Savannah College of Art and Design

The Savannah College of Art and Design (often referred to as SCAD) — founded in 1978 by Paula S. Wallace, Richard Rowan, May Poetter and Paul Poetter — is an independent, accredited and nonprofit school dedicated to the visual and performing arts, design, the building arts and the history of art and architecture. Located in the charming, historic Southern city of Savannah, Georgia, SCAD is the largest art school in the United States, offering Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Architecture, Master of Arts, and Master of Fine Arts degrees. The college is closely engaged with the city and the preservation, at least architecturally, of its rich heritage.

SCAD enrolls close to 7,000 students from all 50 states and nearly 80 countries. International student enrollment is quoted at 10 percent.

Degree programs include advertising design, animation, architectural history (MFA only), architecture, art history, broadcast design and motion graphics, cinema studies, fashion, fibers, film and television, furniture design, graphic design, historic preservation, illustration, illustration design (MFA only), industrial design, interactive design and game development, interior design, media and performing arts, metals and jewelry, painting, photography, production design, sequential art, sound design, urban design, and visual effects.

Minors are offered in 25 of the major programs as well as in accessory design, business management, ceramic arts, contemporary writing, cultural landscape, dance, decorative arts, drawing, electronic design, exhibition design, interaction design, marine design, museum studies, music performance, new media art, printmaking, sculpture, storyboarding and technical direction.

The college also features a study-abroad campus in the scenic town Lacoste, France. In 2005, SCAD opened a campus in Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia, called SCAD–Atlanta. Shortly after opening, the Atlanta College of Art was acquired by SCAD for merger into the Atlanta campus to help the new college campus grow and give more opportunities to SCAD students with connections to the Woodruff Arts Center and the High Museum of Art on Peachtree Street in Atlanta.

Facilities

The college's first academic building was the Savannah Volunteer Guard Armory, which was purchased and renovated in 1979. Built in 1892, the Romanesque Revival red brick structure is included in the National Register of Historic Places. Originally named Preston Hall, The building was renamed to Poetter Hall after the departure of Richard Rowan as part of a campaign of naming and renaming buildings for members of the board of directors and major financial backers. Expanding rapidly, the school went on to purchase more buildings in Savannah's downtown Historic and Victorian districts, restoring old and often derelict buildings that had exhausted their original functions.

By restoring buildings for use as college facilities and as part of the Historic Preservation major of study, the college has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Historic Savannah Foundation and the Victorian Society of America, among others. The college campus now consists of 60 buildings spaced informally throughout the grid and park system of downtown Savannah. Many buildings are located on the famous 24 squares of the old town, which are laden with monuments, live oaks, horse-buggy tours and an undeniable Southern gothic feel that is sought by the many movies filmed there.

Features located on or near the campus buildings include the Riverfront Plaza and Factors' Walk — River Street's restored 19th-century cotton warehouses and passageways include shops, bars and restaurants — and City Market, Savannah's restored central market, features antiques, souvenirs, and small eateries.

The college's facilities in Lacoste, France, date back 500–600 years. Originally founded by Bernard Pfriem, an American artist, in the 1970s and called the Lacoste School of Arts, the small town of about 300 permanent inhabitants is steeped in rustic charm and appears almost as a medieval village from a distance. Lacoste is in Provence, which is in Southern France. The beautiful countryside is an asset to the school as an inspiration for the drawing and painting courses taught there. Enrollment in Lacoste is usually for only one quarter of the academic school year.

Departments

The university is divided into seven schools: the School of Building Arts, the School of Communication Arts, the School of Design, the School of Film and Digital Media, the School of Fine Arts, the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Media and Performing Arts.

The most popular is the School of Film and Digital Media, which has seen much growth in recent years with the addition of new majors to support the demand for computer-driven art classes. These areas of study focus on computer effects, animation and design for film, television, games and the Internet. To meet the demand, a former 64,000-square-foot coffin factory was refurbished as a high-end, 800-computer animation and effects teaching/production house complete with render farm, green screen stages, and even stop-motion labs. SCAD recently added an increasingly popular program in Sound Design, offering concentration in music production or audio for image.

Also very popular and widely recognized is the School of Communication Arts, which includes graphic design, advertising design, illustration, photography and sequential art. Most graphic design classes are held in Poetter Hall on Madison Square, the college's original building and the former 36,248-square-foot Guard Armory. As one of the college's older majors, it still embraces the trend in electronic design and features a large number of computers and several high-end Apple computer workstations in its labs.

Students

Most students live off-campus, which is to say outside the residence halls, since there are no formal campus grounds other than those contained by the building properties themselves. There are eight buildings that provide student housing and range from one- to three-person, single-room dormitories; to four-bedroom student apartments. The dormitories are: Weston House, Dyson House, Oglethorpe House, Turner House, Pulaski House (an all female residence hall), Forsyth House, Gaston House, and Boundary Village. SCAD has no fraternities or sororities. The formation of a student union has been discouraged by the college.

The college has two newspapers, the Chronicle and the entirely student-run District. Student media also extends to SCAD Radio, an Internet-broadcast radio station; Beecon, the student television production group; and The Hive, a student-run online community. There are 23 student organizations related to academic programs and another 16 that are recognized but not affiliated with any particular programs.

Though Fridays are generally considered independent study days, Thursday evenings often end up being popular social nights in the absence of a fifth day of classes.

Students are expected to focus on three areas of study: foundation studies (the art fundamentals of drawing, color theory, design, etc.), liberal arts (the math, science, art history, and English needed for accreditation) and their major area of discipline (a specific course of study such as graphic design, sequential art, etc.)

Events

The college operates a dozen galleries, notably Red Gallery, the Savannah Gallery, the Pei Ling Chan Gallery, the Pinnacle Gallery, and The Earle W. Newton Center for British-American Studies. In addition, the college holds several lectures, performances and film screenings at two historic theaters, the Trustees Theatre and the Lucas Theater for the Arts. These theaters are also used once a year for the popular Savannah Film Festival in late October or early November. With average attendance exceeding 25,000, the event involves a week of lectures, workshops and screenings of student and professional films. There is also a juried competition.

Outdoors, there is the Sidewalk Arts Festival, which garners huge crowds in spring around Savannah's largest downtown park, Forsyth Park. The festival is primarily concerned with the chalk-drawing competition, which is divided into group and individual categories of students, alumni and prospective students. Similar in spirit is the Sand Arts Festival. This particular sand festival is held every spring on the beaches of nearby Tybee Island. The competition is divided into sand relief, sand sculpture and sand castle divisions.

Individual departments host both yearly (like the annual fashion show) and quarterly shows (animation) to promote student work.

Students tend to frequent en masse non-SCAD-affiliated events if they are held in the historic district — for example, the Savannah Jazz Festival and the Savannah Shakespeare Festival (both in Forsyth Park), not to mention the St. Patrick's Day celebration, which is by far the biggest, messiest yearly event in town and the highlight of spring break north of Daytona Beach.

Noted alumni and faculty

Alumni

India.Arie, singer
Mark Brooks, Comic book artist, currently employed by Marvel Comics
Walter S Crane IV, artist/creator of comic book "Sheba", also animator at Olive Jar Studios in mid 90's
Dave Guertin, lead character designer of Ratchet and Clank series, currently employed by Insomniac Games
Tomas Kalnoky, lead singer of Catch 22 and Streetlight Manifesto
W. W. Law, civil rights activist
M. Alice LeGrow, creator of comic *Bizenghast
Dennis Oh, Korean American model, turned actor. Known for his breakthrough role in "Sweet Spy"
Perpetual Groove, jam band
Ty Romsa, Painter and comic book artist for Marvel, DC, and Aspen Comics

Faculty

Larry Dixon, Professor of Photography, photographer; photographer of many album covers while working in Nashville.
Denise Falk, Professor of Painting, painter.
Gokhan Ozaysin, Professor of Film and Television, graduate mentor for the Film and Television Department; specializing in nonlinear editing.
Patricia Perrone, Professor of Computer Arts. Pioneering computer-based artist and one of the first people to earn a degree in computer arts.
Daves Rossell, Professor of Architectural History. Noted scholar on vernacular architecture.
Craig Stevens, Professor of Photography, photographer.
Lynn Wright-Buckingham, Professor of Photography, photographer and lecturer.
Phil A Young, Professor, Animation Dept, worked at Disney for 25 years. Takes 2D Animation, Character Animation, and Layout and Character Design.

Trivia

SCAD has a "Rolling Admission" policy.
SCAD is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
SCAD is on the quarter system. Typical workload is three classes per quarter, or 15 credit hours.
School is four days per week, with individual classes held every other day. Friday is reserved for independent study to allow more time on the weekends to complete projects.
Classes run 2.5 hours with one 10–15 minute break for most classes. The extended length is to accommodate studio classes, where traditional scheduling would seem rushed.
SCAD is primarily located in the historic district of Savannah.
Most classes require a field trip.
Most classes are small at 20 students or fewer, with that number decreasing in higher-level courses to as few as 5.
Spring break at SCAD is timed to coincide with St. Patrick's Day. The St. Patrick's Day celebration in Savannah is second only to New York.

External links

Art schools in the United States | Georgia (U.S. state) culture | Universities and colleges in Georgia (U.S. state) | Savannah, Georgia

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