New art studios at Saint Michael’s bring more options for creativity

Sloane Hall, the art building at Saint Michael’s College, now features two new studios that give students more room to work creatively and collaboratively.

This past summer, two Art & Design majors, Jack Hurley ’25 and Claire Barone ’26, worked alongside Art & Design Professor Brian Collier in creating new senior studios and sculpture classrooms and expanding the space for the woodshop.

“The new woodshop and sculpture classrooms are bigger, brighter, and cleaner; the advantages are myriad,” Collier said.

A new senior art studio in Sloane Hall renovated during summer 2024. (Photo by Riley Treegoob ’26)

Students already used the building to work on projects ranging from photography, sculpture, woodworking, painting, and furniture. The building, which houses solely art and design classes, facilitates a community where students can freely express themselves through creativity.

“We have better tools and increased safety,” Barone said. With the new studios, she added, “students are going to be able to do more.”

A significant part of the new installations, Collier said, were the new studios that seniors will use. The senior studio class is an “individually planned studio program resulting in a thesis exhibition of a significant body of related works.” Senior art students work on these projects throughout the entirety of their senior year, causing them to need to spend a lot of their time in Sloane.

“The seniors have a better space to work in,” Collier said. “It’s semi-private, versus just a big, open free-for-all. But it’s still communal so they can have those interactions. That’s something that’s really important with us since we’re a community that works very close together.”

A new senior art studio in Sloane Hall renovated during summer 2024. (Photo by Riley Treegoob ’26)

Barone and Hurley spent the majority of their summers putting energy and effort into this process, and they both agreed that it was special to work on a building that means a lot to them.

“The process took the entire summer,” Hurley said. “I was working until the first week of classes, from probably a few weeks into the summer.”

Students use the expanded woodshop in Sloane Hall in fall 2024. (Photo by Brian Collier)

Barone and Hurley both acknowledge how the worn-in nature of Sloane sometimes gives the wrong impression to students. However, the lack of structure within the building often acts as inspiration for art students’ own work, Hurley said.

“The character of this building lends itself to creativity and freedom,” Hurley said. “There’s drawings all over the walls, holes, stuff tacked to the ceiling. There’s a freedom of self-expression in this building that you don’t get in St. Ed’s or the other buildings on campus.”