Explore the Visual Art Residency
A closer look at the MFA in Visual Art
VCFA’s academic calendar is divided into two semesters per year: a summer and winter semester respectively. Each semester begins with a nine-day residency that provides a dynamic, student-centered learning environment that supports a broad diversity of artistic practices.
Featured artwork: Aletha (Ali) Womack (VA ’26)
Residency
During residencies, students present their critical and studio work to each other, faculty, and visiting artists and plan their semester’s study. Critiques, lectures, research groups, and student presentations provide the foundation of each student’s semester.
Our world-class faculty maintains a rigorous critical and creative environment where individual artists can succeed on their own terms. They empower students to create and sustain generative practices that value their own experience and challenge received notions of success.
In addition to their Visual Art community, students are on campus with our five other MFA programs during residency: Film, Graphic Design, Music Composition, Writing, and Writing for Children & Young Adults. All students will have the opportunity during residency for interdisciplinary study, work, and networking.
Upon completion of the two-year program, students will have attended five unique and invigorating residencies that guide their creative work while offering minimal disruption to their professional lives and personal schedules.
Semester Work
Mentorship & Individualized Study
During the semester, students return to their home studios where they work with an Artist-Mentor from our expansive list of national and international artists. Students form lasting professional relationships with artists in their own region while determining their own educational values and professional expectations. Students also receive academic guidance from their faculty advisors on their visual culture research project.
Using the mediums and method of their choosing, students design projects that will challenge them to meet new artistic goals. They engage in critical dialogue with their mentors and strive to effectively integrate form and content.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an Artist-Mentor?
Artist-Mentors are prominent, contemporary artists and educators who are contracted to work with students in person during the semester. With a network of hundreds of artist-mentors in the US and Canada, the program ensures that every student, regardless of home location, will study with a committed, professional artist each semester.
Are you a prospective artist-mentor? Click below for more information about the position.
What is "visual culture"?
Visual culture is what we call the writing and research component of the MFA in Visual Art. Students choose research topics that enrich the ideas they are exploring in their studio practice, with guidance from a different faculty advisor each semester.
How do the exhibitions work?
Upon arrival at CalArts campus, students spend the first days of residency installing their artwork in the galleries, with support from the exhibition team. Receptions are held for both the new/returning-student and graduating-student exhibitions respectively. Students do not typically make work while on campus, as residencies are a time for the critiques, feedback, and crucial dialogue that sustain their practice off campus.
So, I bring my artwork to campus?
Yes. Whether commercially shipped, loaded into a car, or packed into a suitcase, the artwork also travels to residency. Students graduate from the program prepared for the logistics of transporting their work to all of the national and international exhibition opportunities that come their way.
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