Calling all creative risk-takers, image-makers, and inventive minds.

In Forman’s Visual Arts Program, creativity takes flight. Build skills, collaborate with peers, and learn to see the world differently across a wide range of disciplines—from ceramics to jewelry-making. All classes are available at beginner and advanced levels.

Visual arts classes

Each year, our visual arts offerings adapt to match student interests. Whatever the class, faculty nurtures independent thinking, problem-solving, and confidence, while helping interested students build persuasive college portfolios.

  • Studio arts
  • Culinary arts
  • Painting and drawing
  • Art history
  • Video, film, and journalism
  • Photography

Studio arts

From printmaking—learning how to create linocut, woodcut, and monoprints—to foundational, hands-on subjects in architecture, metalsmithing, and ceramics, our studio arts offerings fuse practical skills with perspective-shifting discourse. 

Classes available:
  • Ceramics: Throwing on the wheel 

  • Ceramics: Big and small 

  • Ceramics: Set the table

  • Ceramics: Blaze your way in clay

  • Metalsmithing fundamentals 

  • The art of metalsmithing 

  • Becoming your best art self

  • Introduction to printmaking 

  • Architecture

Forman student constructing art

Culinary arts

How do our culinary choices impact the world’s food system? These classes connect the dots between history, agriculture, and modern-food industries. You’ll learn practical cooking skills too—from making ferments like sauerkraut and kimchi to taking care of a sourdough starter, curing and braising meats, and producing your own cheeses. 

Classes available:
  • Culinary: Fire 101

  • Culinary: Water 102

  • Culinary: Air 103

  • Culinary: Earth 104

Painting and drawing

Beginner and advanced classes designed to enrich students’ thinking and technical abilities. Make and stretch your own canvases, fabricate mixed-media works, compose a competitive college application portfolio, or produce graphic posters with programs like InDesign. 

Classes available:
  • Fundamentals of painting 

  • Drawing through observation 

  • Multiple mediums: Drawing, painting, and photography

  • Digital art and design

  • Advanced studio practices 

  • Visual arts portfolio

Art history

Students traverse through centuries of art-making, from the Renaissance to epoch-shifting postwar movements. They learn where different artists and genres fit in broader art-historical narratives, and develop creative presentations.  

Classes available:
  • Rethinking art history

Video, film, and journalism

Master the art of creative communication. These workshop-based subjects span expressive realms, such as stop-motion animation, documentary production, screenplay writing, student journalism, and more. You’ll hone skills like pitching and editing news articles, creating promotional material, directing cameras and lighting, and critical analysis. 

Classes available:
  • Journalism: Writing for The Roar (Forman’s student magazine)

  • Introduction to narrative filmmaking 

  • Advanced narrative fiction filmmaking

  • Documentary filmmaking 

  • Screenwriting 

  • Topics in film: fairy tale films

  • Introduction to stop-motion animation

Photography

Be it film or digital, editing or photographic theory, classes cover all the ways you want to explore making images—plus, there’s a darkroom and green screen on hand. 

Classes available:
  • Photography

  • Photography processes from digital to alternative

  • Digital photo: Beyond the basics

  • Digital photo: Special effects with Adobe Photoshop

  • Photographic portraiture: Human connection

  • Photography: What’s your point?

  • Advanced photography practices

  • Into the darkroom photography

Want to discover what happens when art meets science?

In Forman’s Promethean Lab, you’ll be able to do just that. Solve problems that matter to you in a practical way: making prototypes with 3D printers, testing ideas on animation software, using plasma cutters, designing with architecture software, and more.