The Arts Institute

Tel-Hai Arts Institute is a vibrant school of arts and crafts in the Upper Galilee, providing professional training in fine arts, ceramics and jewelry, while serving as a home for art lovers from all across Israel's northern periphery. Its rich history, beautiful rural setting, and strong commitment to the Galilee community render the Tel-Hai Arts Institute a unique center of creativity.

Creating pots on the wheel in traditional methods as well as techniques in hand shaping and sculpture for creating pots or conceptual (not necessarily functional) objects.

Over Sixty years since its founding, the Arts Institute currently offers study tracks in fine arts, ceramics and jewelry, with multidisciplinary enrichment courses and workshops which add fresh perspectives to the core studies. Students may attend a three-year course of study toward certification as Master Certified Communal Arts Instructors or combine arts training with academic studies at Tel-Hai College for a B.A. degree after four years of study. Selected courses in all tracks are open to the Galilee public.

Fine Arts

• 

• 

• 

The Fine Arts Department invites to you a three-year journey of excitement, curiosity, doubt and critique.

The department curriculum is mainly built from practical workshops. The educational approach places emphasis on imparting broad practical knowledge based on technique studies as a basis for developing a personal conceptual language, through focusing on study of: drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, installations and digital media. The process is also accompanied by theoretical, historical and critical sessions.
Beginning in the second year, the students participate in elective courses in different departments, with the goal of enabling them to adopt new tools and create surprising connections and combinations that will assist them in breaking through traditional limits in the art world. In addition, each year sessions are held with a variety of artists, curators and cultural figures, with the goal of exposing students to a diversity of viewpoints and mediums.

In the last year of study, each student receives their own studio, enabling independent and intimate work, alongside attentive accompaniment by the teaching staff. The studio constitutes part of the learning space that offers workshops, join discussions and professional guidance, which help each artist to form their own unique artistic path and realize an idea for a personal exhibition. Distance from the influence of passing fashions and closeness to nature allow for in-depth observation and self-exploration and contribute to a delicate, sensitive and exposed learning process aimed at enhancing and refining intuitions.

Department Chair: PhD. Gal Shahar

Department Faculty: Arik Halfon, Rachael Rabinovitch, Hasan Khater, Olga Kundina, Anat Rozenson, Maya Gertsov Peck, Michal Shachnai Yacobi, Zohar Rubinstein

For more information on the Fine Arts Departments and to view artworks, please see The Art Institute website in Hebrew

Ceramics

• 

• 

• 

The Ceramics Department, among the oldest departments in Israel to teach ceramics, is anchored to centuries of tradition of direct dialogue between potter and clay and for decades has successfully applied a unique approach to teaching and guiding in which the joint studio, in its diverse characteristics, is managed and maintained by the students themselves, closely accompanied and facilitated by the teaching staff.

Thus the students acquire a variety of talents required to establish and operate their own independent studios on completion of their studies.

Through unmediated experience accompanied by processes of research and development – in which each student has their own potter’s wheel and personal space for creation and learning, the students are exposed to diverse processes of creation, different kinds of firing, developing and applying design thinking processes – from concept to execution and exposure to a rich tradition of studio pottery in Israel and around the world.

The study program is spread over three years and includes:

Understanding the ceramic material in its manifold characteristics – both in technological/theoretical and practical aspects.

Different modes of processing – rolling, work on the wheel, free sculpture, modular building, casting ceramics in plaster molds and more.

Finishing surfaces and glazing – understanding the chemical processes in which glaze coating is created on the fired clay – implementing research and experimentation processes as a preliminary to personally developing a unique color and finishing language.

Different kinds of firing – Anagama kiln, Raku and Salt firing, industrial firing with gas and electricity.

Department Chair: Gunn Rosenstone

Department Faculty: Oren Arbel, Kayla Talmi, Netzer Luria, Zohar Rubinstein, Ziva Vartikovsky

For more information on the Ceramics Department and to view artworks, please see The Art Institute web site in Hebrew.

Jewelry Making and Metalwork

• 

• 

• 

The is unique in its approach to preserving traditional technologies and integrating them with advanced technologies and contemporary approaches to art and design.

The curriculum is spread over three years and is based on developing high level technical skills and broad and deep familiarization with the material, its qualities and limitations, alongside ongoing dialogue with the world of art and design – through conceptual courses whose primary focus is developing a personal conceptual language – in accordance with each student’s roots and world view.

All these aspects are expressed in rich and unique personal projects – jewelry, objects, vessels and Judaica.

The techniques studied in the curriculum: Sawing, soldering, reinforcing, polishing, building structure, metal stamping, bending, cold connections, stone inlay, casting, wax molds, preparing casting models, minting, embossing, flattening, raising, combining metals, filigree, granulation, 3D design (Reino) and more.

As part of our world view, studies in the jewelry department train graduates to be jewelers and designers with unique messages, high technological abilities and talents for working in a wide variety of roles in diverse work frameworks.

Department Chair: Sigal Lifschitz

Department Faculty: Esther Maayan, Elad Guterman, Noga Hadad, Zohar Rubinstein, Ziva Vartikovsky, Liraz Borstain

For more information on the Jewelry Department and to view artworks, please see The Art Institute website in Hebrew