School of Fine Art

Our Painting degree track teaches you the importance of commanding composition, color, style, and technique. You’ll gain the fundamentals to work across every form—still life, watercolor, portrait, landscape, abstract, or figure.

In our Sculpture program, you’ll gain command of traditional skills for both figurative and non-figurative work. You’ll work with time-honored methods and cutting-edge technologies and tools to bring your artistic vision to life.

Our equipment lab features state-of-the-art equipment like a jet-milling machine for cutting metal, a McEnglevan MIFCO forge machine, a plasma cutter, and 250-amp welders. The lab also features the only complete art and sculpture neon studio in California, and a mold-making studio for one-, two-, and three-piece plaster and rubber casts.

Our painting facilities include full-time anatomy studios and a full-time multimedia room. All classrooms and studios are equipped with easels, tabourets, model stands, spotlights, cleaning stations, and painting storage racks to accommodate any style of painting. The prop room is well stocked with over 100 fabrics and over 2500 different props for your reference. We also have a dedicated room for framing and photographing art.

Our main printmaking facility includes six presses for intaglio, relief, and monotype printing. The intaglio and relief studio embraces both traditional and sustainable approaches, with support for both zinc and copper etching. The silkscreen studio concentrates on the photo emulsion process and includes a dedicated darkroom. The studio is equipped with ink, screens, a light table, and digital output capabilities.

Our sculpture center houses a complete wax studio with gating and sprue stations, as well as a ceramics room with slurry tank, silica sand stations, front-loading computer programmed electric and gas kilns, a slab roller, extruder, and a pug mill.

Seven Skutt Electric Kilns
Mid-sized, top-loading, and digitally controlled, these Skutt kilns offer precise, repeatable firing for bisque, glaze, and mid-range ceramic work—ideal for student projects.

One Large Cress Side-Loading Kiln
Our largest electric kiln features a side-hinged door and spacious chamber, perfect for large-scale or high-volume firings, with digital precision and ergonomic loading.

Two Toki Test Kilns
Compact and fast, the Toki kilns are built for glaze tests and small projects—speeding up experimentation with quicker heat cycles and efficient results.

Our welding studio features industry standard TIG, MIG, stick, and gas welders; power tools; a sand blaster; and patina stations.

Fabricate objects and jigs on both natural and artificial wood in our wood shop. Work with band saws, drill presses, a jointer, a planer, miter saws, a panel saw, wood shapers, and table routers. Two wood lathes, two isolated sanding rooms with spindle and disc sanders, and one more lathe for working foam plastics give you the control to polish your designs. The wood shop also features four SawStop table saws as part of our ongoing commitment to safety.

Located in South San Francisco, our bronze foundry is forged for full-process casting. Multiple crucibles, a hydraulic crane, burnout kiln, sandblaster, and a Laguna Raku kiln give students the tools to transform molten metal into masterpieces.

Frame It Right. Your work. Professionally finished.

The framing shop is open to all students and is equipped for paintings, works on paper, and more. Turn your work into professionally finished pieces suitable for display.

Supervised sessions available by appointment only.