Rate My Professor Chris Badger

Chris Badger, serving as Professor of Art and Design at Santa Monica College in the Arts and Culture faculty since 2015, specializes in bridging artistic practice with scientific and mathematical principles. He teaches courses in Design, Color Theory, Digital Media, Contemporary Art, and Creative Coding, where assignments encourage students to explore interdisciplinary themes. This is vividly illustrated in his 2023 exhibition "Ideas Without Edges – Patterns/Loops/Quasicrystals/and Other Infinites" at the Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery on campus. The show presented site-specific installations of student responses to his prompts, demonstrating applications in chemical painting, computational choreography, psychological color theory, sculpture as models of physical phenomena, and mathematical composition of the picture plane. Badger's teaching philosophy positions art and design as gateways to broader fields like mathematics and physical sciences.

Badger earned his BFA in 2005 from Otis College of Art and Design, studying New Genres in the Fine Arts Department, followed by an MFA in 2008 from the Roski School of Art at the University of Southern California. Prior to his tenure at Santa Monica College, he taught special seminars at Otis College of Art and Design from 2009 to 2018, covering topics such as Systems Thinking, Speculative and Esoteric Musics, SUPEREXUBERANCE, Omni-Dimensional Phenomena, and Wilderness as Myth and Metaphor. His exhibition history includes presentations at Jessica Silverman Gallery, Various Small Fires, The Wattis Institute, the Detroit Museum of Art, and numerous other venues across the United States and Europe. In recognition of his work, Badger received a $33,500 grant from the Santa Monica College Foundation in 2016. He has contributed to institutional governance as Co-Chair of the Technology Planning Committee, Co-Chair of the District Planning and Advisory Council, accessibility compliance representative for the Art Department in curriculum processes, and Director of the Pete & Susan Barrett Art Gallery. Through his pedagogy, exhibitions, and service, Badger fosters innovative artistic education and campus-wide interdisciplinary collaboration.