About Visual Arts
In the Visual Arts Department at CU Denver, the city becomes our canvas, industry leaders become professors and a passion becomes a profession. We do our best work designing in a digital lab or putting paint to canvas in a studio. Our students have access to state-of-the art digital labs, sculpture studios, industrial equipment and darkrooms. They find opportunities at the Denver Art Museum, in galleries across the Front Range and at digital studios like Pixar. That’s how the College of Arts & Media unites the ability to create with the means to succeed.
EMPHASIS AREAS:
3D Graphics & Animation
Preparing students to work in a growing variety of fields that use animated digital computer graphics, 3D Graphics & Animation is operated by the nationally ranked and recognized CU Denver Digital Animation Center.
Art History
Art History studies visual cultures, spanning ancient to contemporary art and across diverse media. Students hone skills in research, visual analysis, and communications, while understanding and expressing art in its social and cultural contexts.
Art Practices
Art Practices is a professional degree program in studio art, where students self-select two studio art concentrations. The emphasis provides students with dynamic knowledge of the materials, methods, concepts and subjects to make them competitive in the global contemporary art world.
Digital Design
Through an interdisciplinary approach, Digital Design produces designers who use technology in innovative ways and understand the cultural impact of digital technologies to produce solutions for branding, advertising, social causes and to solve human problems.
Illustration
Illustration is a practice in conceptual illustration, digital illustration, rendering, perspective, painting, exhibition preparation, professional practices and the use of various artistic and illustration techniques.
Photography
Developing skills in traditional and digital photography while refining creative and conceptual approaches to the medium, Photography emphasizes artistic development integrating the history of photography, critical theory, and contemporary practice.
See Denver Differently Through Work of Laura Phelps Rogers '13
The free, online exhibit, “Y/OUR Denver,” shares the work of artists who are giving unique glimpses of the city through photography and design. Visual Arts alum Laura Phelps Rogers is among those who documented the urban landscapes––her image of the Colorado Education Association headquarters captures the structure under siege from the racism-confronting protests that dominated the news in the summer of 2020.
Read the Denver Post article here. The exhibit is online through March 1, 2021.
SHOUTOUT COLORADO: Meet Rian Kerrane
At any moment, Rian Kerrane's work can be seen throughout Denver––currently at Stanley Marketplace, History Colorado Center, and even in the alleyway between 16th Street & Broadway. Or you've been lucky enough to catch her live iron pours. Kerrane's adventurous artistic spirit is a part of the creative fabric of our city and recently Shoutout Colorado interviewed the sculpture professor about her career, risk, inspiration and even her favorite local spots.
Florence Blackwell '21 Contributes to Internationally-Recognized Project
Florence Blackwell, Art History and Photography double major, is among the international contributors to the Blackness, Immobility, & Visibility in Europe project recently published in the peer-reviewed Journal I8: A Journal of 18th Century Art and Culture.
College of Arts & Media
CU Denver
Arts Building
1150 10th Street
Suite 177
Denver, CO 80204
303-315-7400
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