the process of creating motion graphics for video and animation.

**cross-listed w/ ANIM-350-SU01B – Special Topics in Animation and FMSA 327 SU01B

Term 1: Wednesdays/Fridays Block 2, In-Person
Instructor: Martin Jaroszewicz
Topic: Unreal Blueprints

A creative coding exploration of sound design and interactive audio for animators and filmmakers. The course introduces creative approaches to sound in visual media through Unreal Engine’s Blueprint interfaces, learning to build interaction systems and apply them to dynamic, responsive audio. Students will learn through experimentation, starting with basic interactive audio concepts and signal flow, and progressing to interactive sound design. The course begins with fundamental interactive and spatial audio principles and gradually introduces visual programming through Blueprint interfaces. Students will learn to build interaction systems and apply that knowledge to drive sound design and music through the Metasound system. They will discover how to create dynamic soundscapes, design interactive audio responses, and develop sound-driven animations, film and screen art works. Weekly projects will help build confidence in working with audio signal flow, starting from basic sound manipulation and moving towards more complex interactive sound design.

Term 1: Mondays/Friday Block 2, In-Person
Topic: Metal Connections
Faculty: Aaron Nelson-Moody

This course will include several projects for students to explore expressions of identity and culture through small-scale metalwork adornment and storytelling. Initial project focus will be on personal expressions of each students positionality and self identity, with emphasis on responsibility to community and environment.
Smaller projects might include items such as jewelry (necklace, earrings), or clothing-fasteners (buttons, hooks, or buckles). Medium-sized projects may include items such as bracelets, chain (maille), or plates (eg. a gorget).

Objects may be transformed from the found or repurposed, or developed from fresh stock with considerations of the lifecycle of the material. Primary development of hands-on skills in this course could continue into jewelry and related fields, or be useful for one-off or custom production, prototyping, or developing recycling procedures.

**cross-listed w/ SCLP-314-SU02K
Term 2: Tuesdays/Thursdays, Block 2, In-Person
Topic: Foundry + Metal Casting
Instructor: Ian Rhodes

This studio course provides a broad introduction to a range of methods and processes that are employed in the production of contemporary sculpture using traditional and contemporary transformative processes involving casting and mold-making techniques (which may include the use of 3D printing) for casting materials such as bronze and aluminum through the use of our new state-of-the art foundry. Students will acquire practical and critical knowledge to consider cast-metal sculpture and its content and context within contemporary art and design practices. Assigned projects are structured around concepts and techniques relevant to contemporary sculpture practices. The course will include technical demonstrations, research, discussions, and critiques.

**cross-listed w/ ANIM-350-SU03G – Special Topics in Animation
Term 2: Wednesdays Blocks 2/3, In-Person
Instructor: Amanda Strong
Topic: Stop Motion Animation

This course offers a fundamental study of storytelling and expression through handmade and digital components of stop motion animation. Hands-on exercises will explore story through character and world building in the form of puppet making, set and prop construction. Emphasis is placed on understanding scale, material, basic lighting techniques, controlled movement mechanics and image capture. Assignments will encourage students to use stop motion techniques for their own projects and storytelling approach.