The Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art (BASA) provides a general liberal arts degree program with specialization in studio art. There are six different concentrations you can choose from.
What is Studio Art?
Studio Art involves creating visual artworks in a hands-on, practical environment, often within a studio setting. This discipline covers a wide range of mediums and techniques.
Select an area below to learn more:
Two Dimensional Arts
The concentration in Two Dimensional Arts comprises the studio areas of drawing, painting, and printmaking.
DrawingTwo Dimensional Art concentration students are expected to complete three semesters of drawing including one semester of life drawing. Students selecting drawing as a major medium pursue drawing as a final product as they continue upper-division coursework.
PaintingThe Painting Program introduces students to the language of painting and acquaints them with an array of painting practices. Students begin their introduction to oil painting with a series of exercises and projects that gives them an understanding of how materials work as part of the process of developing pictorial ideas.
They are later encouraged to explore and develop their own painting ideas.
PrintmakingPrintmaking courses include technologies from the 15th to the 21st centuries.
Traditional print practices include stone and plate lithography, relief printing, serigraphy, and intaglio.
The Photographic and Digital Printmaking course explores the possibilities of mixing traditional, photographic, and digital mediums to produce hybrid forms of print.
View the Four-Year Plan in the Catalog
Three Dimensional Arts
Book ArtsStudents selecting the area of Book Arts work with hand-set type, letterpress printing, and hand bookbinding to create both limited edition and unique books. They will work on a Vandercook proof press, iron hand presses, treadle presses, and over 300 cases of monotype, foundry, and wood type as well as bookbinding equipment.
CeramicsThe Ceramics Program develops awareness of the creative possibilities that the clay medium provides. Students are introduced to hand building, throwing on the potter’s wheel, glaze techniques, and firing as well as design principles. They are also encouraged to explore the world history of the ceramic process.
SculptureThe Sculpture Program begins with a thorough introduction to the three-dimensional concepts of carving, casting, constructive and reductive methods, installation, assemblage, and multi-media.
Students will also learn about various materials, formal principles, historical periods, and conceptual practices.
View the Four-Year Plan in the Catalog
Graphic Design
The Graphic Design concentration prepares students for careers as creative professionals in a wide variety of fields and industries of print media, video, web, and mobile devices. This concentration explores these relationships as students acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to become successful designers.
The Graphic Design concentration begins with a thorough introduction to the concepts, history, and practical skills that are foundational to the practice of design. Upon this base, Graphic Design students progress to resolving design issues and problems with increasingly complex projects.
Additionally, members of the AIGA UNO student group have the opportunity to integrate AIGA UNO client projects into their coursework in the Design Studio.
View the Four-Year Plan in the Catalog
Media Arts
The concentration in Media Arts comprises two studio options, Game Design and Intermedia and Digital Art. Media Arts students create innovative digital art using contemporary techniques with a focus on experimentation, image-making, story-telling, and play experiences within digital media.
Game DesignThe Game Design option prepares students for careers as creative professionals in contemporary gaming media. Students will focus on both artistic and professional aspects of game development, including the creation of visual content for artistic expression, game design theories and practice (game mechanics and principles), and emerging gaming culture.
They will also learn how to effectively examine and produce game art or digital games through the acquisition of technical skills and the exploration of creative applications within gaming media.
Intermedia and Digital ArtThe Intermedia and Digital Art option approaches media making as a contemporary art practice. Students are encouraged to take risks, try new genres, mechanics and aesthetics, think critically and develop serious practice as an artist.
Students in the Intermedia and Digital Art option will create innovative digital art using contemporary techniques with a focus on experimentation, image-making, and story-telling within digital media.
MCC Students
Students completing a degree or certificate program from Metropolitan Community College in Design, Interactivity and Media Arts (DIMA), Photography, or Video/Audio Communications Arts can, upon successfully completing a Portfolio Review, transfer up to 15 semester hours of their specific MCC concentration coursework toward the 21 semester hour UNO Media Arts Concentration.
If transfer hours are accepted toward the 21-hour Media Arts Concentration, additional Concentration hours will be advanced UNO coursework selected in consultation with a UNO faculty advisor.
View the Four-Year Plan in the Catalog
Illustration
Students in the Illustration concentration explore visual storytelling through traditional and digital media. Emphasis is placed on balancing audience with personal vision to create readable images. Students hone their technical skills, study illustration history, and examine contemporary illustration practices as they develop their portfolios.
Students create comics, character sheets, children's book illustrations, magazine illustrations, surface pattern illustrations, advertisement illustrations, storyboards, and more.
In the capstone course students work to develop a professional portfolio or illustrated book pitch while discussing business practices, contracts, and how to balance art and commerce. This concentration prepares students to pursue careers in comics, children's book illustration, advertisement illustration, product illustration, pre-production for animation, and narrative based fine art.
View the Four-Year Plan in the Catalog
Studio Art with K-12 Certification
This option gives students the opportunity to teach K-12 art or the capacity to pursue graduate-level work in an M.A. or M.Ed. program in art education.
The BASA with K-12 certification requires a minimum of 134 credit hours of which 63 are in ART and 30 are from the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.
View the Four-Year Plan in the Catalog