2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog
Fine Woodworking and Furniture Design (BFA.WFD)
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Program Description
The Fine Woodworking & Furniture Design Program at Vermont State University is a premiere BFA program in fine woodworking offered in partnership with the Vermont Woodworking School (VWS). VWS is a full-time furniture design and woodworking education program. Students spend full days in the woodshop with access to the guidance of professional furniture-makers and woodworkers. Over four years, students learn the basics and then take on increasingly challenging woodworking and furniture-making projects of their own design.
Students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts in Fine Woodworking & Furniture Design take most of the courses in the major at the Vermont Woodworking School (VWS) in their 15,000 square foot, historic barn turned modern woodworking facility. The Vermont Woodworking School is located in Cambridge, about 20 minutes away from the VTSU-Johnson campus, complete with state-of-the-art bench rooms, mill shops, a finish room, a 12-seat computer lab, a photo studio, common areas and galleries. Students study in the same classes and with the same faculty as VWS’s Immersion students. They are assigned a bench at the Vermont Woodworking School and participate in an average of 6 to 9 credits of their full 15-credit course load each semester.
Graduates of the BFA in Fine Woodworking & Furniture Design are prepared to go on to careers in the wood products industry including working for wood products manufacturers, small wood businesses, making and/or designing furniture, graduate programs offering MFAs in fine woodworking or furniture design, or in other fabrication industries. The BFA equips students with skills using SolidWorks, CAD program, preparing graduates for design jobs in the wood industry and beyond. Graduates also go on to start their own furniture businesses.
Program Outcomes
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Articulate informed and ideologically sound ideas about art, both historic and contemporary, and connect those ideas to the wider world.
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Produce creative artwork that is technically proficient and imbued with meaningful content.
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Demonstrate a general understanding, ability, and resourcefulness with a wide range of art media, as well as a deeper understanding of at least one medium such as drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, digital media, or art history.
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Have an openness to ideas other than their own and a willingness to take risks with their own work.
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Have established regular studio practice, which will hopefully be lifelong, be aware of developing issues in their own work, and know how to continue on their own in the pursuit of that vision, with strategies for maintaining self-awareness.
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Be familiar with the professional art world, form the perspective of career options, including exhibition venues, graduate schools, and grant opportunities.
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Assemble a professional portfolio.
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Understand the mechanics of setting up a safe and functioning studio.
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Know how to do a professional exhibition of their art, write about their art, and speak about their art at a public event.
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