Art Major

Back to Majors, Minors & Academic Programs

About the Major

The studio art program encourages students to sharpen their skills and build confidence as artists as they learn the means of self-expression, master techniques for creative thinking, and consider the historical and cultural contexts for their work. After establishing a foundation in design, drawing and art history, students build skills in areas that include ceramics, painting, drawing, photography and intermedia/digital art.

Jobs in Art

• Artist
• Designer
• Photographer
• Art Teacher
• Art Therapist

Past Elon Art Internships

• Smithsonian National Gallery of Art
• Whitney Museum of American Art
• Elsewhere Living Museum
• North Carolina Museum of Art
• Alamance Arts Council

Related Majors

• Art History
• Arts Administration
• Expressive Arts
• Communication Design
• Cinema & Television Arts
• Multimedia Authoring
• Theatrical Design & Technology

Art courses gave student freedom to express true self

When Danny Gutierrez started his first year at Elon University, it was the fall of 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic had students sequestered in their dorm rooms much of the time. To keep himself busy and let his creativity out amid a difficult period, he spent a lot of time making art.

“I was painting a lot in my dorm room,” he said.

But Gutierrez wasn’t an art major — yet. The Communications Fellow had come into Elon considering majors in communication design and cinema and television arts but found that a required art course he was in his first year was feeding a deeper desire to create pieces untethered by rules. It wasn’t until he was immersed in the Fundamentals of Design introductory art class that it even crossed his mind that studio art may be more than a hobby. His lecturer, Micah Daw, was thinking the same thing about his curious student.

“Micah pulled me out of class and gave me the art major brochure, and he was like, ‘You should do this, you’re really dedicated, and I think you will do really well,’ ” Gutierrez recalled.

Gutierrez knew he was going to be creating art whether he was an art major or not, “which told me that I should major in art because I need it.” The courses in the Art Department also seemed to fit his personality better than those in cinema and television arts, he said. “I was less concerned with having work that looked super polished and more concerned with work that had substance and was more conceptual. That was fostered more in art school.”

I was less concerned with having work that looked super polished and more concerned with work that had substance and was more conceptual. That was fostered more in art school.

He also found a sense of personal freedom in his art courses. “I feel like I can express my cultural identity as a Mexican-American person, as a non-White person, as a queer person, as a trans person, and it’s free of judgment and free of me having to justify taking up space,” he said. “I can just do it because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re an artist.”

Three years later in the spring of 2024, Gutierrez was getting ready to graduate from Elon with a degree in both art and communication design. And while he had entered Elon thinking he’d eventually become a creative director for a company or brand, he is now knee-deep in the art world and hopes to pursue creating and curating art with an eye on diversity, equity and inclusion. “I’d love to get into museum work and help diversify galleries and give people the representation they need,” he said.

Elon has given Gutierrez many opportunities to get a head start on that career. Not only has he made art that has taken on many forms — he praises the unorthodox lessons Elon’s art courses teach, for example, using microcontrollers to make movable sculptures and telling stories through sound — he has also learned how to curate spaces that honor other artists’ work.

During his senior year, he was given the opportunity to create his first gallery installation at the annual Student Juried Exhibition, which featured pieces that reflected concepts of identity, race and community.

“That was a really good experience for me because I am interested in curation and I am interested in installation arts,” he said. “And it’s valuable because you treat their works like they’re people; it’s like you’re taking a part of someone and putting it on display in a respectful manner and making sure you’re doing it justice and not misinterpreting it.”

One of Gutierrez’s pieces was featured in the exhibition. Titled “Hijo Hijo/Afuera,” the patchwork quilt of colorful sticky notes bearing Spanish phrases such as “echale ganas” and “ponte las pilas” was inspired by his Mexican heritage and reflected his Latino identity and family.

“My inspiration for this piece was material scarcity and the absence of spaces for marginalized people,” Gutierrez told Elon News Network in March 2024. “My experience as a child of immigrants has taught me to make a lot from very little. My upbringing as a child of very deeply traditional Mexican parents motivated me to share this message with the community.”

At Elon, student artists benefit from various art exhibits held throughout the year by the department and student cohorts, not simply by sharing their work but by making valuable connections at the gallery events. Gutierrez said he’s been offered a variety of opportunities and resources by visitors to these exhibits.

Another opportunity during his time at Elon brought him to Los Angeles over the summer to intern at Midcity Mercado, a Latino family-owned flea market space that amplifies culture and creatives, giving Brown artists — from those in fashion to tattoo artists to musicians — a chance to share their craft. While Gutierrez found the internship on his own, his time in LA was funded by his Odyssey Scholarship and took place in conjunction with the Elon in LA program, for which he also took two courses. The internship taught him that he enjoys coordinating live events and helping vendors. “It is really gratifying work because people are generally really grateful when you give them the opportunity to take up space,” he said.

Gutierrez’s desire to foster community and bring empathy and understanding to all spaces was also seen during his time as general manager of Elon’s student-run radio station, WSOE 89.3, and his role as a college access team mentor for Elon Academy. The latter role had him helping high-need high school students in Alamance County prepare for college. He was a member of the college access program when he was in high school, and by becoming a mentor, he not only had the chance to give back but be a source for those students who don’t always see themselves reflected in higher education.

“I know how beneficial that was for me,” he said. “These are kids who are frequently first-generation college students slash aspiring first-generation students and are low-income, so it was really important to be able to share perspectives in that sense.”

Gutierrez encourages incoming art students to take advantage of all the resources Elon has to offer. Don’t just paint, he said. Use cameras and microphones in your art. Take a music class. Learn papier-mâché and multimedia tools. Learn how to tell a story through sound. “They teach you that your medium is not the point,” he said. “The point is you have an idea, and you have a question, and you have a thought you want to express, and however you want to express it, that’s where the medium comes in. The medium is born from the idea.”

Gutierrez has gratitude for the many mentors in the Art Department who have fed his passion and believed in him, beginning when lecturer Daw handed him the art major brochure his freshman year,

Being told that he is capable of going far in art by professors who “are actively doing it,” was a wake-up moment for him. “They’re all artists, not just professors,” he said. “They are people I’m going to be in community with after I graduate.”

Getting support and encouragement from professors who truly know you is gratifying, he said. “Having someone see you, actually see you, and recognize you and accept you and tell you, ‘I think you’re good at this’ or ‘I think we should rethink that decision,’ it does go a long way for personal growth.”

Curriculum & Degree Requirements

• Art A.B. (opens a new window)
• Art B.F.A. (opens a new window)