Visual Arts and Technology Portfolio Requirements

If you are applying to our visual arts & technology program you are strongly encouraged to submit a portfolio, but it is not required.

All portfolio materials must be uploaded through your student portal which you’ll receive access to once you have submitted your application. The automated process of receiving student portal credentials can take up to 48 hours after your application has been received.

Examples of creative work can include, but are not limited to the following:

• Paintings and drawings

• Sculpture and ceramics

• Photography and collage

• Creative writing

• Code (Github/processing/etc.)

• Game design/world building

• Graphic and web design

• Anything you think is creative

We require five examples of creative work for the visual arts and technology portfolio.

The system will let you upload more than the required number of pieces; however, we cannot guarantee that all of them will be reviewed. Please try your best to only submit your strongest work. We prefer quality over quantity.

Yes! You can provide a description of every piece that you upload and we strongly recommend that you do so. The more context that you provide for your submission, the easier it is for our faculty to review your contribution to the work. Make sure you include information describing what the piece is, how it was created, and why you chose to submit it.

Items in your resume may include:

• A list of visual arts classes taken at the high school level

• Any art courses or private instruction outside of school

• Awards received for your work

• Exhibitions or other public presentations that have included your work

• Experience with technology based in the arts, including software like Adobe Creative Cloud, video production and editing, coding, digital fabrication, etc.

Feel free to submit digital images of your paintings, drawings, and traditional media. Take the best quality photos that you can (borrow a good camera if you can). If you don't have access to a camera, or if your images are highly detailed, consider scanning any appropriate material using a flatbed scanner at a local copy-shop or public library. If you don’t have access to studio lighting, shoot your images outside on a cloudy day for good even, light. Please avoid casual or low-quality images!

Question Continued: For example, some photography, some painting, some computer-based artwork?

Answer:

We recommend submitting your best work. Including drawings just for the sake of including traditional materials doesn't improve the quality of a portfolio. Make sure that whatever you are submitting, it shows the best of your creative output – that is the top priority. You are encouraged to submit non-traditional work and if you feel that you're accomplished in many mediums, please feel free to include a variety of pieces. Keep in mind that the evaluation is based on depth, not breadth.

While the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences encourages students to use new technologies at all stages of their creative work, use of AI tools in the creation of portfolio projects must be clearly disclosed.

Although we technically support media files as large as 5 GB, please be advised that larger files will take longer to upload from your Internet connection and may stall if you are on a wireless connection or one that cannot sustain a connection for the necessary period of time. Uploaded documents may contain no more than 75 pages. We support the following file formats:

Video: .avi, .flv, .m1v, .m2v, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mpeg, .mpg, .mp4, .webm, .wmv

Audio: .aac, .aif, .aiff, .iff, .fla, .m4a, .mpa, .mp3, .ra, .wav, .wma

Slide: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff

Document: .doc, .docx, .odg, .odp, .odt, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .rtf, .wpd