The Renaissance has long been fascinated by many themes including religion and ritual, archaeology, art and civilian, the natural world to tales of the monstrous and murder through tales and images of terrible things. Florence has been the home and has served as a source of inspiration for artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Giotto, the poet Dante, among others. Like Florence’s great artists of the past, students will be guided by their individual interests while examining and using Florence’s landscape, museums and culture as sources for creative exploration and research.

You will visit some of the most important museums in Florence and they will serve as our classroom including the Uffizi Gallery, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Museo degli Argenti Bargello Museum, Boboli Gardens, Academia, the Fondazione Bisonte, and the Armadillo Atelier to study prints, drawings, and paintings first hand. These locations will serve as sources of inspiration allowing you to develop a greater awareness of the role of drawing and the print has as an investigative process in the development of creative work and it’s use as an expressive means of communication. Students develop a site-responsive studio practice in relationship to the cultural landscape of Florence. We will consider the unique identity of particular sites and structures, land use, and use our experiences on-location to inspire and frame ideas for our work. We will work both in the studio and on-site in the city. Practical and didactic learning will include a complement of methodologies: texts, lectures, films, demonstrations, site visits, field work, and travel to Venice and other sites outside of Florence.

Students will develop a suite of prints through a series of prompts. Ultimately, all students will have the power to make independent work that explores their own visual and media interests. This course will give students a greater awareness of the role of drawing as an investigative process in the development of creative work and it’s use as an expressive means of communication. This course will be divided between working on creative work on location in Florence and utilizing the cities world class museums and galleries and individual work outside of class. Students will also learn how to utilize a sketchbook/journal in the development of creative research, the documentation of the city, and a source for the stimulation and development of ideas.