THE EXPERIENCE:

A student sits in a sun-drenched studio on the third floor of a warehouse overlooking the Milwaukee River. Charcoal figure drawings litter the walls, the floor. Some are highly realistic, precise, detailed renderings of the human form, others are bold and gestural, quick studies of figures that are as much in motion as they are emotive.

In the next studio over, glitter and sequins dot the cement floor. Torn, yellowed newspaper clippings and old blueprints are scattered amongst graphite pencils and gloss medium, waiting for their place in the next work of art. On the walls, two-dimensional collage pieces include your traditional and not-so-traditional drawing media, mixing together text and image to create visually intriguing, personal narratives.

Go one studio further and you'll find a student cutting mylar stencils of helicopters. It's all in preparation for a drawing installation piece on the wall of the student gallery. Hundreds of helicopters, different sizes and perspectives will be traced in patterns with permanent black marker, guiding a viewer through a complex web of flight.

This is drawing.

As a sophomore Drawing Major at MIAD, you'll spend a large amount of time in the classroom, drawing, critiquing, listening, watching. Your engagement with your classmates is critical to your learning experience, as is the relationships created between students and instructors. As a junior and senior, a significant amount of time will be spent in the studio, exploring your personal narratives through drawing. One-on-one conferences with your instructor, small group discussions, and class critiques will help expand, enrich, and solidify your work. You'll spend most of the senior year creating a cohesive body of artwork in preparation for the Senior Thesis Exhibition.

This is the moment where you go from being an art student to recognizing yourself as a professional artist. You've always wanted to show work in a gallery? MIAD's Drawing Major is where you start -- in the studio, creating, reworking, critiquing, drawing. MIAD prepares you to take your drawing off the charoal covered wall of the studio, and present it, mounted and framed, to a gallery, museum, or private collector.

The Drawing Major at MIAD is about defining for yourself what constitutes a 'drawing' -- an oil pastel drawing of a reclining woman or a chemical reaction on paper that creates beautifully rich rust patterns -- it's up to you to determine the boundaries of drawing.

It's tradition vs. experimentation. Choose your battle.