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  • Locations: Ballyvaughan, Ireland
  • Program Terms:  
  • Program Sponsor: Fairfield University 
Fact Sheet:
Fact Sheet:
Click here for a definition of this term Language of Instruction: English Click here for a definition of this term Class Status: 1-first year, 2-sophomore, 3-junior, 4-senior
Housing Options: Dormitory Click here for a definition of this term Areas of Study: Arts
Minimum GPA: 2.8
Program Description:
Burren



Drawing On site:

A Beginning Studio Experience on the Western Coast of Ireland


Ireland continues to offer mystery, beauty, and refuge to its visitors. The western coast of Ireland,
especially rich in visible history, from the 3500 BC Celtic burial sites to the ruins of 11th century churches and abbeys, offers a compelling array of shapes, values, textures and context for the beginning studio practitioner to respond to and record. The program takes place at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, a small village on the coastline of County Clare, and south of Galway City.

Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution, is fully accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which accredits schools and colleges in the six New England states.

Faculty

Jo Yarrington, MFA, is a full-time professor of studio art in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield University. She teaches courses on drawing, printmaking, and studio practice/theory, and has received numerous residencies and grants in support of her teaching and her visual work. Her drawings, installations and site work have been shown at the Museum of Glass, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Rotunda Gallery, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow University (Scotland), Galleria Sala Uno (Rome), and Christus Church (Cologne). In 2001 she represented the United States at the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates. She has lived, worked, and taught studio art on the western coast of Ireland. That experience changed her life and her work and she hopes that her students are equally inspired by Ireland.



All students take SA 12 - Foundation Drawing, which satisfies Fairfield’s practicum core requirement for the Visual and Performing Arts. In Foundation Drawing, you will gain experience in the fundamental processes of visual expression, and the multiple ways it can be used to realize an awareness of one’s place in the world. We will discover how the marks we make and the images we create arise from deeply personal sources as they intersect with external experience.

Contemporary art uses visuality, the body, emotions, the unconscious and intellectual concepts as equally valid means of accessing awareness. In a series of projects we will examine how these ways of knowing both ourselves and the world can be experienced, documented, reacted to, combined and transformed. We will explore and experiment with traditional and intuitive approaches to black and white and color media (both wet and dry) as well as the contextual and metaphoric aspects of surface and format. Besides personal development from studio practices, we also will encounter a variety of contemporary art, and the ideas that are a part of it, through viewing visual work in books, on the web, in artists’ studios and at exhibitions.

Drawing landscapes during a mountain hike; field trips to Fanore Beach for drawings en plein air; a lecture and discussion with a visiting Irish artist; a tour of contemporary art museums and galleries in Galway; and a visit to the Cliffs of Mohr and Bridgette’s Well are all part of this course.

Housing
Students will be housed at the Burren College of Art. Lodging is double occupancy.

Application Deadline:

Dec. 1, 2012

Program cost $3650 due Jan. 15, 2013

A cumulative GPA of 2.8 is required.

Application form, costs, dates, and details at www.fairfield.edu/studyabroad

Program Includes:

> Tuition for three credits

> Double-occupancy housing at The Burren College of Art

> Some meals

> Roundtrip airport transfer for group flight passengers

> Field trips – tour of County Clare, hiking, midnight Irish dance, visit to Galway City

> Insurance

Airfare is not included.

The Trustees of the University reserve the right to change tuition rates and make additional changes whenever necessary.