Studying Craft in Portland
Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) offers two Master of Fine Art degrees and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate focusing on Craft and reflecting today’s evolving interest in the use of materials as central to the creative process. Since 1907, OCAC has educated students in a mentor-based learning environment that fosters each student’s investigation of studio practice. The results are as varied as the processes that embody it.
The college’s most recent program addition, the MFA in Craft, a full-time, two-year, 60-credit program with classes throughout the summer semester to maximize the students’ studio experience as makers, provides a broad and intensive program for the understanding and application of advanced study in craft. Highly skilled and motivated students work with a dedicated core faculty to develop the conceptual and expressive potential of their materials. Karl Burkheimer, Chair of the program, emphasizes a strong engagement in advanced critical discourse, contextual understanding of work within the cannon of craft and contemporary art, and a profound commitment to a vigorous creative practice. The program is complemented by an impressive array of artists and instructors-in-residence, curators, critics and gallerists, who make presentations, meet with students in their studios, and are accessible to students over the course of a term.
The MFA in Applied Craft and Design connects design thinking to design doing. OCAC and Pacific Northwest College of Art have collaborated to create a unique MFA program grounded in hands-on making, entrepreneurial strategies and social and environment engagement. Combining a mentor-based approach with an exceptional visiting artists program, students work one-on-one with nationally and internationally recognized designers, makers, and scholars in a self-directed curriculum that challenges them to bring to life the full strength of their ideas and skills. Led by Program Chair JP Reuer and Associate Chair Heidi Schwegler, the program stands out as unique through its curriculum, emphasizing making original work with an applied purpose.
OCAC’s Post-Baccalaureate Certificate program is a one-year 30-credit intensive craft studio program, specifically tailored to each student’s needs. Designed for students with college-level art experience, the Post-Bac is an advanced, in-depth study of a specific medium. Concentrations are available in book arts, ceramics, drawing and painting, fibers, metals, photography and wood.
Portland is a city with a rich mix of green parks, bridges, hip urban culture, and activism; a place where food, music and art all forge new paths. The City of Roses embraces the small batch, the entrepreneurial, the handmade, and the collaborative. A progressive and affordable city, Portland supports independent thinking, sustainable practices and fresh ideas.
Application review is ongoing for the graduate and post-graduate programs.
Contact information
[email protected] / T +1 971 255 4192
About Oregon College of Art and Craft
Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) has earned a reputation as a leading college of art and craft in the United States. Known for its exceptional faculty of artists and makers, the uniquely small, mentor-based community is comprised of approximately 180 students who pursue full-time Bachelor’s or Master’s degree programs, in addition to the 2500 students enrolled annually in youth and adult programs. At OCAC students are encouraged to work across the full range of its specialized facilities in the seven studio areas that comprise Craft at OCAC. Its hands-on, studio-based approach to learning—one in which critical thinking informs making works by hand—is enhanced by a robust, integrated liberal arts component that prepares graduates to become critical and informed makers and thinkers eager to interact with the world around them. Its over four hundred alumni, 82% of whom are employed in the arts, exemplify the vital role artists and makers play in satisfying the global demand for new ways of thinking, making and innovating. Founded in 1907, OCAC (pronounced “O-see-A-see”) is an active player in the Portland, OR ethos as the home of the small batch, handmade, environmentally sound, and ethically entrepreneurial.
Mission: Oregon College of Art and Craft is dedicated to Craft as the creative material practice at the core of art and design. OCAC’s mentor-based learning community fosters self-reliant, entrepreneurial, globally conscious, critical and innovative makers.
