Facilities Overview

The undergraduate painting studios are located on the fifth floor of the art building. There are three studios that are used exclusively for painting classes and a fourth that is used for life drawing and life painting classes. These studios are large and can accommodate classes of up to 25 students. They all have natural north light as well as track lighting, and all provide excellent ventilation. The painting graduate studios are housed in a room in the Art South building, just across the courtyard from the undergraduate studios. The room is configured to provide six separate studio spaces, is private, and conducive to intense individual research.

Darkroom Photography

The School of Art + Design has excellent black and white darkroom facilities available to students at all hours.

• medium and large format cameras
• several dedicated blackout rooms to prep traditional film for development tanks
• sixteen enlargers for up to 16″ prints
• large array of filters and lenses
• separate room with a horizontal enlarger for producing very large-scale photos
• film dryer
• light table
• paper cutter and flat file storage

Digital Photography

High-end digital photography production is also available in the School’s computer labs with state-of-the art Mac computers, scanners, and large format printers.

Intaglio and Relief Printmaking Studios

The studio which shares space with the intaglio lab is is also equipped for the making of photopolymer plates from digital, hand made, or photographic imagery. Involvement in more than one Printmaking technique is encouraged.

Screen Printing Studio

Art South 481 is a fully equipped poster and fabric screen printing studio where students can print up to 17″ x 24″ screens. This room is equipped with:

Computer Labs

The School of Art + Design manages seven high-end Mac computer labs, including a dedicated collaborative laptop lab.  Although specific classes are often held in the labs, open lab hours are scheduled throughout the entire week so students can work on assignments. All computers are networked and have access to class servers for student file storage. The following can be found in each lab:

• flatbed and film scanners
• laser printers
• projector or large presentations display(s)
• 25+ high-end Mac computers with:
  • Mac OS
  • Windows OS
  • Adobe Creative Cloud (all apps) and Director
  • AutoCAD, Revit, Maya, SketchUp Pro
  • Suitcase Fusion and over 2,500 licensed fonts
  • Processing (for Arduino)

Tablets and touchscreen TVs

Additionally, classes have access to a mobile classroom set of iPads for product design and e-publication testing. Large exhibition touchscreen TVs are also available in specific labs to use with development in multimedia projects.

2D Digital Printers

Students have access to paid printing in computer labs during open lab hours. The following resources are available during those open hours:

• large format printing (multiple media types available)
• black and white laster printing
• color laser printing

Visit the FLab page to learn more.

Sculpture Ferrous Metals Shop

This 2000+ square foot space is available to all students trained by faculty to use the equipment. It is outfitted with a full array of cutting, bending and shaping machinery that includes:

• a lathe
• step shear
• hydraulic pipe and tube bending machinery
• computer operated trace cutter
• plasma cutter
• mig, tig and oxyacetylene welding
• an English Wheel

Non-ferrous Jewelry and Metalsmithing Workshop

The Jewelry and Metalwork studios are on the 4th level of the art building. The main non-ferrous metals facility consists of the following:

• three large interconnected workshops providing jewelry bench space with torches for 24
• a well-equipped metalsmithing studio with pewter-working area
• adjacent ventilated annealing/patina area
• sheet and wire rolling mill
• metal band saw
• small and large drill presses
• 3 belt sanders
• titanium rectifiers
• oxygen/acetylene torches
• micro torch
• watch lathe
• grinder and buffing machines
• disc cutters
• 50 ton hydraulic press
• copper electroforming
• spray etching
• aluminum anodizing baths
• large enameling kilns
• 36″ sandblaster
• laser cutter

The studio also has centrifugal and vacuum casting equipment including a wax injector, vulcanizer, electromelt, and large burnout kiln. A photography set-up and camera for small-scale work is available in the metals studio for student use.

3D Woodworking Shop

This facility is available to all students trained by faculty to use the equipment.

• 1000+ square feet of space
• a table saw
• 3 band saws
• 2 drill presses
• panel saw
• jigsaw
• miter saw
• belt, disc and spindle sanders
• additional bench room with solid wood table tops and vices

Woodshop Machine Room (2nd floor)

This studio is open to students enrolled in Furniture courses. The fully equipped machine room consists of the following:

• 2 Saw Stop table saws
• 2 thickness planers
• 18″ jointer
• horizontal slot mortiser
• 3 bandsaws (36” Northfield, 24” Oliver, 18” MiniMax)
• drill presses
• radial arm saw
• 4×8 cnc router (Techno)
• 2×2 icnc router (Techno)
• 4 Form labs 3d printers
• Large 3d printer (Stratasys Dimension 1200)
• 36” thickness sander
• steam box and high output steamer
• One Way lathe
• large disk sander
• spindle sander
• oscillating edge sander
• 2 vacuum presses
• free standing ventilated spray booth for finishing of all types
• large clean multi-purpose classroom for critique, seminars, and clean work space
• grinding and sharpening machines
• hand and portable power tools that are shared by all students
• access to a range of metal fabrication and casting facilities and equipment
• 2 undergraduate bench rooms with high quality benches for each student
• separate, secure, shared graduate studio space with high quality work benches and individual work spaces
• (Coming soon) Waterjet Cutter

SDSU Ceramics has spacious, well-equipped facilities for hand building, slip casting, and wheel throwing. We have a recently modernized kiln room with twelve computer-controlled Skutt electric kilns of various sizes, and two Geil computer-controlled gas kilns, along with a 90 cu. ft. sculpture kiln. We have just added a delta clay printer to our array of digital technology. Ceramics also has traditional facilities as well: a raku kiln, saggar kiln, two soda kilns, and a wood-fired kiln in our outdoor kiln yard. Other equipment includes a Soldner clay mixer, large de-airing pug mill, ball mills, slab rollers, extruders, slip mixers, and HyperGlaze glaze software.