The ACC Art Department’s Permanent Collection of over 300 student artworks displays the diversity of artistic disciplines taught at Austin Community College. For over twenty years, artworks have been carefully selected from annual student exhibitions for acquisition. Support for purchases has been provided by the Office of the Chancellor. 

Ceramics is an exploration of form which can result in artworks of utility or aesthetic non-functional objects. Ceramics students focus on advanced technical and artistic processes in the making  of three-dimensional forms in clay and related materials.  Ceramics students combine sculpture and painting techniques in the creation of hand-built or wheel-thrown sculptural works and pottery that are decorated by slips or glazes. 

Digital Media students engage with the evolving visual arts field of digital media and graphic generation. Through a variety of technological resources, students create digital paintings, collages, and manipulated digital photography as well as projects that may include video, animation, and sound components. Students are introduced to the basic concepts, challenges, and possibilities of this new media as they create their unique artworks. 

Drawing students gain skills and perspectives of this traditional artistic process that utilizes materials such as graphite, charcoal, erasers, paint sticks, or water-soluble crayons on a two-dimensional picture plane. The intimacy of drawing allows students to explore by creating studies of form and style through sketching practices. Student projects require learned skills to create finished compositions and provide them with a basis for advanced work in other media.

ACC Jewelry students learn to design, fabricate, repair, and cast original work as professional jewelers through hands-on instruction, Computer-Aided Design (CAD) technology, and the use of state-of-the-art equipment. By teaching these skills, our professors provide a foundation for success allowing students to apply various techniques, such as lost-wax casting, fabrication, soldering, and stone setting, to their jewelry-making practice. 

Painting students learn advanced techniques through the use of wet media such as oil, acrylic, or watercolor paints on canvas or board. While Color Theory is central to the development of a painter's practice, additional elements of design, such as line, shape, light, and texture, are stressed to provide students with the ability to create stronger, well-rounded compositions. Advanced students can enroll in honors sections of painting courses at ACC.

ACC Printmaking students learn the traditional techniques of creating original prints through the media of woodcuts, linocuts, intaglio (etching, engraving, drypoint, and aquatint), lithography, and screen printing. Printmaking requires expertise in compositional drawing and design as well as technical precision. Our professors provide hands-on demonstrations of these techniques to teach students how to create printable surfaces for their original compositions. 

ACC Sculpture students build on the foundations learned in Design II to make more complex three-dimensional artworks in additional media. Sculpture students explore an art form that is continually evolving with new materials, techniques, and concepts. While introduced to contemporary innovations, students are trained in historical sculptural traditions that provide them with a deeper understanding of constructing three-dimensional expressions.