MFA Applied Craft + Design

A ONE-OF-A-KIND MFA PROGRAM GROUNDED IN HANDS-ON MAKING, ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGIES, AND SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGAGEMENT.

The MFA in Applied Craft and Design is a graduate program that embraces an approach to design rooted in the culture of making and the community of craft, emphasizing learning from materials to ground concepts. The program welcomes students from a wide range of creative backgrounds to create work with an applied purpose. Combining a mentor based approach with an exceptional lecture series and regional craft salons, students work one-on-one with nationally and internationally recognized designers, craftspeople, makers, and scholars in a self directed curriculum that challenges them to bring to life the full strength of their ideas and skills.

With a curriculum focused on developing a strong artistic voice, the realization of work in service to others, and entrepreneurship that connects making a living with making a difference, the MFA in Applied Craft and Design is the only graduate program of its kind.

CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The program emphasizes entrepreneurial studies through a two-semester class called Creative Entrepreneurship. This class provides students with the frameworks, knowledge, and strategies to build a career as a craftsperson and designer after graduation. The course introduces students to multiple pathways that create a sustainable bifurcated or trifurcated practice. It also covers aspects of starting and maintaining your own business, including mapping, planning, goal setting, identifying and working with customers and clients, project management, promoting your business, business structures, taxes, copyright, contracts, selling your work, and more.

DESIGN-BUILD

Designers in education and industry routinely and assuredly assert that design thinking strategies can deliver the "game-changing" ideas needed to address our times' critical and complex problems. Frequently, however, it seems we're seduced by and fall in love with the promise(s) of these ideas and are less committed to following through with their actual realization with the same degree of passion.

To provide an alternative model of design and craft education and practice, first-year MFA AC+D students begin the program with a pre-semester, 10-day collaborative design-build intensive. By designing and building a project for actual clients, students come to know one another, learn how to work together, communicate, and understand the value of civic engagement. The projects are selected based on their potential to benefit an organization or population that generally would not have access to the services of designers and makers.

HIGH DESERT TRIPS

AC+D puts its curriculum into practice with an immersive trip to California's High Desert for communal, unmediated, radical, and unplugged experiences. One of the main attractions is visiting and touring Andrea Zittel's A-Z West, among other engagements, workshops, and studio visits. The trip features makers, visionaries, and projects that respond to the surroundings, resulting in aesthetics influenced by desolate landscapes and countercultures. These experiences expand and build upon students' knowledge and connect them to people and places outside of Oregon to provide bursts of inspiration for their studio practice.

Studio visits include All Roads Studio, Yucca Valley Material Lab, High Desert Observatory, Dan Anderson Studio, High Desert Test Sites, Noah Purifoy Foundation, Joshua Tree National Park, and sound bathing at the Integretron.

PROGRAM MENTORS

Adam Arnold

Dylan Beck

Brett Binford

Rose Bond

Karl Burkheimer

Lisa Congdon

Carolyn Hazel Drake

Amanda Leigh Evans

Lilia Hernandez Galusha

Chelsea Heffner

Susanna Hohmann

Reiko Igarashi

Karen Lee

Andrew Santa Lucia

Pilar Gallego

Brenda Mallory

Abbie Miller

Matt Miller

Daniel Meyers

Hannah Newman

Ryan Noon

Laura O’Qinn

Aleks Pollner

Crystal Schenk

Lauren Sinner

Rory Sparks

Jen Stady

Patricia Vazquez

Sarah Wertzberger