The New Genres area is designed to build upon skills and desires you bring to the program by expanding your individual creative voice. How do experience and intuition translate into expressive form? How does the imagination connect with research to activate the viewer significantly? And how do formal analysis, historical contextualization, dialogue, and reflection lead to art making? New Genres students are routinely questioned as to their role as artists in the larger cultural milieu and their ability to reach wider audiences for their activities. Central to this mission is our consistent strategy of placing artwork outside the confines of the academic institution at the undergraduate level. Our partnership with the Center For Art Plus Environment of the Nevada Museum of Art, the advantages presented by our Leeds certified Tahoe Environmental Science Center, our involvement in the annual Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert, and participation in ongoing alternative exhibition venues all foster this sense that solutions to real world problems entail creativity and innovation. In addition, students are advised to bring in skills found in other areas of our small liberal arts college, such as our poetry writing and outdoor environmental leadership. Together these resources provide a model for cross disciplinary education that speaks of individual solutions and contexts, pairing artistic design with real world problems. Shared lab facilities in New Genres include Mac-based New Media areas, including video sound installation and performance as well as traditional studios, such as painting, printmaking and 3D studios, photography, (both traditional wet darkroom and digital labs), and ceramics. As with all areas of study at Sierra Nevada College, the studios are available 24 hours a day to promote student creativity and growth. In addition, New Genres students are encouraged to dovetail their artistic pursuits with other labs on campus.

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