FACILITIES

Facilities for the Art Department are located in three buildings on the ODU campus. The Visual Arts Building houses the Art office, along with classrooms and studios for media, crafts, painting, drawing, and sculpture. The Art Studio building holds additional sculpture facilities and the ceramics studio. Art History classrooms are located in Diehn Fine & Performing Arts Center. The Elise N. Hofheimer Art Library (Room 109, Diehn Fine & Performing Arts Building) contains over 10,000 volumes on architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting, print media, photography, arts & crafts, along with 40 periodical subscriptions, and other text resources. The Library also has Internet workstations with online catalog access, slide viewing tables, and VCRs and monitors for art video viewing.

 

Ceramics

Clay studios are located in the Art Studio building, and include three electric kilns, a downdraft gas cart kiln, raku kiln, 14 electric pottery wheels, slab roller, two extruders, and a Laguna Spray Booth.

 

Media Labs

There are two media labs of 18 stations each available for student use comprised of Macintosh iMac computers running the OS X operating system. Students have access to a variety of software programs such as InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, Cinema 4D and many others. An extensive type library of classical and contemporary fonts is also available. Scanning stations are included in both labs with four legal-sized flatbed and one 12" x 17" scanners, and dedicated slide scanners. Each lab has B&Wand color laser printers plus HP DesignJets (755 and 800) for large format output.

 

Painting

Students enjoy two well-lit studios as well as individual workspaces for advanced students and special projects.

 

Photography

As an all-digital program, photography uses the resources in the Media Labs (see above). An equipped lighting studio is also located in the VAB.

 

Printmaking

The studio space for printmaking techniques comprises over 2800 square feet. Included is a general classroom, a lightsafe room for photomechanical processing, a computer lab with an HP 755 CM wide format printer, a dedicated studio for screenprinting, and a large studio equipped for intaglio, relief, and lithographic processes. Major equipment includes a 33" x 51" Takach litho press, a 26"x 50" Takach etching press, and a Vandercook SP20 (20"x 26") flatbed proofing press for typography, relief printing and book arts. Lithography includes the use of aluminum plates, posi-plates, and stones. The shop has a quality litho stone inventory which includes 10 stones in the 20"x 30" range, 18 in the 15"x 24" range, and over three dozen of smaller sizes from 8"x 10" to 12"x 16". The shop is also equipped with an air-powered levigator for graining stones. For intaglio the shop has a 24"x 36" aquatint box and a 24"x 36" hot plate. For book arts there are 168 case drawers of foundry type and wood type, and an Ideal 28 power paper shear. The screenprint shop includes a 40"x 50" manual American clamshell press, an American Cameo 32"x 36" semi-automatic clamshell press, a 27"x 33" Davis CPU platen press, a Hopkins six color manual shirt printer, and a Firebird dryer. Retensionable metal screen frames include two dozen Cam-Loks and seven dozen roller bar type in sizes from 18"x 20" to 30"x 50".

 

The photomechanical processing room includes four light tables, a Richmond Graphics 42"x 48" soft top Professional Exposing Table, a NuArc 30"x 40" glass top vacuum exposing unit, an Olite Compact Halogen Printing Light with an OLIX light integrator, and two temperature controlled washout sinks. Each student is provided with individual storage space including a cabinet and a 36"x 45" map case drawer. All work spaces are temperature controlled, ventilated, and meet OSHA safety standards.

 

Sculpture

Located in the Art Studio building, facilities include equipment for fabricating in wood, stone and metal.

 

Visual Resource Center

The Visual Resources Collection features a rapidly growing, web accessible, searchable database of over 5700 art and art-related images. (A University password is required for access.) The Collection, located in Diehn Fine & Performing Arts Building, also holds a comprehensive collection of 80,000 slides. For more information, contact the Visual Resource Curator.