What does it mean to make meaning? To make objects that have meaning? We will explore, via projects of making, a continuing dialogue between two seemingly disparate disciplines: art and mathematics. 

We’ll tackle a wide variety of questions about creativity, process, social history, and justice, via hands-on experimentation and making. Using logic and imagination in creative problem solving, students will expand the scope of their making, mathematical and artistic, and communication skills.

Study of music in childhood as part of socialization and enculturation of the child within family and community. Emphasis given to songs and music listening experiences provided by parents to nurture the child's musical, social, and intellectual development from infancy through middle childhood. For nonmajors.

Informs ability to see art as a tool to examine history, ideology, beauty, and ultimately the image-saturated present. Also to distinguish between historical context and modern projection on artworks. Further, to discover how art transcends its context and still speaks in a language in which people can become literate.

Where do ideas come from? How does the practice of art connect across disciplines? Promotes critical curiosity. Students gain experience evaluating images and developing ideas. Demystifies each individual's capacity to be an imaginative thinker, and dispels myths about what it means to be an artist today.

Capoeira was developed in Brazil by enslaved Africans as a martial art disguised as a dance, in rebellion and resilience to the bonds of slavery. Students will learn the technique, history, music, and cultural significance of this formerly outlawed art form, while developing trust and community with classmates.  

The Broadway musical was created predominantly by people marginalized from mainstream society. Examine this uniquely American art form through issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, social justice, and equality. Taught by the emeritus artistic director of Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre.

Ethnomusicology Visiting Artist Miguel Ballumbrosio shares the rich cultural traditions of Afro-Peruvian music and dance through class rehearsals, individual lessons and final performance.

Traces how American art has shifted, expanded, and contracted in step with the transforming nation from around 1650 to the present.

Explore the arts of Japan from prehistory to today with a focus on Buddhist art and architecture, sculpture, narrative handscrolls, ink painting, folding screens, and woodblock prints.

Visual presentation matters. Get introduced to the basics of visual communication including the creative process, fundamentals of composition, typography, color theory, and image-making.