Upcoming Events
Jan 23 - 10:00 AM
Remediate/ Re-Vision: Public Artists Engaging the Environment
Jan 30 - 4:45 PM
Presentation & Reception, Artists as Environmental Catalysts: in Context and in Community
Jan 31 - 8:30 PM
Lecture by Dr. Angela Rajagopalan: Codex Aubin and 16th Century Printed Texts
Contact Us
Carrie Patterson, Chair
Associate Professor of Art
Phone: 240-895-4252
Email: ccpatterson@smcm.edu
Office Staff: 240-895-4225
Alumni Where are they now?
Hannah Piper Burns (studio art, 2006) achieved her MFA in 2009 from the San Francisco Art Institute. She currently lives and works in Portland, OR as a freelance art writer, communications director for the Museum of Pocket Art, and a social media and blog coordinator for artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson. Her recent work can be found at www.hannahpiperburns.com.
Welcome to the Department of Art and Art History
Our Mission:
The Art and Art History Department provides a diverse, collaborative, and integrated curriculum in studio art, art history, and art theory. Our program forcefully models an interdisciplinary liberal arts mission, and department members share a common philosophy that studying the making, analysis, and history of art are inseparable endeavors.
In an increasingly visually complex world, we need to understand how the visual aspects of our world affect our actions, our interactions, and our understanding. The department’s central goal is to expose students to creative and intellectual activities that will help them become thoughtful producers and consumers of visual media. In our department, students and faculty work through visual problems, study past and present visual cultures, and join in art production in order to connect concepts and ideas to analysis and practice. Our offerings appeal equally to the intellect and the senses, and our curriculum is designed to be accessible to students of all interest levels. 
One goal of the art major is to produce professionals in both studio practice and art scholarship. In a broader context, we also prepare students for other careers in the arts, as well as a wide range of professional and personal activities for which visual literacy is a central component of both production and interpretation. Finally, we instill appreciation in those for whom art is simply a pleasurable and meaningful component of a full life. By exploring the visual world at St. Mary's College of Maryland, students can shape that world throughout their lives.
Interested in studying abroad? Professor Carrie Patterson will be doing a three-week summer course in Alba, Italy, where students will explore the principles, practices, and history of painting and drawing on site from underground, street level, to mountains and towers rising above landscapes and cities. Students will learn techniques of drawing and painting from direct observation.
The tour will run from June 4-22, 2012. More information here (pdf), or contact Carrie Patterson at ccpatterson@smcm.edu
Be sure to check out our Current Opportunities page for information on internships, exhibition opportunities, workshops, grad school programs, and more!
