Education Programs
Since 2003, FOR-SITE’s education program has enriched the experience of graduate-level art students with learning opportunities that extend beyond the traditional academic curriculum. FOR-SITE offers educators affiliated with the foundation’s institutional partners the space and resources to create a course or seminar focused on their interests. The foundation provides access to the Nevada City residency site and funding that covers essential project expenses. Students are in residence for no less than two three-day sessions during an academic term.
A lone figure, dwarfed by the immensity of nature, confronted and challenged by the ferocious splendor and magnificence of the surroundings in which s/he is engulfed, is a common theme in many 19th-century Romantic landscape paintings. This provides a point of departure for a class examining the relationship between landscape, figure, and the representation of experience.
This studio explored the land as a site for work. The class focused on the human and natural histories of two disparate sites — the FOR-SITE Foundation and the Headlands Center for the Arts — and created original works that engage the complex cultural mesh of each site.
This course explored the complex relationships between rural and urban, natural and man-made. Using the Presidio of San Francisco as a case study, students researched the design and history of the park and how it reflects cultural concepts of nature.
This project-based study examined how the art, history, and natural environment of a region are mediated and represented by an urban museum. Graduate Curatorial Practice (CURP) students immersed themselves in the history, landscape, art, and culture of Nevada City and in the collections, history, and programs of the Oakland Museum of California.
This course was an exploration of how one responds to a particular place; how one speaks of that response and the place itself when no longer there; and the methods used to describe a place to those who will never see it.
This interdisciplinary, field-based seminar focused on earthworks, land use, and ecological interventions. Students took several trips to the residency site to camp, study, experiment, and explore.
This interdisciplinary course focused on earthworks, land use, and ecological interventions. Guest artist Ursula von Rydingsvard worked with the students.
This graduate-level course focused on the Northern California landscape as a site and source for art and design work.
This two-semester project connected students to nature and place in the context of a full exploration of the architectural design process.
Students in this course designed the perfect artist’s studio. By interviewing two prominent Bay Area artists, John Zurier and Mildred Howard, students gained firsthand knowledge of what a working artist needs in order to create, then translated these guidelines into working design models.
This five-week “real-world” project afforded students the opportunity to research and design wayfinding systems (maps and signage) for the FOR-SITE Foundation.
The Trails Forever project took place within a Media Theory and Practice course. The project examined the use of wireless technologies as non-intrusive interpretation systems.
This project asked “What happens if we take the approach of Robert Smithson’s Nonsite?” Students critiqued and worked within the context of the Nonsite.
This studio introduced students to tectonics in architecture through an investigation of site and ground. The focus was on the understanding of particularities that site lends to architecture, and learning to think about buildings in the landscape.
Fortescue, along with three other faculty and fifteen students from the Wood/Furniture Program at the California College of the Arts, trekked to FOR-SITE’s residency site for three days of exploration, learning, and creativity.