Visual & Performing Arts

Program Description

Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts

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The Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts has the unique mission of supporting a contemporary dialogue with classical sources providing an education in the principles, history, techniques, and critical thought processes that have shaped society from the Renaissance to the present.

The College was founded in 1976 by sculptor Elisabeth Gordon Chandler and others dedicated to the belief that serious artists must study the figurative traditions of painting and sculpture, studies that produced the great master artists from Michelangelo to Picasso. The College embraces these disciplines in a rigorous curriculum that places emphasis on life drawing as the foundation for aesthetic development.

Students from across the country seek the College for the education offered, recognizing that their professional future depends on learning the fundamental and basic skills of drawing, painting, and sculpture.

Students and alumni from the College receive honors annually at the Copley Society of Boston, the oldest art association in America. Several have earned the prestigious Robert Brooks Memorial Scholarship. For the past five years, the College’s students have earned the four highest awards in the National Arts Club Juried Student Exhibition in New York City. Graduates in the B.F.A. Painting program are eligible to apply for a $5000 Stobart Foundation Fellowship supporting their first year as an emerging artist.

The College offers opportunities for assistantships in area schools and volunteer work for arts groups. The eight-week summer program includes intensive workshops and an eight-week session with a variety of traditional painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture courses.

The College’s cultural campus extends from New York City to Boston, each just 100 miles away. Additional cultural venues can be found in Connecticut and Rhode Island as well. The College attracts outstanding contemporary, representational, and figurative master teacher/artists to its faculty.

The College encourages its student artists to bring intelligence, passion, and creativity to bear upon each drawing, painting, and sculpture. Emphasizing studio work, the College seeks to create an environment that encourages individual creation and personal responsibility through the profoundly difficult act of making the not-yet-seen and the not-yet-known.

Program Facilities

 The Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts’ studios are located adjacent to the Historic Sill House and feature nine spacious well-lit studios and an art supply/book store. The Art History/seminar room and a classroom are located in the Academic Center. Sill House has a professional gallery, administrative offices, and a student kitchen. Campus facilities doubled in 2003 when the Academic Center was completed, bringing individual senior studios on campus along with additional studios, classrooms, galleries, cafe food service, and administrative offices.

Five drawing and painting studios feature north light, air exchange systems, easels, and large storage racks for oversize paintings. Sculpture facilities include two spacious studios with modeling stands, abundant storage shelves, separate storage rooms for works in progress, a carving studio, and a casting room. Student lockers are in the hallways connecting all studios. The Student Commons provides space for exhibitions and student activities. The Academic Center lecture hall hosts visiting artist’s lectures, presentations by art dealers and gallery owners, and additional programming. Conversation and counseling is available in the comfortable Student Services office in the Academic Center.

The Krieble Library features Mission Style chairs, study tables, and large windows overlooking the Lieutenant River. The library has over 13,000 volumes for Fine Arts and Liberal Arts and Sciences and more than 19,000 slides for research and special projects, fifty-six regular periodical subscriptions, and six computer workstations. The library doubles its size to 46,000 square feet with expansion.

The Art supply/book store has all materials and books necessary for studio and academic programs. Material lists for classes are in the store for reference, which is conveniently open before every class.

Student Exhibit Opportunities

 Students participate in a Senior Thesis Exhibition before graduation, an annual “All Student Exhibition,” and “Faculty Selects Exhibition,” and “Student Art Sale” during the holiday season. Freshman-, sophomore-, and junior-level exhibitions are displayed in the Commons and works in progress are shown in the studio hallways. Faculty members recommend students for the National Arts Club Annual Student Exhibition in New York and the Copley Society in Boston. The Academy supports an “Award of Excellence” exhibition fourteen months after graduation.

Special Programs

 Students may apply for mobility to attend a different college for the first semester of their junior year with an Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design member school. Frequent trips to New York and Boston take advantage of other cultural opportunities in the area. Precollege life-drawing classes help with portfolio development. The College sponsors a Visiting Artist’s Lecture series.

Application Procedures

Deadline--freshmen and transfers: continuous. Required: essay, high school transcript, college transcript(s) for transfer students, minimum 2.0 high school GPA, 2 letters of recommendation, portfolio. Recommended: interview, SAT I or ACT test scores. Auditions held 1 time. Portfolio reviews held as needed on campus and off campus in National Portfolio Day Conferences; the submission of slides may be substituted for portfolios if a campus visit is impossible.

Undergraduate Contact

Debra A. Sigmon, Director of Admissions, Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, 84 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, Connecticut 06371; 860-434-5232 ext. 119, fax: 860-434-8725.