RISD XYZ Spring/Summer 2011 by Rhode Island School of Design

Rhode Island School of Designâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alumni magazine Spring/summer 2011

Conversations online, incoming,

ongoing

Listen to reflections, opinions, what’s on our readers’ minds

Look

at summer stuff, the great outdoors, skin season

Doing it Differently in a DIY World

True Character

As quintessential RISD makers, Tanya Aguiñiga MFA 05 FD, Jessica Brown MID 09 and Amy Devers MFA 01 FD readily share their commitment to craftsmanship with others.

Six Degrees updates from clubs, the Alumni Association, Alumni Relations

Two College Street Maeda’s message, faculty news, a glimpse of studios/ student life now

Impact news about scholarships, donors, the RISD Annual Fund

Where We Are class notes and profiles, undergraduate first, graduate second

Where We Were photos/memories from the past

Sketchbook sketches, doodles, thoughts, works in progress

28 RISD Vintage 2011 (a very good year) As they wrapped things up this spring, RISD’s newest batch of alums showed that they’re definitely ready for what’s next.

Buck Lewis 81 IL loves bringing characters to life on screen and has created some of the most memorable personas in the Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks inventories.

FINDING YOUR OWN WAY T his is the tim e o f ye ar w he n an yon e w ho

works at a school or has kids of a certain age inevitably thinks about transitions. Every year, all over the world, a select group of students graduates and moves on to a new phase in their lives. At RISD the alumni “body” grows steadily, adding another 650+ people every spring—and every year I find myself thinking about how these new graduates will find their path in life. This issue, like most, is full of stories about how and why various alumni have chosen to do what they do. For some reason, the paths that RISD artists and designers follow to get wherever they want to go strike me as extraordinarily interesting—maybe because they seem so daring, or circuitous, or counterintuitive. No matter what RISD alumni choose to do after graduation, they generally embark on a journey that’s less predictable and infinitely more intriguing than that of the average college grad. Becoming an artist—or a creative professional of any sort—isn’t like going into banking or engineering or retail. There’s no one path, no linear progression. In this issue of RISD XYZ, you’ll find a feature article about three young alums, Tanya Aguiñiga MFA 05 FD, Jessica Brown MID 09 and Amy Devers MFA 01 FD—all designers, all makers and all women who would gladly use a power drill over a hair dryer any day. Their paths have taken them in very different directions, yet each one is living a creatively satisfying life, capitalizing on an innate love of making. And t e aches,

Let us know what you think about this issue: risdxyz@risd.edu.

much of their satisfaction comes from sharing the skills they’ve learned along the way with people who, unlike most artists and designers, aren’t naturally drawn to a DIY approach. The second feature story focuses on Buck Lewis 81 IL , a character designer for animated features who tried out a couple of careers before ending up in Hollywood. In fact, Buck first went into advertising and had made enough money by the time he was 30 to “retire” to a newly purchased farmhouse in Connecticut, with the romantic notion of finding the solitude and space he needed to become a painter— until he took a significant detour. Almost wherever you turn in this issue you’ll notice that RISD alumni are not content to simply follow a predetermined career path or do “what’s expected” to make it. The handful of Class of 2011 graduates highlighted in the third feature seem to know that and are prepared—not to follow a set trajectory or to climb the old-school ladder, but to make their own path. They may meander a bit, but chances are that they, too, will find creative satisfaction. If there’s anything I’ve learned about RISD alumni, it’s that you are a restless bunch, unwilling to accept that you may have to compromise in order to pay the bills. Granted, many alumni may do that at some point, for a period of time. But what’s totally impressive about most RISD grads is that you figure it out. You create alternatives. You find a way to make a living doing what you love.

editor’s message by

Liisa Silander

photo illustration by

Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD

CONTRIBUTORS PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Becky Bermont EDITOR

Liisa Silander lsilande@risd.edu 401 454 6349 D E S I G N/ P R O D U C T I O N

Kate Blackwell Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD Sarah Rainwater

Listen |

Cover |

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Anna Cousins Francie Latour Paula Martiesian 76 PT Liisa Silander D I R E C T O R O F A LU M N I R E L AT I O N S

Christina Hartley 74 IL PRINTING

Lane Press Burlington, VT printed on 70# Sterling Matte, a recycled stock RISD XYZ

Two College Street Providence, Rhode Island 02903-2784 USA Published three times a year by RISD’s Media group, in conjunction with Alumni Relations.

Listen illustration |

Cover | Crystal Ellis MFA 11 SC (crystalroseellis.com) creates evocative works of sculpture in a range of materials—paper, feathers, wood, and lead and monofilament, as in the mesmerizing kinetic piece The Weight of Water (see her website). She’s shown on the cover peering into her egg-shaped papier-mâché piece Echo, which she exhibited this spring in RISD’s 2011 Graduate Thesis Exhibition. Interestingly enough, after graduation Crystal plans to throw her energy into expanding a small design company she founded with two other women called…Egg Collective. You can also see another piece of her pure, white, soft/hard work on page 31. Listen (page 5) | After winning a Fulbright grant to study in Japan, Louie Rigano 10 ID (louierigano.com) has been exploring traditional Japanese aesthetics and design philosophies this year. His goal is to analyze and react to the core tenets of Wabi Sabi as he designs and fabricates functional objects. Louie wrote the Listen piece on page 5 in response to his experiences during and after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which not only changed the course of his year abroad, but radically altered his understanding of the human spirit. This year Louie has also been posting gorgeous images and writing about his Fulbright year in Japan on his blog: louieinjapan.blogspot.com.

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Sketchbook |

Listen illustration (page 5) | A NYC-based illustrator from Hong Kong, Victo Ngai 10 IL (victo-ngai. com) travels a lot between the two cities—and speaks Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Japanese. Her real name is Ngai Chuen Ching, but since her British kindergarten teachers couldn’t quite handle that, they dubbed her Victoria—which, in turn, baffled her Chinese classmates, who gave up and just went with Victo, which stuck. Just a year out of RISD, she’s freelancing for The New York Times, PLANSPONSOR and The Village Voice, among others. Victo has won awards from Communication Arts, American Illustration, Spectrum, the Society of Illustrators/NY—and the list goes on. She created the illustration to accompany Louie’s Listen article and was inspired by the Namazu, the catfish in Japanese mythology responsible for causing earthquakes. Sketchbook (page 64) | Artist/educator Sarah Haskell 76 TX combines her lifelong love of weaving with teaching people of all ages and abilities to discover the joys of working with thread. She lives in York, ME with her family and spends summers exploring the coast of Maine in her sailboat. Sarah contributed a page from the sketchbook she kept during a salty trip across the Atlantic earlier this year. She regularly exhibits her textiles in local and regional galleries, and though she loves being on the water, her studio is where she finds real meaning. “The interlacement of threads, the meditative quality of weaving, the metaphor of weaving and the truth I face when I am at the loom are my passion.”

Let us know what you think about this issue: risdxyz@risd.edu.

I N I T I A L C R E AT I V E D I R E C T I O N

WellNow Design wellnowdesign.com Criswell Lappin MFA 97 GD Nancy Nowacek Dungjai Pungauthaikan MFA 04 GD O N T H E C OV E R

Echo (2010, papier-mâché, wood, paper)

A D D R E S S U P D AT E S

Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Advancement Services RISD, Two College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA Or email ksouza@risd.edu

Online, incoming, ongoing

MEAT LOVERS “The winter issue of the magazine is outrageously beautiful. I think it’s the best I’ve ever seen come out of RISD!” Jerry Mischak 73 PT, adjunct faculty, Painting, Providence, RI

It’s a terrific edition, congratulations on such a beautiful and conceptually bold issue. Chris Bardt BArch 83

RISD Professor of Architecture Providence, RI I love the design. It is interesting and well done, and creative. And yet engaging and readable. Content is very good, and above all, the whole thing is well organized, well executed and exciting. Believe me, I ran my own design firm in Boston for 27 yrs, and I don’t throw out compliments too often. But you have created a superb piece of work. And I do know how much effort that takes on everyone’s part. Jack Dickerson 69 GD

Brewster, MA

I really loved the food-themed issue of XYZ! Great reading! Reminded me of a New Yorker or NYTimes magazine issue. Peter Goldberg 88 PT

Pawtucket, RI

The best edition of the magazine that I’ve seen in all the years that I’ve assiduously read it! Congratulations! I don’t know how or where or from whom the idea developed but it really is a winner from all perspectives. Barnet (Bunny) Fain

Before your great food issue I was only aware of a couple of culinarilyinclined RISD alums. Now I feel almost part of a crowd! I’ve worked as a product and surface designer for most of my life, but when I was diagnosed with celiac disease a few years ago, I used my years of home cooking experience to start developing gluten-free recipes. GlutenfreefromNYC is my new online bakery and www.wheatlessand meatless.com is my blog catering to gluten-free vegetarians and vegans. I would love to hear from RISD food people in the NYC area who’d like get together. Who knows how many of us there might be?! Bernice Mast 71 PH

New York, NY

I just got my copy of the XYZ magazine. It looks fabulous!! Thank you so much for asking me to be involved, and for your very thoughtful and generous article about the feast [see Winter 2011, pages 22–23]. I’m truly so honored to be a part of it. It’s so nice to be next to Ciril (who I remember from college) and the other great RISD grads. I think I own a cookbook by Krystina Castella. Go RISD!! I can’t wait to see what the next one will bring! It’s really such a fun and cool publication. Lauren Garfinkel 91 AP

Brooklyn, NY

honorary trustee/former Chairman of the Board Barrington, RI

Follow RISD at twitter.com/risd and facebook.com/risd1877.

All about you. If you don’t yet know about the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), you may want to check it out. It’s an online initiative aimed at providing a national picture of what alumni of US art schools are doing with their degrees. Run by the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research in collaboration with Vanderbilt University’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, SNAAP is modeled after the National Survey of Student Engagement, a more established Indiana Center project that collects data on the level of academic involvement among college students. The SnaapShot section of the SNAAP site presents interesting stats in an easily digestible format that helps frame a picture of art school grads in the US: snaap.iub.edu/snaapshot.

Dear XYZ readers, We really want to hear from more of you about what you do and don’t like about the magazine. So please fill out the short survey at the back of this issue or do it online at www.risd.edu/xyzsurvey. No purchase necessary to take advantage of this extraordinary offer.

spring/summer 2011

DISAPPOINTMENTS

too small

One of my favorite teachers was the late Dr. David Manzella, chair of the MAT [Master of Arts in Teaching] program. Toward the end of his tenure and after his retirement he made his new studio—a former bakery—into a bread making sculpture facility/ studio, where he and (as I understand it) invited artists/students and friends would also make bread works. He would have been the godfather of this issue and I was rather surprised and disappointed he was not mentioned.

I think that RISD XYZ is a beautifully designed, interesting magazine. But why does the typeface have to be so small and so gray? I know I am not alone with this question.

Perci Chester MAT 68/MFA 69 PT

Minneapolis, MN

Editor’s note: Thanks for the reminder, Perci. I haven’t heard about David’s legendary bakery studio, but we obviously couldn’t pack all the great RISD food stories into a single issue…. Like the year the Class of 1974 baked its design diploma from cookie dough (in the Foundry!), the award-winning Dining + Catering people who are making amazing food at RISD these days and the many professors (current and former) known for being almost as talented in the kitchen as in the studio. Nice work on the XYZ magazine. It is a pleasure to ﬂip through… wish I’d known about the FOOD issue. My firm does mostly food and hospitality work for chefs such as Mario Batali. Among other projects, we’ve designed all of Mario’s award-winning cookbooks and most of the branding for his many restaurants. Douglas Riccardi 84 GD

Brooklyn, NY

Editor’s note: We did run a subtle mention in the Fall issue (page 54) hinting that food was on the horizon for Winter, but we hear you. We’ll attempt to make our intentions clearer in the future. Coming up next: a focus on alumni involved in publishing.

“Like Rome, Providence congregates around seven hills. The two to keep in mind are Federal and College.” from an article citing Providence as “on the shortlist of coolest small cities in the US” in the British newspaper The Telegraph, which also notes that RISD is “responsible… for the city’s vibrant, experimental art scene” (5.14.11)

Gretchen Dow Simpson 61 PT

WOrds or less

Providence, RI

Editor’s note: Since we use several alumni-designed faces (Antenna, Receiver and Chronicle) at various sizes throughout the issue, I’m not sure which one rubs you the wrong way. But thanks for the feedback. We’ve been trying to be very sensitive to legibility issues and will continue to do so as we tweak our font choices to make the magazine graphically stronger.

PORTABLE DOC FORMAT? Though I’d enjoyed risd views tremendously, RISD XYZ provides us a more mainstream if not elegant experience. Magic happens when image and typography meet thoughtful design, and they are committed to print as is in RISD XYZ. That brand of magic captured me at a very early, impressionable age, and I’ve been at its mercy since. I wonder if there might be an archive where pdfs of each can be obtained as well? I’m no digital junkie, but I make exceptions for certain material. For instance, RISD XYZ.

It was super, super intense. I was so energized. Collection 2011 guest critic

Robert Geller 01 AP remembering his senior crit with Nicole Miller 73 AP , among others

It goes without saying that we aren’t a cookie-cutter publication. Erica Morse 12 GD in her editor’s note after the great new RISD student magazine The All-Nighter (all-nighter.com) signed off for the summer

If the work is good, what does it matter? actor/student/MC/whatever

James Franco MFA 12 DM commenting on media criticism that he’s “spreading himself too thin”

I’m feeling very manly. David Byrne 73 FS after former Florida governor Charlie Crist publicly apologized for failing to get permission to use the song Road to Nowhere in his campaign ad

Christopher Bright

Cranston, RI

Editor’s note: We post current and back issues of RISD XYZ (in PDF format) at www.risd.edu/xyz.

I wanted to fall in love with my profession again. Erika Tarte MFA 11 GD telling Graphic Design USA why she came to RISD

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Keep in touch. Write us at: risdxyz@risd.edu

Readers reflect, write, shout, share what’s on their minds.

LEARNING FROM TRAGIC LOSS I h ad just gotten ou t of the sh ow er an d

had started buttoning my shirt when I felt the initial tremor. I wasn’t too concerned at first, especially as there had been several small earthquakes since I had arrived in seismically active Japan. But by the time I reached the third button the severity of this earthquake was obvious—within roughly five minutes everything in my Tokyo apartment had been completely rearranged.

“It’s difficult to concentrate… in the midst of a national crisis of such magnitude. It was totally terrifying, but I was unhurt. As a Fulbright fellow studying abroad, I immediately realized my parents would be worried, so I Skyped them back in the US to let them know I was safe. Then I followed the news as websites announced with increasing concern when each aftershock would occur, and I would feel it just seconds later. Fortunately, Tokyo suffered virtually no structural damage. Still, since I was studying in a region close enough to the Fukushima nuclear plant to warrant travel warnings, I took the advice of Fulbright Japan and returned to America for a short leave of absence. But in the 10 days before I left, I witnessed a different Tokyo. The night following the earthquake, I walked from my apartment to Shinjuku station—the busiest train station in the world—and stood in the street amidst thousands of people facing three huge LED screens, which usually streamed advertisements but now displayed live news footage of the destruction of not-so-distant coastal cities. We stood in silence monitoring the flow of graphic images and the outpouring of people rushing through the streets toward their homes. The cultural barriers I had been facing by virtue of being an outsider in a foreign country were nullified.

Despite this, it was very hard to even think about my design projects and research. The continuous aftershocks were unnerving, some large enough to pull me out of sleep. Yet the Japanese seemed remarkably unphased. They went to work as always and carried on with everyday routines. Even in the face of such unbelievable loss—loss that I, as a visitor, could never truly comprehend—the people of Japan remained resolute. The month at home in the U.S. allowed me a chance to regroup for the second half of my Fulbright

To submit your own commentary, email risdxyz@risd.edu (subject line: listen).

year, which was almost exactly at the halfway point when the earthquake struck. I had just started an internship in Tokyo a few weeks before and had arranged another one for late spring, both at industrial design firms. This spring I am also working with a traditional woodworking master an hour outside the city and in the summer I will spend a few weeks making ceramics at a Buddhist monastery. While it will be difficult to concentrate on my personal design project in the midst of a national crisis of such magnitude (complicated by radiation concerns from the irreparable power plant), I am deeply gratified to be able to delve into the historic culture of a people with the self-discipline, tenacity and poise to remain intrepid in the face of immeasurable loss and tragedy.

text by

Louie Rigano 10 ID

illustration by

Victo Ngai 10 IL

spring/summer 2011

The WATER WHISPERER

It’s Summer! Emily Cohen 90 IL

Emily Cohen 90 IL had fun working as a school art teacher for years, but it wasn’t until she taught her own small children to swim—both by age two— that she discovered her true calling. By transferring her creative approach to teaching from the classroom to the pools of sunny southern California, she developed a how-to method for small fry based on “entertaining developmental methods that break down the basic elements of swimming in a simplistic manner,” she explains. Today, she runs The Water Whisperer in Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills, CA, teaching hundreds of babies, kids and adults to swim every season. Cohen boasts a 98% success rate in getting kids three and up swimming within 10 lessons. Her trick? Push fun, not sheer survival: “Throwing children in immediately and creating scary experiences are not part of The Water Whisperer philosophy.” thewaterwhisperer.com

Roots on the Cape For all his expertise in shaping outdoor environments, George Rockwood “Rocky” Clark BLA 77 admits that nature knows best. At Harwich Gardens by the Sea, the landscaping company he has run on Cape Cod for 30 years, gorgeous perennials provide the starting point for designers with a keen sense of balance between the wild and the manmade. Clark takes particular pride in the habitats he creates to encourage hawks, owls, turtles, rabbits, deer and other native species to thrive. Unmowed fields and a pesticide-free patch of land allow willows, pitch pines, bayberry and red cedars to

Rocky Clark

entice the wild ones to have a hay day. harwichgardensbythesea.com

BLA 77

AND THERE’S

MORE 06

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Jillian Barber 68 CR jillianbarber.com Bring the outdoors in with ceramic seahorses, turtles, lacy fish and jardinières fired in the artist’s Jamestown, RI studio. Inspired by natural beauty, Barber also sculpts masks and is particularly partial to her own Greenman, an ancient symbol of male fertility, rebirth and regeneration.

David Stark 91 PT davidstarkdesign.com The modern-day bride doesn’t need a church, a limo or even special shoes (at least not for beach weddings). But flowers are a must. So in To Have and to Hold Stark breaks it all down, petal by petal and season by season, for brides who don’t want to bother with thinking about every last detail.

Botanical Beauties “It is easy to forget that the colonists settled in New York City because of its bounty of natural resources,” noted Wendy Hollender 76 TX in a recent New York Times feature on vanishing urban plants. She, too, first grew roots in Manhattan, living there for 30 years as she built a career around drawing beautifully accurate renderings of plants, primarily through the New York Botanical Garden. Now the botanical illustrator has transplanted herself to a more natural setting: Hollengold Farm in upstate New York, where she conducts botanical drawing workshops, creates fine art

Wendy Hollender

and does commissioned work for clients such as Country

76 TX

Coty and others. Her latest book—Botanical Drawing in Color

Living and Horticulture magazines, Restoration Hardware, (2010, Random House)—offers an approachable how-to guide to capturing the blooming beauty of botany. drawingincolor.com

Pot Happy Plants feel right at home in pots made by Kim Barry 78 SC, owner of Clay Trout Pottery in the seaside town of Mattapoisett, MA. She uses traditional methods to craft each of the hand-thrown vessels, adding embellishments for custom projects. (Wedding centerpieces with the couple’s initials are particularly popular at this time of year.) Clay Trout offers shapes and sizes to suit even the pickiest of plants: delicate Paphiopedilum and Phragmipedium orchids are pampered in narrow, deep pots that accommodate their particular root systems; Cattleya pots have holes for extra aeration. Barry uses several varieties of clay that release moisture at different rates, allowing you to select the very best housing for your favorite greenery. claytroutpottery.com

Lois Brezinski 70 AP

Endless Escape Sometimes you just can’t bear to leave the perfect vacation behind and return to the rat-race—just ask Lois Brezinski 70 AP. Inspired by an “idyllic” getaway in the Cayman Islands, the

Kim Barry 78 SC

one-time owner of a textile design firm in New Jersey decided to make a new life in the Caribbean after getting burnt out on the job. There she pursued her passion for capturing the blissfulness of beachfront living in her vibrant watercolors, and soon discovered that resorts and galleries were eager to display her work. Now settled in Delray Beach, FL, Brezinski runs a brisk business with Cayman Colors, a line of decorative tiles, cards, candles and other products featuring tropical scenes that transport buyers beyond the mainland. loisbrezinskiartworks.com

Aaron Meshon 95 IL risdworks.com In his ode to the Bomb Pop, Aaron Meshon sends us straight back to summers spent scampering curbside at the first jingle of the ice-cream truck. Yet, without adding a single calorie to the mix, his rubber-dipped messenger bag will keep your laptop and other sundry stuff safe and sound.

Paul Loebach 02 ID paulloebach.com Loebach is making a splash again with his high-end Great Camp collection for the Manhattan design store Matter. Inspired by Adirondack furniture, it offers a line made with pieces of lumber that appear to have been whittled by hand—except that it’s a total illusion.

spring/summer 2011

The Great Outdoors

GEAR OF THE YEAR Toss away the tent poles and lighten your load this summer with NEMO’s nifty inflatable beams. Since founding NEMO Equipment in 2002, inveterate adventurer Cam Brensinger 02 ID has been working nonstop to raise design standards in outdoor equipment. From the get-go, NEMO’s breakthrough AirSupported Technology earned an avalanche of awards and recognition from Popular Science, Time, I.D., iF and others. Almost a decade later, the bright ideas just keep flowing out of the NEMO shop in Nashua, NH: the Sleep Tight Anchor Transfer system tethers tents in precarious positions; the APRI liner raises internal tent temperatures; a Removable Insulated Floor separates sleepers from frosty ground. Most recently NEMO’s Astro/Pillowtop sleeping system earned a 2011 Gear of the Year citation from National Geographic Adventurer and an Editor’s Choice award from Backpacker. nemoequipment.com

Falling in Love “Picking Gravity as my first feature with no film school training was insane,” says Marah Strauch 00 GL. “That said, I didn’t have a choice. It chose me.” As the writer and director of the first full-length documentary about the sport of BASE jumping (freefalling from fixed objects), she has spent five years tracking down and interviewing BASE pioneers and grabbing exhilarating footage shot in the 1970s and ’80s by BASE guru Carl Boenish, wearing a head-mounted camera. She’s also filming modern wingsuit flight and jumps—including along the spectacular rock faces of Norway, where Boenish died on a jump in 1984. But Gravity is not a film about death, outrageous stunts

Marah Strauch 00 GL

or media hype, Strauch emphasizes. It’s “a love story about what it feels like to fall, at first uncontrollably, then willingly, and finally ecstatically.” gravitythefilm.com

Karen Hackenberg 78 PT karenhackenberg.com The ocean is filled with mystery, but humans have the pesky habit of filling it with deadly irony. From a Natural Ice soda can to the sea nymph on a Starbucks plastic cup, Hackenberg’s paintings create a disturbing juxtaposition between Pacific waters and the junk we throw in them.

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Susie Nielsen MFA 05 GD farmprojectspace.com Now is the time to visit farm project space + gallery in Wellfleet, MA, where Nielsen mounts a great line-up of shows during the height of tourist season. A lot of RISD alums are frequent “farmers,” with work by Asya Palatova MFA 04 CR featured through June 14.

Mountain Modern It takes a real appreciation for the great outdoors to design homes that both complement and respect the breathtaking natural landscapes around them. In his 30 years as principal of Charles Cunniffe Architects (CCA) in Aspen, CO, Charles Cunniffe BArch 75 has mastered the art. CCA’s approach involves a “humanistic, socially responsible and technologically sophisticated vision of design”—one that has earned the AIA Colorado West 2010 Firm of the Year designation, along with the 2010 AIA Colorado West People’s Choice Award, a Gold Nugget award of merit and a top spot in CNBC’s list of America’s most impressive ski homes, among many other awards. Natural wood and stone allow CCA residences to harmonize with their surroundings, while expansive windows are strategically placed to enhance the sweeping views. cunniffe.com

Cam Brensinger 02 ID

Jon Naiman 89 PH

When Quidditch Isn’t Enough Bern-based photographer Jon Naiman 89 PH says Hornuss, a 17th-century Swiss hybrid between baseball and golf, is an acquired taste among farm folk, with a “rather small” fan base. Played on thin strips of land between crop fields, the game pits hitters, who whack a small puck—called a hornuss (or “hornet”) for the buzzing sound it makes when flying 300 km/h— far out into a field, against defenders, who use heavy wooden shields on sticks to intercept the hornuss in flight. Naiman’s series Release Form captures the flavor of the Swiss sport and caught the attention of the jurors for Photography Prize 2011, which selected several of his photos Biel, Switzerland.

Charles Cunniffe

jonnaiman.com

BArch 75

for a recent show at Photoforum-PasquArt in

Kevin Cunningham BArch 05 spiraresurfboards.com Last spring we noted that Spirare Surfboards certainly stand out at the shore. This spring Cunningham completed a Kickstarter campaign to begin making artful surfboards from “trash that washes up from the massive drifts of debris in the ocean.”

Tom Weis MID 08 + Shoham Arad MID 08 see-why.org This summer these two RISD classmates are teaming up to offer a new series of design workshops for teens at Weis’ See Why Studios in Rockport, ME. The goal is to show teenagers exactly how the design process works and why it matters.

spring/summer 2011

Skin Season

PERFECTION “Swimsuit photos were probably the last thing in the world they would have expected me to be doing at RISD,” Bjorn Iooss 03 PH readily admits. But earlier this year shooting skin led to one of the most visible photography gigs on the planet, when his photo of Russian model Irina Shayk was selected from stacks of contenders for the cover of the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition (estimated circulation: 60 million). Iooss had done work for advertising and several VOGUE editions, but had never shot for Sports Illustrated before. On the morning of the shoot on the beach in Maui, he realized he was looking at something potentially special: “It was beautiful. The light had just come up.” And, he adds, “The crazy thing about it was that it was the first morning, the first girl, the first look, and it was perfect.” bjorniooss.com

Stylish Sunscreen The convergence of two major hat-wearing seasons— summer and a royal wedding—makes it a heady time to be Eric Javits 78 PT. Since 1978, when he crafted his first hat to help a friend get noticed at the

Old salts and landlubbers alike can proudly bare summer

door of Studio 54, the millinery and accessories

skin adorned with the work of Duke Riley 95 PT, founder

designer has been synonymous with easy glamour.

Eric Javits

Marked for Life

Performers as diverse as Bette Midler, Alicia Keys, the Rockettes, Madonna and Britney Spears have commis-

78 PT

of East River Tattoo in Brooklyn. He and the other artists on staff specialize in custom designs influenced by maritime folk art, scrimshaw and 19th-century tattoos— think Queequeg, not Kat Von D. Riley’s interest in folk history

sioned special

is more than skin deep: through his projects outside the

editions. Javits hats

tattoo studio, he addresses “forgotten unclaimed frontiers”

have graced the heads

on the edges of urban areas, often where water meets land.

of at least two first

Recent adventures in the name of art include An Invitation

ladies and accentuated

to Lubberland, his attempt to rediscover a river beneath

the runways at Donna

Cleveland that was the site of a booming shantytown during

Karan, Carolina Herrera,

the Depression, and a cross-country journey by freight train

Arnold Scaasi and Bob Mackie shows. For women out enjoying the elements but shy of the sun, Javits invented

to reconstruct the defunct “hobo census” of the US. eastrivertattoo.com dukeriley.info

the popular Squishee: a faux-straw chapeau that springs back into tip-top shape after being stuffed into a suitcase. ericjavits.com

Lara Kurtzman 00 PT kelacalaq.com What do feminist comedian Janeane Garofalo and R&B femme fatale Rihanna have in common? They both go for the irreverence of Kelacala Q, a jewelry line used to accentuate the abundance of bronzed skin in this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

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Jennifer Clinch Guertin 96 PT anchorsteamtattoo.com Nothing celebrates skin like a good tattoo. As owner of Anchor Steam Tattoo Gallery in seaside Newport, RI, Guertin has been perfecting her body art for over a decade. From Nemo to mermaids with Afros, Samurai warriors to Wonder Woman, her portfolio makes an indelible impression.

Tubing Karelle Levy 97 TX believes that no matter what shape you’re in—or what shape you were born with— the beauty of her toobular knit designs will “flatter the shape you have.” Through her Miami-based company Krelwear, she creates knock-out knitwear that is regularly snapped up by such tastemakers as Nicki Minaj, Cameron Diaz, Pink, Alanis Morissette, Christina Ricci and Carmen Electra, among others. And her seamless tubes cover a lot more than just ankles; using the finest yarns (including glow-in-the-dark and UV-reactive ones) she creates fabulously funky skirts, dresses, tanks, sweaters, onesies for the beyond-infancy crowd and—well, courtesy of Karen Carpenter/Sport Illustrated | cover image: courtesy of Bjorn Iooss/Sports Illustrated

basically, anything that can be knit in the round. Levy’s fusion of art and fashion has earned Krelwear growing recognition, including call-outs such as GenArt’s Fresh Faces of Fashion and Daily Candy’s Sweetest Thing Fashion Designer. krelwear.com

Karelle Levy

Sally LaPointe

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Going Gaga So, as all the gossip blogs will tell you, the good news for Sally LaPointe 06 AP is that she is “fast becoming one of Lady Gaga’s favorite designers.” The bad news is that the

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exuberantly outrageous celeb doesn’t always don the designer’s entire outfit. So, yes, she wore a beautifully sexy LaPointe gown to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas earlier this year (though who other than the glitterati would opt for evening wear at a trade show?). But when the paparazzi snapped this shot in late-winter NYC, LaPointe could only take credit for half the look (namely, the expert tailoring and sculptural structure for which she’s known). Unlike the celebs who have embraced her work, LaPointe doesn’t actually show much skin in her fall collection. “She’s a smart woman,” noted POSHGLAM, “because New York City in the fall and winter doesn’t lend itself to scantily-clad dressing.”

far right: photo courtesy of INF, Inc.

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Evian Zukas-Oguz 98 TX evianzo.com As owner of EvianZO, Evian Zukas-Oguz channels hippy California style to make her hand-dyed silk sarongs, tank tops and other beach-ready wear. Summer never felt so good wafting through a whisper of an indigo silk dress or shimmering off a red and yellow swimsuit.

Sarah Small 01 PH livingpictureprojects.com Plenty of skin marked last month’s debut of Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions, the most recent of Small’s theatrical experiments; 120 performers of all ages, sizes and colors took to the stage in Brooklyn to bring tableaux-style paintings to life in this “live mosaic of humanity.”

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DOING IT

F IF

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by Francie Latour

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Meet three designers who share a deep love of materials, a fondness for power tools and the drive to help others discover the joys of working with their hands. H ow ca n you t ell wh en a p h en o m en o n h as b eco m e co m plet ely en t r en c h ed wi t h i n po pular cult ur e?

Earlier this spring Tanya Aguiñiga created an inviting installation of crisscrossed yarns, felted furniture and floating woven pieces for Crossing the Line, her solo show at LA’s Craft and Folk Art Museum.

When it’s got a catchy three-letter acronym that everybody either instantly recognizes or senses they should. Like DIY. DIY is the American middle-class hobby that grew into a philosophical movement that exploded into a national obsession that spawned a billion-dollar media and retail empire. It’s an anti-consumerist subculture and it’s a giant cable network (actually several, including DIY, HGTV and a lucrative chunk of PBS). It’s a way to plan your wedding and it’s the message behind every ad for Lowe’s and Home Depot. More than anything, it’s a highly hyped notion of returning to something the average American vaguely senses has been lost—without knowing exactly what that something is. For three young alumni—one from suburban Michigan, one from rural Kentucky and one from the Mexican border town of Tijuana—DIY was never really any of those things. It wasn’t a trend or something they even identified with a label. For Amy Devers MFA 01 FD, Jessica Brown 09 MID and Tanya Aguiñiga MFA 05 FD, doing it yourself has always been something they craved. From the time they were young, finding a new way to use an old thing was a way of life and a physical impulse—almost an extension of their own hands. They may not have chosen the same materials or had the same motivations: As a teen, Brown once took apart a dresser to make shelving for a stereo out of necessity; at the same age, Devers was doing her hair in wild architectural styles for sheer fun. Aguiñiga made money to buy candy by packaging handmade jewelry in Saran Wrap and selling it door-to-door. Today, their channels of expression are equally varied— making how-to videos, creating floor-to-ceiling installations and bringing imaginative curb appeal to homes. But from a

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shared passion for making and building, these three alums are carving out dynamic careers, blurring the boundary between DIY and craft and elevating the most mundane materials— from obsolete 8-track tapes to impersonal folding chairs to nondescript bathroom tiles—to new heights. “All three of these women demonstrate a high level of informed intellect in their manner of making,” says Professor Rosanne Somerson 76 ID, longtime head of Furniture Design at RISD and now interim provost. “There is a clear sensitivity to materials and process linked to their concept, but they each produce work that simultaneously extends their personal voice and our conceptual understanding.” THE URGE TO TINKER

Amy Devers on the set of the DIY Network show Freeform Furniture (above) and doing an on-camera workshop as a crowd of Koreans looks on in Seoul.

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As distinct as their paths have been, Devers, Aguiñiga and Brown all describe the same gravitational pull towards three-dimensional making. “I started envisioning furniture before I had any idea it was something you could study in school or had any kind of understanding of the physics or mechanics of it,” says Devers, a Los Angeles-based furniture designer/maker who has skyrocketed to DIY fame as a co-host for shows like Trading Spaces, Blog Cabin and the A&E hit Fix This Yard. This year, Devers launched “Hands On,” a homeimprovement advice column for ReadyMade magazine. Recalling her college days and early 20s, Devers says she had a powerful urge to tinker. She was studying the business side of fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology. But one night, while watching her friends struggle to design a packaging product that would open in a particular way, she became obsessed. “I just couldn’t let it go,” she says. “I got my own cardboard and sat in my dorm room alone playing with it until I figured out how to make it work.” Later, while sharing a tiny apartment with friends in California, she figured out how to make milk-bottle lamps with rudimentary wiring. But her mind was racing far ahead of her hand skills. “I started this mental process of re-engineering all the furniture in our place in my head so that it would be more useful to us,” she says. “I’d think, ‘If this futon was just hollow somehow, then we could still sleep on it but we’d have all this storage underneath.’” Eventually, when Devers got to RISD, her skills would catch up with her ideas. For her graduate thesis project, she designed and built an entire nightclub lounge interior using only bathroom materials; shower fixtures became lamps and vanity pieces became sitting areas. “Everyone else was seeking out the most lavish materials— beautiful upholstery fabrics and exotic woods,“ says Somerson, “and Amy brought in these really mundane materials from Home Depot, which she then repurposed with an incredible level of both craftsmanship and ingenuity.” Like Devers, Aguiñiga was reaching for that same building know-how in her 20s, too, but for very different reasons. In the late ’90s, as part of the Border Art Workshop, a politically engaged arts collaborative in San Diego, she wanted to build spaces that would give migrant squatter communities access to resources and a powerful voice through art. She built those spaces in the tradition of the border neighborhoods around her, cobbled together using nontraditional techniques and discarded materials destined for the

“ All three of these women demonstrate a high level of informed intellect in their manner of making.” Rosanne Somerson 76 ID, professor and interim provost

trash heap. Once, she reclaimed an outdated marble rotunda from a local San Diego museum, sawed it into pieces, drove them down to Mexico and transformed them into church pews. “Where I’m from, you don’t throw anything out. You always made due with what you had,” says Aguiñiga, a furniture designer and artist whose exuberant, handcrafted work has been shown everywhere from Mexico City to Milan. Her work has spanned the gamut from metal and plastic to wood and textiles; in Crossing the Line, her spring solo show at LA’s Craft and Folk Art Museum, she exhibited a room-size installation of crisscrossing yarns and floating woven pieces that enveloped visitors in a cocoon-like environment. Through the Border Art Workshop, Aguiñiga developed the skills she would need to hone her vision in craft. “We built a soccer field. We built a cemetery. We built a sculpting school to teach people to carve gravestones themselves,” Aguiñiga says.

“I had never even used a power drill before, and here I was doing roofing and physically building stuff. That was when I started to think, ‘I want to make furniture. I like working with my hands to make something.’” And though it was a slow road, Aguiñiga began to win the approval of her struggling working-class relatives, who had been counting on her—the family star since kindergarten—to lift them out of poverty through medicine or law. “One of the times Pope John Paul II came to Mexico, we were on the roster of people for him to meet because of all the work we had done for migrant rights,” she says. “Even though my family wasn’t happy with me ‘wasting my brain’ on art, they finally said ‘Well, if the Pope thinks she’s okay, I guess she’s okay.’” From the time Jessica Brown stole her cousin’s toy push saw, the satisfaction of creating and repurposing in 3D was visceral. Her longtime mentor and former high-school art teacher, Glenda Bittner, puts it this way: “She made men’s underwear out of duct tape. She made clothes for her pet rat. Every single solitary assignment I gave Jessica she attacked, like it was the greatest thing there ever was.” Long before Brown knew what sustainability meant, she and her family would do what most people did in their hometown of West Paducah, KY: They recycled, reused and handed down almost everything. Food scraps became cattle feed. Bathtubs became planters. T-shirts became rags. But even in a community of savers, Brown stood out. Once,

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“Every single solitary assignment I gave Jessica she attacked, like it was the greatest thing there ever was.”

after getting a stereo for Christmas, she took a saw, cut out the upper rails of her five-drawer bureau, covered a cardboard slab with some contact paper and then set it on the lower rails—all in a matter of minutes. “I took the stereo and speakers, positioned them into their new home and voilà,” says Brown, who now lives in Providence. “My parents were flabbergasted. One, that I had cut up a bureau they had had for years, and two, that I did it that fast.” Looking back, she says that her parents gave her a precious gift: the freedom to “destroy their house with purpose.” Now Brown dreams of following in Devers’ DIY footsteps: With a TV persona that is a cross between Bob Villa, Bob Barker and ’80s MTV icon Downtown Julie Brown, she has launched four episodes of her YouTube show Let’s Just Make That!, showing viewers how to make kitchen islands or pot racks with the forgotten materials sitting in their basement. She is shopping the idea to several networks. “There’s something about 3D and the fact that I can touch it and it’s tangible,” Brown says. “With painting, I might be able to smell the paint, but I can’t physically go in there and move those shapes and colors around.”

Jessica Brown MID 09 has been tinkering, experimenting and making things since she was a kid—when her parents essentially gave her free reign to “destroy their house with purpose.”

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PLANES OF IDENTITY

For Devers, Aguiñiga and Brown, the journey to becoming designers/makers was marked by their own evolving sense of

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Glenda Bittner

As one of the first women to be featured regularly on DIY shows, Devers typically tackled projects with men. Here she’s building a table with Diamond Rio on DIY to the Rescue.

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identity and the lived experience of crossing cultural boundaries—boundaries of ethnicity, nationality, race and gender. Fresh out of San Diego State with a degree in furniture design, Devers got her first job—as a machine shop foreman overseeing a 12-man team that built trade show booths. She quickly realized that before she could be their boss, she first had to prove she could be their equal. “I noticed in my interview that they all came to work in blue Dickies and a white t-shirt,” Devers says. “So on my first day, I came in blue Dickies and a white t-shirt. When something was too heavy for me, I moved tables around and used leverage to manipulate materials. And I just worked. I worked as hard and as long as they did.”

As part of the project Artists Helping Artisans, Aguiñiga worked with artisans in Chiapas, Mexico, who weave fabric using backstrap looms.

But that gender challenge paled in comparison to what Devers would face in the surreal world of television. She broke into TV after hearing about a casting call from a friend of a friend. The criteria were simple: a female who was a skilled builder. No acting experience necessary. “I thought, ‘What the hell. I know how to build. I have rhinestone safety glasses,’ ” says Devers, who landed the part and launched her TV career on the DIY Network’s flagship show, DIY to the Rescue, in 2003. On the one the one hand, Devers says, she was a soughtafter commodity—a telegenic woman and highly skilled builder who knew how to get the content right. On the other hand, she was a novelty—a product audiences would have to buy in order for the show to succeed. “There was a moment in home-improvement TV history where, if you were a woman, you were either the sexy carpenter who didn’t really know what she was doing, or you were the token female,” Devers says. “The network didn’t want either. They hired me because I was the real deal. But they had a deep suspicion that nobody would believe I was the real deal.” These days nobody doubts Devers’ credentials, and she’s developed her own on-camera persona—“relaxed, a little bit of a smart-ass, and bossy in the all-for-the-greater-good kind of way.” But in that first crucial season, producers told her she had to play it safe: “No jokes, no goofiness, no personality. Just the facts. So I was being asked to be myself, but a very conservative version of myself.” If Devers had to straddle invisible boundaries of perception, Aguiñiga straddled boundaries that were geographic and highly policed: Twice a day from the age of 5, she crossed the border from Mexico to attend school in San Diego, where she was born and where her father worked. For years, her Tijuana address was a secret she had to keep from her school and even her closest friends. But as an adult, her body of work—highly tactile, interactive pieces with unexpected combinations of material and form—stands as a powerful visual translation of that experience. “Where we lived was a few blocks away from the border fence. So the drive to school was along this road right next to the border,” says Aguiñiga, who lives and works in LA and won a $50,000 award in 2006 as an inaugural recipient of the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship. “That’s one of the things that made the border super present in my mind always, the difference between me just being able to drive over it and other people having to sacrifice their lives to cross it.”

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“ I’ve always felt guilty about making work that wasn’t functional, because that’s something that people of leisure do.” Tanya Aguiñiga MFA 05 FD

With an instinctive love of materials and a childhood defined by a hyphenated identity, Aguiñiga began to embed her ideas about home, alienation, boundaries and belonging into her furniture designs. Her very first piece at RISD, Embrace Lounge—a daybed with a surface cut out in the shape of a human figure—spoke to an acute need she was feeling at the time: for physical, human contact. Today, Aguiñiga’s sense of identity and place are still evolving. In 2007 she traveled with a younger sister to weaving villages in Chiapas, Mexico to study traditional techniques of backstrap weaving, where women use their own bodies as looms. But success has also meant redefining what it means to exist in two different worlds. “It’s a long process to be okay with someone giving you $50,000. I was never actually prepared for success. I was prepared for struggle,” she says. “I’ve always felt guilty about making work that wasn’t functional, because that’s something that people of leisure do. And now I guess I’m ‘people of leisure.’ I’m still exploring ideas centered around craft and tradition, but in different ways.” On the surface, Jessica Brown might seem to share some common ground with Devers and Aguiñiga. As an AfricanAmerican growing up in rural Kentucky, she knew what it felt like to be a minority in a predominantly white world. As a woman who builds, she knows what it’s like to be female in a predominantly male world. But while Brown has addressed issues of race head-on in her past work, those are not necessarily the forces that have shaped her art. What accelerated Brown on her path was something else entirely, something that made high-school art class not just a fun place to create, but a critical outlet for her survival. In 1997, she was among a group of students who were fired on in a school shooting, injuring five and killing three. She doesn’t talk much about the incident, and the bubbly optimism of her YouTube workshops betrays nothing of the pain she experienced. But in the shooting’s emotional aftermath, art literally saved her. “After the shooting, the art room became my escape, because I decided to not really deal with the… shooting,” she says. The art annex became the place Brown went in the earlymorning hours before school opened, letting herself in with alarm codes she had been given. It was the place teachers sent her as an alternative to detention when she got in trouble. And it was where Brown forged a deep bond with Bittner, her art teacher, who became her mentor and surrogate mother.

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Tanya Aguiñiga MFA 05

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Aguiñiga created Embrace Lounge (top) at RISD, inspired by the need to be held. Later she rescued a set of metal folding chairs from a dumpster and covered them in felt skins, using eye-popping colors inspired by her native Latino culture.

“I have absolutely no doubt Jessica is going to be famous one day,” Bittner says. “I’ve never known anybody braver than she is and I’ve never seen her fail at anything. I’ve seen her detour, but I’ve never seen her fail.” CRAFTING COMMUNITIES

Here’s a coincidence: When you talk to friends of Devers, Aguiñiga or Brown, they inevitably start telling a story that involves one of those women walking into a room. The point of the story is to explain that the room is no longer the same once they’ve entered it. “I took Amy out to dinner last night. We went to a restaurant we’d never been to before, and there was a room in it I wanted to show her,” says Ron Fleming, an LA designer and friend. “There was a big party happening in that room, so I hesitated. But Amy just walked right in and grabbed the guy around the shoulders and said, ‘Hey, happy birthday!’ She’s totally fearless.” These women don’t just want to break new ground, colleagues and friends say. They also passionately want to connect. With an equal mix of personal dedication and largerthan-life personality, they are using their craft to engage audiences and build communities. The infectious enthusiasm they generate around their work has allowed them to bridge divides between high art and domestic crafts, between the average homeowner and the intimidating renovation project, and even between generations of their own families. “My granddad watched me on YouTube and he calls and says, ‘Jess, you don’t know how proud I am. I tried to teach your uncles how to make things, and I always wanted to pass on that legacy,’” says Brown, who first started Let’s Just

Make That! to help her mother in Tennessee tackle basic home projects when Brown was far away. “Hearing that and knowing that brings a whole new level of satisfaction.” Rosanne Somerson recalls being in a room when Aguiñiga demonstrated her process of hand-felting folding chairs. She remembers the entire studio smelling like olive oil and soap, and watching her student lovingly cast the bright wool fibers onto the drab metal. “If you’re in a room with Tanya, you’re happy. She is just naturally connected to people. And actually, I think that’s something all three of these women share,” says Somerson. “They all are incredibly hard workers. But they’re all also really funny, lively inventive people who draw people to them and, in doing that, draw them to new ideas.”

“ They all are incredibly hard workers. But they’re all also really funny, lively, inventive people.”

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Jessica Brown loves transforming trash into something useful, as in the funky key holder she made from an old Neil Diamond 8-track tape. Above: One of the benches Amy Devers has shown viewers how to build on Fix This Yard.

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At RISD Buck Lewis learned to value process—something he now uses to bring memorable characters to life in some of the best animated features made in the US.

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ILLUST R AT I O N

Buck Lewis BFA 81

by Francie Latour I n 1988 B uc k L ewi s f i n ally got ev ery t h i n g h e h ad

ev er wa n t ed. Just shy of 30, he walked away from an award-winning career in advertising and a client roster that included American Express, HBO, IBM and Sony. He fled Manhattan for a Connecticut farmhouse on 100 acres. It had a circa-1750 chimney, a 35-foot-long artist’s studio with vaulted ceilings and offered all the tranquility he would need to answer his true calling: to become a painter. Three months later, he fell into a black hole of depression. “I was one of those people who was like, ‘Someday I’m going to paint. Someday, I’m going to get out of this rat-race with all this commercial bogus bullshit and do something that’s pure,’” Lewis says, with all the idealism of that 29-year-old self coming through in his 52-year-old voice. “I was fortunate enough to reach the point where I could actually get what I wished for, and see what that felt like. And it was scary.” It was scary for a few reasons. One, Lewis found out he wasn’t very skilled as a painter. Even worse, it dawned on him that in this static medium, he had nothing relevant to say. But the worst realization of all came one night when he went to the movies, and settled in to watch the animated classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit? When it was over, he realized that at 30 years old, he had gotten his true calling all wrong. “I could feel the appetite right away, like, ‘I want to do that,’” Lewis recalls. “And as soon as I felt it, I thought, here I am in

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It took roughly four months of sketching before Po, the unlikely hero in Kung Fu Panda, began to emerge from Lewis’ imagination. Finding the character’s essence required dozens of sketches— until he hit on the contours of Po’s flabby exterior and inner warrior.

a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. How in the hell am I going to make movies? Other than wallow and read about people who make films, I couldn’t put together how I would do it.” About a month later, in a moment that could’ve been scripted for Hollywood, Disney called. The studio was in a rut with a movie that was in production. They wanted something new, and they’d heard about his whimsical, prize-winning style in the illustration world. “I think they thought, ‘Hey, maybe this guy could do something,’” Lewis says. “So I got invited to play.” Since then, Lewis has been playing in some pretty elite movie company. As a character designer on more than 20 animated features, his blockbuster credits include: Madagascar, Cars, Ratatouille, Bee Movie, Ice Age, Kung Fu Panda, and this year, Gnomeo & Juliet. He has created characters for the titans of animated film, from Pixar to Disney to DreamWorks. And his heroes and anti-heroes are voiced by some of the biggest names in movie-making—Bruce Willis, Owen Wilson, Jerry Seinfeld, Renee Zelleweger. But if his gifts as an illustrator have catapulted him to the top of his field for a second time, you get the feeling that for Lewis, it’s not about the credits. (Sometimes, in the messiness of creative collaboration and the Hollywood tussle over turf and egos, he doesn’t even get full credit for his work.) For him, it’s about the medium itself. His plein-air canvases from the farmhouse may have lacked meaning. But inside his Los Angeles studio, the blank sketchbooks where animated films

“I could feel the appetite right away, like, ‘I want to do that.’” Buck Lewis 81 IL

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When the director of Ice Age turned to Lewis for ideas about how to create depth in a landscape of snowy white tundra, he was treated to a world of moody blues and purples, unexpected shadows and fantastical shapes.

“The way [Buck] approaches ideas and characters is unusual. And it’s pretty inspiring.” Chris Wedge, director are born allow Lewis to unlock entire worlds. Those worlds can be inner ones—as with Marty, the zebra in Madagascar yearning for a life beyond the city zoo—or outward-looking, as with the long vistas of Ice Age landscapes. “To me, the promise of animation is the way it opens up reflection on the human condition. It’s very much like science fiction in that way,” Lewis says. “You can introduce a world to a viewer—a unique world that you haven’t seen before, but that’s also somehow universal and hugely relatable.” When Lewis dives into those cinematic worlds, his peers in the industry say, the sketches and illustrations that emerge are extraordinary. “When we worked on Ice Age, Buck came up with these shapes you wouldn’t expect for glaciers and these colors you wouldn’t expect to render shadows on snow. He helped create an incredible sense of mood in a landscape people would assume was just going to be white,” says Chris Wedge, the Oscar-winning director best known for Ice Age and whose Blue Sky Studios produced the new film Rio. “The way he approaches ideas and characters is unusual. And it’s pretty inspiring.” This thing called art school

For a lead designer who has produced some of the most memorable characters in some of the most successful

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animated features, Lewis doesn’t sound like someone who’s used to getting his way in Hollywood. He sounds a lot more like someone who always had to find his own way, starting with his blue-collar childhood in West Chester, PA. Except for his art teacher, no one in his small-town environment knew anything about art. As a result, he became known as the kid who hid out in the art room and drew vicious but clearly advanced caricatures of his teachers. As graduation loomed, Lewis found himself facing what he calls his “first big fork in the road:” joining the local chapter of the Pagans, a national biker gang, or going to college. And the latter option held almost no appeal. “I was already at a point where I really wanted to develop my own path in life,” he says. “Any kind of traditional schooling felt too much like a template that I was being handed, that I had to conform to. And that wasn’t interesting to me at all.” At first, he had no idea that kids could do something radical and law-abiding at the same time. Then, Lewis says, he found out about colleges called art schools—and soon applied to every one he could find. After getting accepted to all of them, he didn’t know how to choose, so he went with his gut: RISD. Almost immediately, he gravitated to illustration—a medium that resonated with his blue-collar instincts to work hard, produce and excel by proving yourself technically on paper.

“There was a kind of clarity about illustration, and it was really attractive to me that you couldn’t hide behind any pretense,” he says. “It had nothing to do with what you looked like or your persona or anything else. It just had to do with what you could do.” But even a non-traditional school like RISD has rules, and Lewis, the would-be biker, found himself gravitating to other things beyond the studio—like getting into trouble. He may not hold the record for being called before RISD’s disciplinary board, but with roughly seven appearances in four years, Lewis says if he doesn’t, he’s probably pretty close to whoever does. “How can I put this?” says Carter Goodrich 81 IL, a fellow character designer whose credits include Shrek, Finding Nemo and Despicable Me. “Buck was this sort of wild man; I came from the country in Connecticut with nothing like that kind of background.” But the two became lifelong friends and today live just a couple blocks away from each other in LA. “He didn’t do anything really bad. . . I just think that reckless and fun life got him into trouble now and then at RISD.” Lewis also faced the brutal realization that he would never again be the ace high-school artist whose work blew everyone away. For four years, he worked with peers who were as good or better than him, he says, and professors whose relentless Ratatouille invited audiences into the world of haute cuisine and convinced them to root for an unlikely hero—a rat whose predicament throws light on the human condition. He is precisely the kind of character that drives Lewis’ passion for animated film.

discipline literally transformed him from a kid drawing dragsters to a proficient figurative artist. Yet for all the conflict and self-doubt, Lewis says, there was no better place for him than RISD. “I couldn’t have been in a more perfect place,” he says. “What’s astonishing and formative and useful about RISD is the way it’s all about process. It was all about how you engage creatively. And that answered my original interest in finding my path and my own journey, because process itself—every drawing, every creative experience—is a very powerful kind of journey. I look at process as a way of life, and I couldn’t think of a more valuable thing to take away from school.” Defining good

Lewis’ intensely personal process has become one of his most important calling cards, in editorial illustration, in advertising and especially in animated features. It’s a trait that sets him apart in the world of character design, where survival often means never getting too attached to characters that automatically become the property of a studio, but may never make it to the big screen. “To Buck’s credit, he gets very emotionally involved with it, and the characters become a lot more personal to him,” says Goodrich. “And that’s how it should be.” But the other key to Lewis’s success is much harder to describe. “I’ve seen plenty of folks’ portfolios out here, and they all have a stunning sense of design,” Goodrich says. “But they don’t have that strange element—that something in them that makes the characters believable. Buck’s real strength is that he has great designs but he also has a reality and freshness to his characters. And that’s really hard.” Lewis himself has trouble articulating what it is that makes a character not just well-designed, but vital, though he agrees with Goodrich that it’s about more than technique. “Designing lead characters for animated feature films is kind of a weird super-specialized endeavor,” Lewis says. “As a draftsman, I’m not as phenomenal as other people I encounter on a daily basis. But what I have is access to my own process. If you invite me to work on a story with you, I relate to it completely differently than most other people.”

“To me, the promise of animation is the way it opens up reflection on the human condition.” Buck Lewis 81 IL

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“I started to feel like I could see the character, and then fastened on to it. I went into a zone.” Buck Lewis 81 IL

Where other character designers like to flaunt their technical craftsmanship, Lewis says, he instinctively gravitates towards the inner contours of personality and the universe in which the character lives. “I can’t find my way to a character with technique,” he says. “I go to an emotional place. I find the connection with a character, I learn everything I can about them from the inside out, and then I can create. It has nothing to do with the surface. It has everything to do with the interior.” It took about four months for Lewis to find Po, the unlikely martial-arts hero from Kung Fu Panda. Unlike many projects, where directors come to him with a fully formed concept and storyline, Lewis had a hand in creating Po and his panda world from the ground up. “That was a movie where I was invited by DreamWorks to be part of a kind of informal director’s think tank,” Lewis says. “So I was really engaged at the level of the nucleus of the story.” At that embryonic stage, Lewis already envisioned Po as a lovable, improbable Rocky—guided, challenged and nearly abandoned by his master trainer. It was an homage to the Kung Fu movie genre wrapped in anthropomorphic farce. What followed was a flurry of sketches and iterations of pandas—until he hit on an idea worth pursuing. “I’d get into a series of five or six different renderings and something would emerge where I started to feel like I could see the character, and then I fastened onto it,” he says. “I went into a zone, and I could feel I was hitting him.” The promise of Po slaying his master’s shunned protégé, the evil snow leopard Tai Lung, contained all the elements that drive Lewis to make animated films. “In what other medium could you say, ‘OK, what is the most unlikely hero for Kung Fu fighting you could possibly think of?’” Lewis says. “Well, how about just a big flabby panda bear? Top that! That’s the fun

of animation. And then there’s that Holy Grail element of having this world that has its own logic to it and you can build that out and take viewers on this ride within it.” In 1991, not long after Lewis got his start in character design, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. The last two years have seen back-to-back best-picture nominations for the genre, with Up! (the Pixar film featuring the work of supervising animator Scott Clark 96 IL) in 2010 and Toy Story 3 in 2011. If some people are surprised at the meteoric rise of animation in recent years, Lewis is not. “I think good has a universal definition, beyond just, you know, pyrotechnics,” he says. “With animation, you’ve got a protracted, years-long process where everyone involved is asking over and over and over again, ‘Is this a good idea? Why are we doing this?’ In that kind of process, chances are you’re going to have a story and a movie that can do well.” Inventing new worlds

After working on the best animated features in the industry, what’s next for H.B. Lewis? Perhaps not surprisingly, he now finds himself driven by the element that has long been the

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In addition to designing characters, Lewis longs to tell stories. He has illustrated seven books, including My Penguin Osbert in Love, and is in the process of developing the characters, look and feel (middle image) of his own animated feature, Left Tern.

“With Buck, there’s a hidden artist in there who really understands the emotional structure of a film.” Chris Wedge

key to his animated characters: storytelling. He has already illustrated seven books, including My Penguin Osbert (2008) and My Penguin Osbert in Love (2010). He’s written a graphic novel with his longtime partner, Staci Marengo, and his three children, ages six, four and two, have become his most important critics. “They’re my review team,” Lewis says. “They just respond instantly to stuff, and it’s amazing.” But to hear his colleagues tell it, there’s one place a character designer with Lewis’ sense of narrative is bound to end up: writing and directing his own feature film. “In animated film these days, you’re pretty much dealing with collaboration among specialists. It’s rare that you find artists that can do more than one thing really well,” says Wedge. “With Buck, he excels at his drawing, which he’s obviously known for, but there’s also a hidden artist in there who really understands the emotional structure of a film. He has an amazing ability to invent stories that are charactercentric and emotion-centric.” Lewis puts it more simply. “Once I realized I wanted to do more,” he says, “‘more’ became stories.” And then, without pictures or a sketchbook in hand, he starts to tell a story. It’s a story about a bird, co-created by Lewis and Marengo. She’s a teenager and the oldest daughter in a very large family of terns who migrate year after year from Maine to Florida. And she’s completely bored. “Isabelle, our tern, is just sick of this migrating pattern. She’s seeing her life flash before her eyes, and she yearns for a different outcome,” Lewis says. “And in that moment when she starts to think, ‘What else could there be?’ she fantasizes about staying behind. And her mother, Alice, who is the bird equivalent of a Type-A, PTA mom, she’s got a whole team of families that she’s in charge of when they migrate. They get all the way to Florida, and her daughter is not there.” The project, which Lewis is set to direct and is tentatively titled Left Tern, is the kind of story any parent and child could relate to. But the heart of the conflict—what will the mother bird do?—presents the perfect kind of story for Lewis to tell. “In the bird world, once you migrate, you can’t go back,” he says. “That’s against nature. So it’s great fun and it’s good entertainment. But having those universal emotions embedded in a dilemma from a completely different world? That’s what really attracts me.”

spring/summer 2011

RIS D

V IN T A GE

2011 ( a

v e r y

g o o d

y e a r )

W h en t h i s y ea r ’s sen i o rs a n d master’s candidates graduate on June 4, the RISD alumni community will welcome 660 newly minted members. In gearing up for the big transition, all graduating students presented final projects this spring. It’s breathtaking stuff, showing the conceptual depth, mastery of materials, personal expression and indescribable appeal of the diverse work emanating from RISD studios. The handful of examples shown here offers a glimpse of work by seniors, followed by grad students.

Rebecca Manson 11 CR r ec en t r eco g n i t i o n : one of 10 students nationwide to win the prestigious 2011 Windgate Fellowship for excellence in craft

a residency and research in Berlin, followed by post-baccalaureate study at California State University, Long Beach

n ext up :

rebexman.com

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JooHee Yoon 11 IL recen t recog n i t i o n : one of two top prizes in the 2011 Society of Illustrators NY competition n ext up: move to New York City to freelance as an editorial illustrator for magazines, newspapers, books and posters ; continue making prints through her new Six Legged Studios

jooheeyoon.com

Avery Reed 11 AP internships at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC and Annex Theater in Seattle, WA

recen t e xpe r i en c e:

find a position as a costume designer so that she can to combine her love of fantasy with her design, illustration, sewing and construction skills

n ext up:

avery-reed.com

“Inspired by the story of La Esmeralda—an operatic adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame—my collection emphasizes the self-mockery and masquerade of the festival of fools scene, uniting the chimerical and frightening elements of the cathedral’s gargoyles with the frivolity of the revelers in the streets below.” Avery Reed 11 AP

spring/summer 2011

Collin Hatton MFA 11 PT “I strive to make my work represent the world as something folded into itself…. I am interested in the challenge of creating paintings in which anything can be included, but still maintain a sense of logic and purpose. I want to use the fold to access and embrace it all.”

fro m his thesi s state me n t:

next up: preparing for Small Crowd, a show of work by RISD MFA 11 Painting grads at Mixed Greens in NYC, June 16–July 8

williamcollinhatton.com

Lee Patrick Johnson MFA 11 CR r ec ent wo rk: Craftswoman, a one-hour performance piece (based on Paul McCarthy’s Painter) in which he threw air-dry clay, resin, glitter and crystal on a pottery wheel; Column, a collaborative installation piece for Sitings at the RISD Museum rule o f thum b:

“Apply for everything. You can’t lose.”

leepatrickjohnson.com

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Jennifer Cawley MFA 11 PH shown here, archival pigment prints, including Untitled (Airstrip, Vietnam), from the series Re/constructed Narratives of the American War in Vietnam, and Untitled (Michael), from the series War Stories

t h esi s wo r k :

n ext up : work included in Best of the Northeast Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, on view from June 10–September 5 at the Helen Day Art Center in Stowe, VT

feed.risd.edu

“I create light-catching, soft, white, fluid objects that are hollow, empty, isolated, barren, over-worked or tedious. They hold dual messages—of purity and loss, of hard and soft, of weight and weightlessness, of memory and reality, and of hope and experience.” Crystal Ellis MFA 11 SC

Crystal Ellis MFA 11 SC f ro m h er t h esi s stat e me n t: “I grew up on the vast flat plains of Illinois. It was empty out there on the land, by the water, below the sky. My childhood feels like a sunny place, but it wasn’t always. I had my imagination, the spaces under a cricket’s wing or below the belly of a snake, the freedom of a summer day, the small and the big together in an open field, mixed with a myriad of pets, deaths, pseudo science, winter, divorce, work and isolation. Somehow, that is what my work is. I reach in and I empty these things out.” n ext up : keep making art and reinvigorate Egg Collective, a three-person design company she recently helped found

crystalroseellis.com

spring/summer 2011

Keep connected to RISD through the Alumni Association’s network of 38 clubs around the country and the world.

ENERGIZER IN CHIEF

For architect Jim Leggitt BArch 73, the recession has given him the wiggle room to invest energy in reinvigorating the Denver-based RISD/ Colorado club.

Co lo rad o c l u b l e ad e r

Jim Leggitt BArch 73 talks fast—

rollercoaster fast. Backed by passion and years of study, this Denver-based architect (FAIA), urban planner and author speaks like a gifted professor, his words gaining speed, building momentum, steadily climbing to a dizzying peak. Then the ideas spill out, as he rides the curve at a breakneck pace to make his point. Leggitt is, in fact, a teacher. Like many professionals, he found in the ever-worsening economy the perfect opportunity to start a new career. Two years ago, as head of the international projects division for one of Denver’s leading architectural firms, he was in the middle of a huge master planning project in Dubai. “I was working so hard, always on a plane,” he says. “Then, the projects dried up and everything went belly up overnight.” Today, he has his own firm, Leggitt Studio LLC; a new book, the 2nd edition of Drawing Shortcuts (drawingshortcuts.com); and is teaching prodigiously in various media, both traditional and non. 32

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“I’m 60 years old and I have a new career!” Leggitt exclaims. He teaches drawing classes, holds workshops and presents lectures at AIA conventions. He presents drawing “webinars” on land8lounge.com, an 11,000-member social media site for landscape architects. He has a website, a blog, a Twitter account, and YouTube and Facebook pages—all promoting his unique approach to drawing, which combines the best of technology with hand drawing skills to help people better develop and realize their design concepts.

“I try to keep everyone in contact with each other, talking to each other and having fun.” Leggitt’s latest project is leading the RISD/Colorado club in Denver. “Even closing in on 40 years later, I think of RISD as such a wonderful experience,” Leggitt says. Back then, a 17-year-old Jim and his identical twin brother John Leggitt BArch 73 both applied to RISD—and were so certain of their choice that they applied to no other school. Decades later, he still knows he made the right decision. “I think I reached a point where I want to give back,” Leggitt says. “I don’t really have any need to advance my career, so I am just leading the club for the fun of it.” Before Leggitt got things going a couple of years ago, there was no RISD alumni club in Denver. But in 2009 he wandered into an Alumni Council meeting at a RISD reunion in Providence, listened and soon

Find out more about Jim’s work at jimleggitt.typepad.com + drawingshortcuts.com.

found himself “the go-to guy for RISD alums in Denver.” Today, Leggitt sees his role as energizer in chief. “I look for opportunities to get together, I organize them,” he explains. Last fall the group got together for a successful opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. On June 3 the club is having an open studio event hosted by sculptor Patrick Marold 97 ID. And they’re planning a walk through the construction site of the new Clyfford Still Museum led by Chase DeForest MFA 04 FD, an artist/educator who works at the new museum. “I try to keep everyone in contact with each other, talking to each other and having fun,” Leggitt says. “I want to build enthusiasm about RISD in the middle of the country because otherwise we’re so isolated.” – Paula Martiesian 76 PT

Happy Happenings Just like the candy store, the regional clubs supported by Alumni Relations offer something for everyone! Clockwise from top right: 1| In February snow delayed, but didn’t detract from the warmth at the RISD/Philadelphia Valentine’s Party, hosted by Christine Jones 52 IA (shown with Laila Ahmadinejad 01 GD, RISD Philadelphia Club leader, to her left and Christina Hartley 74 IL, director of Alumni Relations and Special Events, to her right). 2| In May RISD/NY alumni got a sneak preview of the

Phillips de Pury contemporary auction and wine tasting at Art Thirst, mingling with alumni from Harvard, Brown, Princeton and Wellesley. 3| Anne Feldmeier Adams MFA 02

PH hams it up with Olivia Valentine 02 PH, Garth Borovicka 02 PH and Kerry Hagy 02 PH at the RISD/Chicago mid-winter meet-up hosted by Matthew Stone 94 ID at Sandbox Studios. 4| At a February reception held in conjunction with the CAA convention, Jean Graham, director of Community Relations at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (where the event took place) connects with Meredith Miller 81 GD and Hannah Milman 82 FAV. 5| Members of the RISD/NY planning committee enjoying the art at Phillips de Pury: Polly Carpenter 77 PT (club co-leader), Chardonnay Pickard 07 IL, Michael Neff 04 PH

DIY TOGETHER RBD: OCT 14–16

(club co-leader) and Joe Borzotta 85 GD.

Robyn Ericsson BArch 86 and Isaac

Regelson BArch 86 began thinking

above: photo #3 by Kyle Henderson BArch 99

50TH IN MOTION @ 50TH At her 50th RISD reunion, Linda DeHart 51 AP (dehartart .com) will present Colors In Motion: The Human Journey, a meditative digital media piece that includes 1,000 of her watercolor paintings synchronized with 10 musical scores. The DVD is used for healing purposes in hospitals, senior centers and elsewhere. DeHart’s work will be screened at RISD by Design on Saturday, October 15, running from 1:30–4:30 pm in the Tap Room, which is still in Memorial Hall (though the building itself has been fully renovated). For clubs and contacts in your area go to risd.edu/alumni.

about their 25th reunion as soon as their 20th one was over, surveying classmates post-event to find out what worked. Eric Meier 86 IL confirms that when he ran into Isaac at RISD Commencement last year, “he only really wanted to talk to me about our next reunion, which was kinda funny, but great.” OK, so maybe not everyone is as motivated as these two party planning pros, but you can’t have a good reunion during RISD by Design weekend (October 14–16) without people willing to organize it and others wanting to come. For their 25th, the Regel/Eric/ sons are planning Friday night drinks at a downtown bar, Saturday and Sunday brunches at The Met (refectory), a campus tour and a Saturday night pizza and drinks deal somewhere on campus, like Woods-Gerry or the Tap Room. (And at their 20th, the fun continued ’til 3 am on Saturday!) So, go ahead: start rebuilding your creative connections by requesting a list of phone numbers and email addresses and encouraging people to attend. Contact Claire Robinson at crobinso@ risd.edu or 401 454 6379 to get going.

spring/summer 2011

NEW NETWORKING TOOL SALEN SELECTED FOR 2011 ALUMNI AWARD

As a designer, Katie Salen MFA 92 GD became so fascinated with the logic and coherence of video games that she realized they have potential for helping kids to learn. She’s now testing that theory through an experimental NYC school called Quest2Learn.

At RISD’s Commencement ceremony on June 4, the Alumni Council will recognize Katie Salen MFA 92 GD with its 2011 Art and Education Award. For the past decade, this multifaceted artist and designer has been playing and designing games, using everything from karaoke ice cream trucks to giant inflatables to demonstrate the power of games as tools for innovation and learning (see Fall 2010 issue of RISD XYZ). “I became fascinated with the way that video games construct worlds,” Salen says in explaining how a pastime became a passion. “They literally start to create a kind of logic and a coherence to what you can do in that space, through the design of rules.” And as a designer, she adds, “games have become a tool to help me figure out how to design things that aren’t games.” Salen’s ever-expanding expertise led to the seminal gaming design book Rules of Play, which she co-authored, and to positions at MIT and Parsons,

where she now teaches. It also inspired her to found Institute of Play, a nonprofit that stakes it claim on the idea that gamer intelligence is not only essential to 21st-century learning, but also makes us better risk-takers, problem-solvers, collaborators and engaged citizens. In 2009 Institute of Play launched its boldest venture yet: Quest2Learn, a New York City public school organized around gaming principles and digital culture. Since then Salen’s radical model for what a school can be has commanded the attention of politicians, teachers, philanthropists and education-reform advocates across the country. With $1.1 million in funding from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and a $2.6-million grant pending from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Quest2Learn is changing the conversation about how a nation’s failing education system can reach a generation of digital kids. “When I was at RISD, I was really intrigued by this notion of: How do you begin to ask questions about the role of design in the world?” Salen says. “I don’t feel like I was trained as a graphic designer. I feel like I was trained as a design thinker.”

The new alumni online directory is a great tool to help you connect with each other, submit news and information about what you’re up to and share opportunities —about jobs, exhibitions, residencies, etc. Log in to the directory at www.risd.edu/alumni to: • update your own personal information (contact, address, family ties) • customize your own directory landing page • search a comprehensive database on alumni • search for or post job listings via ArtWorks • register for RISD events The new directory also allows you to submit to class notes listings online, meaning your posts will be immediately accessible to fellow alumni who are logged in to the directory. The early spring launch of the new directory— which is in iModules, a content management system used by a lot of colleges and universities—was a preliminary step towards creating a new, more useful and informative alumni site. That process will continue over the next few months as we work with a group of alumni advisors to rethink the approach and create a flexible site that also works as a strong corollary and complement to RISD XYZ.

PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION, ALUMNI-STYLE Meghan Reilly Michaud 01 GD, who has been a member of the Alumni Council since she graduated and has served as vice president since 2009, is assuming the Council presidency from Nat Hesse 76 SC when his two-year term ends in June. As a student, she was an active member of the Student Alliance, the undergraduate governing group, and served as president in 2000. After practicing as a graphic designer for several years, Meghan earned an MAE from Salem [MA] State University and became a National Board Certified Teacher in 2009. She now teaches fine arts at Andover [MA] High School and freelances for corporate and nonprofit clients as principal of Visual Identity Studio. 34

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Hoopla Re: Hamilton In June alumni in the New England area are gathering to celebrate the late great Robert Hamilton 39 PT, a well-loved RISD professor from 1945–82, at a show of his work and a screening of a documentary about him. The event takes place on Saturday, June 11 at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, where the exhibition Robert Hamilton: the Last Paintings runs from May 28 through July 10. His painting Nine Giraffes (from the collection of Karen and David Estey 64 PT) is shown above. For more information, contact pbrown@risd.edu or cmcanow.org.

risdoids belong together Dawn Grattan BArch 92 + Justin Kerr 90 GD

risd sweethearts (We got more than our degrees at RISD!)

Inseparable Since Foundation Year

above right: photo by Valerie Ann Kitchin

Katy Dika 03 AP + Paul Osimo 03 ID

Paul and I met our very first day at RISD—back in 1999. We were both assigned rooms on (everpopular) floor 4 in Homer. Through a strange twist of fate, we not only lived down the hall from one another, but were also assigned the same Foundation section our first semester and had all of our classes together. No matter how different from one another we may have seemed, we were destined to be great friends, especially after pulling our very first RISD all-nighter together for a Mark Milloff 2D assignment. Paul joined The Nads hockey team (and still plays with them today!) and I became a dedicated,

card-carrying, pleated-skirt-wearing “Jockstrap,” never missing a game. A few years went by and before we knew it we were totally inseparable. After graduation, Paul heroically waited for me back home while I buzzed around the other side of the planet during my Thomas J. Watson year abroad. He even scraped up enough money for a month-long visit, braving March Fly bites and Bull Ant stings to be with me in Australia. About three years ago we finally bought our first house together on the West Side of Providence, where we now live with our two dogs, Cocoa and Nilla. I work at the RISD Nature Lab and Paul is the head designer for a juvenile products company in nearby Mass. We’re currently spending all of our free time planning our wedding at the end of July, which will be at what is still one of our favorite RISD spots—Tillinghast Farm in Barrington.

For clubs and contacts in your area go to risd.edu/alumni.

I first met Justin at the “Spaghetti That Ate Providence” party he and his roommate Bill hosted (complete with custom invitations). My roommate invited me and I didn’t know anyone, but in true starving student tradition, I went anyway ’cause it was a free meal—and a good excuse not to spend the night in the studio working. When I arrived at the party, Justin was making name tags, and noticing that he was kind of handsome and funny, I tried to position myself in the dining area so that he would sit next to me. We spent a pleasant evening laughing at each other’s bon mots, and parted ways. After a few weeks we started dating and a year and a half later, we were married at Manning Chapel on the Brown University campus. It was very important for us to ride in the ’58 DeSoto limousine Justin had found; design-wise, a contemporary stretch limo would just not do. His skills also came in handy when we realized the night before the ceremony that we had forgotten the wedding program and he was in the hotel room hand-lettering our program and discussing paper choices with me. I think it’s a good thing for RISDoids to marry other RISDoids. Justin and I have been known to discuss color in depth while our non-art school friends look at us as if we’re over-analyzing Jell-O. I don’t think any mere mortal (non-RISDoid) would be able to sympathize with a spouse complaining about the overuse of Trajan as a font. Once you go to RISD, you look at the world in a whole different way. What started out as a chance meeting at a spaghetti dinner has blossomed into six children (our “performance art” pieces) and 20 years of wedded bliss. These days, I’m no longer focusing on architecture; my days are now consumed by babies and baking. Justin is still working in his field doing web design—and even our kids have started to notice bad letter-spacing. –Dawn Grattan Kerr BArch 92

–Katy Dika 03 AP spring/summer 2011

summer 2011

summer is alive with possibilities at risd

• Pre-College Program

• Summer Institute For Graphic Design Studies

• Summer Studies

• Textiles Summer Institute

• Career re:Design Program

• Study Abroad Programs

• Continuing Education Summer Term

Registration is happening right now.

risd.edu/summer

continuing education

RISD Continuing Education 345 South Main Street, 2nd floor Providence, RI 02903 800 364-7473 (press 2) | 401 454-6200

Process. It’s something art and life share in common. by the time they graduate , RISD students have learned to internalize the creative process. They’ve gained amazing lifelong skills and the ability to see more clearly and see the big picture.

You can become part of the RISD process by investing in the next generation of creative leaders. And you can make a huge difference by simply planning ahead.

To discover the impact of gift planning—which is itself part of the process of thinking about your life and legacy—contact Louise Olson at 401 454-6323 or email giftplanning@risd.edu.

risd.edu/giftplanning

A glimpse of what’s happening at the heart of campus — with the president, students, faculty and staff.

ADDING ART TO THE NATIONAL DEBATE message by

John Maeda

RISD’s President

Above: In Making It Understandable, a Wintersession studio taught by adjunct faculty member Lindsay Kinkade MFA 10 GD, students leveraged the power of visual communication to help explain the intricacies of healthcare reform legislation. Far right: Kinkade (middle) is flanked by fellow faculty members Susan Doyle 81 IL/MFA 98 PT and Khipra Nichols BID 78 at one of the Make It Better panel discussions.

As I w rote last fall , I a m exc i t ed t h at

Rhode Island Congressman Jim Langevin (RI–02) has introduced a resolution to officially turn STEM to STEAM. In other words, he’s actively advocating for the need to incorporate the Arts and design into national education policies that emphasize Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) as key subject areas in our nation’s schools. In Representative Langevin’s own words, House Resolution 1702 posits that: Art and design advance the understanding of STEM learning and collaboration. In classrooms and laboratories across the country, the innovative practices of art and design play an essential role in improving STEM education and advancing STEM research. To build on this, Rep. Langevin is hosting a Congressional briefing in Washington, DC on June 22 to get the word out to other members of Congress and garner support for STEAM. The briefing is open to the public and will include a diverse set of speakers talking about why the arts and design are indispensible to creating innovation in America. I will be among them, representing RISD and making a case for the value of art and design education—and the creative thinking it fosters—in our 21st-century drive to push the bounds of human endeavor. We recently created some STEAM of our own on campus, with generous support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Interim Dean of Fine Arts Deborah Bright and Architecture Critic

Follow President Maeda at our.risd.edu + twitter.com/johnmaeda

Brian Goldberg MArch 00 led the effort to organize Make It Better, a symposium in March that looked at how artists and designers can help improve healthcare delivery, public health and everyday wellness through their extraordinary powers of communicating information and emotion, among other things. We were pleased to welcome two key healthcare leaders on the national scene—Dr. Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services, and Donna Garland, associate director for communication at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As keynote speakers, each one presented much to think about as we continue this vital discussion. We were also joined by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who wisely observed that, “Engineers and designers together created the automotive dashboard. This type of innovative, cross-industry collaboration is long overdue in our healthcare system.” So, we’ve been generating some steam behind STEAM this spring and hope to build on that momentum. You can see video highlights from the symposium at risd.cc/risdmakeitbetter and also find out more about some of the health-related studios RISD has been running. If you’re in the DC area, please join us at the Congressional briefing on June 22. And stay tuned as RISD continues to engage in the national debate about healthcare and other issues that can benefit from the input of our creative community. For more information on the Make It Better symposium, go to risd.cc/risdmakeitbetter. For information on the Congressional briefing on June 22, contact Kirtley Fisher at kirtley.fisher@mail. house.gov or call 202 225-2735.

spring/summer 2011

Silkscreening for Japan In response to the March 12 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, RISD students Sakura Bready 12 TX and Minami Otake 13 TX (both from Japan) led a crew of volunteers in a day of screenprinting t-shirts to sell to benefit relief efforts. Faculty member Gina Gregorio 92 TX helped organize the effort and reached out to alumni to help defray the cost of supplies. “The day was extraordinary in its spirit of support and community,” notes Professor Anais Missakian 84 TX, longtime head of the Textiles department and the newly appointed interim dean of Fine Arts.

GRADS GET KIT OF PARTS

SALUTING THE CLASS OF 2011 Approximately 660 students are becoming bona fide alumni as they collect their hard-earned degrees at RISD’s June 4 Commencement ceremony, which takes place at the Rhode Island Convention Center. Honorary degrees are being presented to three special guests who have made significant contributions to the worlds of art, design and education: national design leader Bill Moggridge, philosopher and aesthetics expert Arnold Berleant and public/conceptual artist Mierle Ukeles. Moggridge, who is also the keynote speaker at the ceremony, is the director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in Manhattan. A visionary interaction designer, he wrote Designing Interactions and is one of the first people to integrate human factors into computer design. As a philosopher, musician and leading figure in the field of aesthetics, Berleant has taken all three 38

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of these disciplines in new directions by asking fundamental questions about the nature of beauty in art, the natural world and our built environment. A lifelong academic, he now edits the online journal Contemporary Aesthetics and has written seven books, including, most recently, Sensibility and Sense: The Aesthetic Transformation of the Human World (2010). The action-oriented public art Ukeles has been making since the 1960s—when she released her well-known Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!—has transformed such mundane routines as cleaning, serving and maintenance into radical art statements. Her installations, performances and public art pieces have been exhibited across the country and around the world, and since 1977 Ukeles has served as the official, unsalaried artistin-residence at NYC’s Department of Sanitation.

RISD is again giving graduates an Artrepreneur Kit, a practical parting gift to help them explore entrepreneurial possibilities. As part of the kit, Etsy is awarding the first-ever Etsy RISD Fellowship to the 2011 grad whose shop on the recently launched RISD Team Page shows the most promise. The winner will receive a $1,500 grant to attend an Etsy-sponsored summit on small business and sustainability in Berlin, Germany. Square, Inc. is offering graduating students the ability to process credit card payments anywhere via a small square card reader that plugs into a mobile phone input jack. New grads will also get free six-month accounts to Prosite, Behance’s newly launched online portfolio site, and 2GB accounts from YouSendIt that are free for three months, followed by discounted service fees. “With our Artrepreneur Kit, we are providing new grads with just a few of the online tools and resources that can help launch their work in the public spectrum,” notes President John Maeda. “It’s just one way to help them make a living in whatever way they choose.”

MFA PROGRAMS TOP LIST For the third year running, RISD topped the US News & World Report rankings for the best Fine Art Schools, which assess graduate programs throughout the country. In earning the top spot, it edged out both Yale and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In specialty categories, RISD earned a #1 ranking in graphic design, glass and interior design; placed #2 in industrial design, metals/jewelry and printmaking; and #3 in ceramics, multimedia, painting, photography and sculpture. The rankings—determined solely based on results from peer assessment surveys—are published on the US News education website and also appear in the 2012 edition of the book Best Graduate Schools.

Fun Furniture at ICFF In mid-May a dozen Furniture Design students showcased their work in the high-profile International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York. Called Recyclable Composites, their show featured benches, tables, chairs and light fixtures made with Twintex®, a flexible glass-fiber filament that offers an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional composites. Eun San Ernie Lee 12 FD experimented with the properties of Twintex to create a feeling of “fluffiness” in his playful Perm Chair, and since Twintex is malleable until baked, Alexandra Snook MFA 11 FD actually knit her Saddle Stool.

Showtime

JAPANESE LANTERNS AT NYC BENEFIT In April students from the Wintersession course Architectonics joined their instructor, New Yorkbased architect Aki Ishida, at the Japan Society in New York City for a benefit to raise funds for the Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund. They installed a collaboratively designed piece and ran a full-day workshop to help visitors add to it. Inspired by traditional Japanese festivals, the Luminous Washi Lantern project explored the use of light and shadow in Japanese architecture and celebrated the ephemeral, fleeting nature of materials traditionally used in Japanese rituals. The group synthesized designs by Adria Boynton BArch 15, Fernando Diaz Smith 13 ID and Timothy Dobday BArch 15 to develop the site-specific piece installed in the Japan Society’s skylit lobby. Ishida was pleased that students helped with Japanese relief efforts in sharing their “special convergence of interest in Japan and in teaching the public about design.”

For more on these and other stories, go to www.risd.edu.

Half the senior class of FAV majors—the ones in the live action program—posed for this poster shot, but all 31 screened an amazing range of new animated, narrative and documentary work at the senior film show in May. Many of the 2011 films will go on to be screened at festivals around the country and the world—and based on past performance, a lot of these will not only be audience favorites, but will win awards.

spring/summer 2011

Faculty Newsbites In late April Digital + Media faculty member Catherine D’Ignazio presented The Border Crossed Us, a public art installation at UMass

Diving Warbler with Insect (2011, oil on canvas, 34 x 33") is among the paintings by Professor of Illustration Trent Burleson MFA 76 PT on view through August 17 at the Newport [RI] Art Museum. The Museum will host an opening reception for Trent Burleson: Birds and Other Metaphors on June 10 and the artist will talk about his work at a luncheon on July 26, followed by a demonstration of the chiaroscuro process.

Amherst. The piece divided the campus with a to-scale photo replica of the fence that runs along the border between Mexico and southern Arizona. Erected in 2007 by Homeland Security, the fence now splits the Tohono O’odham Nation—the second largest Native American reservation in the country—in two. D’Ignazio’s sculptural intervention included a sound piece and security poetry that students responded to by texting. Recent work by Leslie Hirst, assistant professor of Foundation Studies, was included in American Artists and Not, a satellite show within the VI Biennale Di Soncino a Marco, held in May in Soncino, Italy. The exhibition featured work by 58 contemporary artists. Professor Anais Missakian 84 TX, who has served as head of the Textiles department since 2004, has been named interim dean of Fine Arts for the 2011–12 academic year. Professor Bill Newkirk 68 GD, head of the Graphic Design department, will serve as interim dean of Architecture + Design during the 2011–12 academic year. Film/Animation/Video Professor Peter O’Neill recently completed Better Places, a 52-minute sequel to his 1981 documentary The Best Place To Live. Both films are about the Hmong community, a group of Laotian refugees who fought alongside the US in the Vietnam War. The sequel looks at the new possibilities for four Hmong families in Providence and was co-directed by Louisa Schein, a Brown graduate who also worked as a translator and community liaison on the original film. Professor Rosanne Somerson 76 ID, longtime head of the Furniture Design Department, has been named interim provost, effective July 1. In late March, Ceramics Department Head Linda Sormin presented Howling Room at Holtegaard Gallery in Copenhagen. She also spoke at a symposium at the Royal Danish Art Academy in conjunction with the show.

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MAJOR ENDORSEMENT Two of the three Rhode Island-based artists who won prestigious MacColl Johnson Fellowships from the Rhode Island Foundation teach at RISD. Professor Ellen Driscoll, head of the Sculpture department, and Assistant Professor of Textiles Liz Collins 91 TX/MFA 99 have been awarded $25,000 each—among the largest no-strings-attached awards given to artists in the US. The fellowships are intended “to fund an artist’s vision or voice” and have been awarded to composers, writers and visual artists every three years since 2005. Driscoll creates sculpture, installations and public art works that reflect her interest in social, racial and environmental justice, with recent studio investigations focused on the architectural and environmental impact of extracting and consuming natural resources. She plans to use her MacColl Fellowship to create outdoor public sculpture involving water. Known for creating innovative textiles, experimental knitwear and dramatic performance art pieces, Collins (see also page 52) will use her fellowship to travel to the Tilburg Museum and Textile Lab in the Netherlands, where she’ll work as an artist in residence this August. During the past five years, she has mounted several Knitting Nation performance pieces in which a team of machine knitters creates large-scale, on-site fabric installations. Building on this work and other experiments, Collins plans to use the fellowship to generate a new body of work that she hopes to show more frequently in galleries and museums.

This spring Interior Architecture Department Head Liliane Wong and Assistant Professor Markus Berger produced the second edition of Int/AR, a handsome journal focused on issues of adaptive reuse of the built environment. Volume 02_Adapting Industrial Structures presents a series of thoughtful articles that look at the challenges of adapting and transforming industrial structures and sites in Europe, South America, the US and China, which is just beginning to adopt the practice. You can order copies of both volumes at intar-journal.risd.edu.

RISD DEAN BECOMES PRESIDENT Dawn Barrett, RISD’s dean of Architecture + Design, has been selected as the next president of Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in Boston, effective July 1. During her 10-year tenure as dean, she was instrumental in facilitating curricular and programmatic advances in the division. Barrett first taught in RISD’s Graphic Design department in the early 1990s and just prior to her appointment as dean, she headed of the Department of Design at the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. “Barrett comes to MassArt with an unwavering commitment to advancing the disciplines of art and design,” noted Richard Shea, chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees. “As a designer, faculty member and administrator, she is able to see through multiple lenses and facilitate collaboration among diverse constituencies.”

The RISD Museum helped open the world of art and design to you when you were a student. It’s still here for you. 2011 exhibition highlights Cocktail Culture: Ritual and Invention in American Fashion 1920 – 1980 Jacques Callot and the Baroque Print Newly restored Ancient, Medieval and Early Renaissance galleries Building Blocks: Contemporary Works from the Collection

risdmuseum.org 20% of your Alumni Membership is directed to the Phil Seibert [BFA ’67 IA] Alumni Acquisition Fund, which supports the purchase of works of art by RISD alumni. Join today! Call 401.454.6322 or visit us online at risdmuseum.org/join.

Skateboarders is among the drawings Printmaking faculty member Brian Shure is showing in Shadow Play, a solo show that continues through June 11 at the Museum of Art at the University of Maine in Orono. This is the first time he has exhibited drawings unaccompanied by his paintings and prints. Shure’s work is also on view through June 30 at Lenore Gray Gallery in Providence.

A look at some of the many ways people invest in RISD and support current and future generations of students.

NICOLE MILLER INVESTS IN RISD TALENT

Celebrities such as Lauren Hutton, Beyoncé and Cate Blanchett choose the comfortable and flattering looks for which Nicole Miller 73 AP (shown here on the runway herself) is known.

“RISD-educated designers are far more experimental than at other schools.”

SHE H AS BUILT ONE OF THE MOST

timeless brands in American fashion, with designs worn by iconic beauties from Lauren Hutton to Cate Blanchett to Beyoncé. Now, Nicole Miller 73 AP wants to help up-and-coming RISD designers to realize a vision of their own. After several meetings with President John Maeda to discuss her philanthropic interests, Miller is establishing an eponymous endowed scholarship that builds on her long history of support for her alma mater. “I think RISD has been a little under the radar design-wise, and it really should be brought out into prominence more,” says Miller, a full member of RISD’s Board of Trustees from 1993–98 and an honorary trustee ever since. During the Future by Design capital campaign, she volunteered as one of two national campaign chairs, helping to raise more than $100 million for the school. Miller, who has always maintained a close connection with the Apparel Design department, has chosen to invest in today’s students because RISD was critical to her own development as a designer. “Freshman Foundation alone was so great, so challenging,” she says. “It showed me a methodology, a unique way of thinking about things and a method for taking on challenging projects.” D IST INCTIV E,

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Despite the demands of running a high-profile design business, Miller often hosts class visits to her NYC headquarters and serves as a visiting critic and lecturer. In fact, she has volunteered at RISD since 1987, just a year after opening up her first New York boutique on Madison Avenue. The opening marked a major milestone in Miller’s ascendancy in the fashion world. In 1982, together with business partner and CEO Bud Konheim, she co-founded the Nicole Miller company, launching a label that has expanded far beyond women’s apparel—to handbags, footwear, jewelry, bridal wear and men’s sportswear. Now, with 15 namesake boutiques nationwide and more than 1,000 specialty and department stores carrying her designs, Miller still thinks fondly of Carr Haus, Benefit Street and the studios where students burned the midnight oil. And she can always tell what makes RISD students stand out: “RISD-educated designers are far more experimental than at other schools,” she says. “They really push the boundaries, so you see a lot more innovation. It may not always be the most commercially viable, but school is an important time to be experimental and creative.”

Find out more about Nicole’s work at nicolemiller.com.

Known for the superior cut and construction of her dresses as well as her striking graphic prints, Miller has built her premier label by avoiding trendy fads in favor of designs that are iconic and dramatic at the same time. She has often credited her father, an engineer, and her Parisian-born mother, who gave her an early taste of French style, as influences in the evolution of her signature style. “A lot of my clothes really require a lot of construction and very complex pleating,” she says. “I like things that are a challenge to be made, rather than something that’s simple. The complexity of engineering in the clothing is one of the most fun parts to me.”

photos by Melinda Rainberger 04 FAV

SWAG WITH A DIFFERENCE In Hollywood, SWAG stands for Sealed With a Gift, and usually involves goodie bags filled with luxury freebies celebrities don’t really need. This year RISD launched an altogether different kind of SWAG: Students Who Are Grateful. It’s a campaign to raise awareness about RISD’s Annual Fund, which encourages alumni and parents to help support a portion of the cost of educating each student. “The tuition dollars families pay only covers about 70% of the cost of attendance per academic year,” says Assistant Director of the Annual Fund Kenneth Fonzi, who worked with students to launch the campaign. “If you start spending tuition money on the first day of classes in September, we calculated it would run out by roughly March 16.” Since most students either don’t realize that RISD depends on donations to the Annual Fund to help offset operating costs or what impact those donations have on them, SWAG volunteers—mostly students who are on financial aid themselves—put up posters around campus saying, ‘Imagine that you could not finish this painting” or “that you could not finish developing your film.” For more on giving to RISD, go to www.risd.edu/give.

The awareness campaign culminated in a SWAG event on March 16 that drew about 100 students. Several students had made a roughly seven-foot-tall tree from recyclable materials, and everyone who attended wrote small thank you notes to donors on leaf-shaped paper and then hung them on the tree’s open branches. The awareness campaign was meant to engage students in a different way from the more traditional senior gift model. In the past two years, graduating students have donated funds to start a materials library and support recycling efforts, but enthusiasm for those efforts fell short, in part because of lack of student awareness and in part because the restrictive nature of the gifts meant the funds couldn’t be used for other important needs. “I think SWAG is a model that works well for RISD, as opposed to seniors saying, ‘Hey, let’s buy a bench,’” Fonzi points out. “It’s a way to connect students with donors and remind them of the importance of giving back.”

spring/summer 2011

underGraduate Class Notes

661 36 new alumni as of 6.4.11

Graphic Design

% of males graduating

department with the most graduating students, along with Illustration (82 each)

Jon Naiman 89 PH

Rachel Schreiber 87 GD

Anne Karpis MAT 83

Victo Ngai 10 IL

Carol Anthony 66 IL Nathalie Jolivert BArch 12

Carlos Cedran 96 PT

1933 441 179 118

Jewel + Pearl

Moon Jung Jang loveliest name in class notes

# of seniors graduating

# of grad students graduating

Arch

relative # of Class of 11 graduates per department

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FAV

earliest class year referenced

cutest risd wannabees in class notes

# of international students graduating

22,261

# of alumni now in risdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s database

William Killen TC and Bill Killen 93 FAV , an RI-based

father-and-son team, worked together to create Killen Studio’s RISD Acrylic Color, a complete student-grade paint system under the RISD label. The line was introduced at the risd:store last fall and has been “extremely well received,” they report. The paints actually originated 20 years ago when Bill challenged his father to create an acrylic paint system superior

Mary (Padykula) Kosowski 49 AP

to what was commercially available; as a result, he used the line William produced

Mary is thrilled that her work will be on view in two shows this summer: one at the Providence Art Club from June 12 – July 1 and the other at the Attleboro [MA] Art Museum from August 12–September 10. The retired teacher lives in Smithfield, RI and is still happily drawing and painting.

throughout his RISD years and has stuck with it ever since.

Helen Webber 63 AE

1960

Helen recently created two murals that “glow like stained glass with back LED lighting” for Coasta Cruise Lines’ new ship Favolosa. She works out of her studio in Exton, PA.

In February Jean Winslow IL* (Lowell, MA) showed work in A Print is a Print is Print, an exhibition at The Brush Gallery in Lowell, MA that was part of a citywide printmaking exposition.

1961

1949 In March Robert Nason PT showed 50 years’ worth of pastel figure studies and portraits at Addison Woolley gallery in Portland, ME, where he lives.

1954 Fabulous Fakes: Jewelry by Kenneth Jay Lane, a retrospective featuring 400 archival pieces by Kenneth Jay Lane AD , ran earlier this year at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL. The exhibition built on one that originated at the RISD Museum in 2007 by adding approximately 50 pieces dating from the 1960s and ’70s.

1958 David Kelley GD reports from Falmouth, MA that he had “a very satisfying 2010,” with pastel paintings accepted in four national and two regional juried shows, and several first-place awards overall. Two were for family portraits: Grace Dore, a painting of his mother as a young woman, which won the Open Juried National Exhibition at the Cape Cod Art Association, and Aileen, a portrait of his daughter, honored in the Open Summer Juried Exhibition at the new Falmouth [MA] Art Center.

50th Reunion

1959 From 1995 to 2005, Robert Cronin PT (Falls Village, CT;

October 14 – 16, 2011

1963 Two computer-photo montages

robertcroninart.com) worked

by Deena des Rioux IL (NYC)

exclusively on imaginary figure

are included in the fifth edition

paintings. Selections from

of Robert Hirsch’s Exploring

this body of work were shown

Color Photography, which

last winter in Be Mine, a solo

was published by Focal Press

exhibition of “couples paintings”

in January 2011.

at Sanford Smith Fine Art in Great Barrington, MA.

1964 Elizabeth “Chickie” Sommers

In April and May Wendy

Busch AE (Glenburn, ME)

Ingram SC/MAE 77 had an

is completing a large-scale piece

exhibition of Paintings &

titled Inside, Outside at the New

Handmade Paper at the Central

Mexico Scientific Laboratories

Congregational Church in

in Albuquerque. Selected through

Providence, where she lives.

an open national competition,

she took inspiration from both the landscape outside the lab and the hidden landscape of cells to create a work that will fill an entry atrium when it is installed late this summer. “Eleven individually hung, painted, digitally printed and woven units will fill a 65 x 30' space,” Chickie explains. “I have obtained digital plant, animal, human cell images… [and] transferred them to transparent UV acetate. I cut them all into strips and interweave them into the New Mexico landscape.” Elissa (Scott) Della-Piana IL curated and presented Points of Departure, a spring exhibition of non-objective works at her Gallery Della-Piana in Wenham, MA. The show featured works by Michael Pasquale BArch ,

Robert Cipriani 60 GD and Pamela C. Shaw 09 PR .

Work by Eric Engstrom IL (Fairfax, CA) has been featured and reviewed on several blogs recently, including architectsandartisans.com, modenus.com and roamingbydesign.com. As one of the authors of the educational program Prentice Hall High School Math Digital Path, Stuart Murphy IL (Boston) was among the team that earned a 2010 Award of Excellence from Tech & Learning magazine. Stu lives in Boston and continues to be an active member of RISD’s Board of Trustees, serving as vice president. Nancy H. Taplin PT (Warren, VT) showed work in Hello from Vermont, a group exhibition held in February and March at Maison Kasini in Montreal.

Elaine (Mendolia) Longtemps 63 GD Based in Brooklyn, Elaine has been on a roll, exhibiting work in quite a few current and recent juried shows, including: Marylou Hillyer 25th International Juried Show, held in March at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit; Green: the Color and the Cause, which continues through September 11 at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC; the invitational exhibition Uncommon Threads: The Fiber Show, March–April at Trenton [NJ] Artworks; Fiber Plus, March–May at the Blue Door Gallery in Yonkers, NY; the National Fiber Directions Exhibition 2011, March–May at The Wichita [KS] Center for the Arts; and Hinoki (right) in The Northeast Regional Juried Fiber Exhibition, April–May at the Rochester [NY] Contemporary Art Center.

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

spring/summer 2011

Jillian Barber 68 CR Doppelganger, one of Jillian’s recent photographs, was included in two recent national juried shows: Spectra 2010 at The Silvermine Guild Arts Center in New Canaan, CT (fall 2010) and Seeing Double at the Attleboro [MA] Arts Museum (summer 2010). Jillian is based in Jamestown, RI.

and boxed collages—from each of the four decades she taught at the college. Maureen is retiring knowing how well we comple-

as the Joanne Toor Cummings

joining forces will benefit both

’50 Professor of Studio Art, and

firms,” says Craig, whose former

has been one of the longest-

firm, DuBose Associates, will

tenured professors at Connecticut

maintain an office in Westerly,

College. Her work is in the

RI under the Tecton name.

collections of museums and

1969 Ed Baranosky PT (Toronto,

Ontario) had two poems included in Lynx XXVI:1

Carol Anthony 66 IL Beloved Paint Brush is among the oil crayon paintings Carol will show in Landscapes of Memory, her next solo exhibition at Gerald Peters Gallery in Sante Fe, where she lives and paints, happily unplugged from the wired world. The show runs from July 8 through August 5.

(February 2011), Plein Air and Voyageurs. In January he offered a demonstration and workshop on acrylic seascape painting at Lucsculpture School & Studios in Toronto.

1966 45th Reunion October 14 – 16, 2011 Clay monoprints by Marsha

were recent paintings and drawings full of “unsettling images of a world gone awry,” depicting post-apocalyptic landscapes and scenes of global warming,

Dowshen PT (Bordentown, NJ)

urban decay, eating disorders,

were on view in April in the

overconsumption and war.

art gallery at Pebble Hill Church

at the end of this academic year

ment each other, we see that

In May Jack Dickerson GD exhibited a large new body of work entitled Crabs of Cape Cod at his own Dickerson Gallery in Brewster, MA. Bruce Helander 69 IL/MFA 72

Selby Minner FS (Rentiesville,

Tim Casey PT* (NYC) had work

in Paper 2011, a winter show of small works on paper at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery in Brooklyn. His piece JV was included in a review of the show on the blog Steven Alexander Journal. Lois Brezinski AP (Delray

.com) invites all RISD alumni to visit her new gallery, Lois Brezinski Artworks in West Palm Beach, FL, to see her own work and the work of other artists. The gallery opening was supported

PT was recently appointed editor-

by a $20,000 grant from the

in-chief of The Art Economist,

city’s Downtown Development

a glossy new monthly magazine

Authority. Lois has had many

process starts with a flattened

Family Portraits, a show by

slab of stoneware clay that

Ben Larrabee PH (Darien, CT;

describes it as a “handsomely

commissioned work can be seen

becomes the ‘canvas.’ Colored

benlarrabee.com), is on view

designed and understandably

at hotels and resorts including

various tools, and inlaid with

Nantucket, MA.

rollers. This is what gives the images their depth, texture, and richness of color. The image is carefully transferred with pressure using a hand roller onto a special non-woven fabric. The process leaves the monoprint archival since the clay is inert and the pigments are permanent and stable. Each clay monoprint is an original.” In April Karen Moss PT

Mary Curtis Ratcliff AE

(Berkeley, CA) had a show titled Encounters with Light in March at Mercury 20 gallery in Oakland, CA.

1968 David Foster BArch and

aimed at art lovers and collectors.

of her paintings published by

In his editor’s message, Bruce

PI Fine Art of Toronto, and her

written” publication that “carefully examines the active careers and financial successes of prominent living artists.” In February he also moderated a panel discussion entitled The Curious Economics of Art at the American International Fine Art Fair, which took place in West Palm Beach, FL, his longtime home.

Craig Saunders BArch recently

Connecticut College recognized

merged their two Hartford, CT-

retiring studio art professor

based architectural firms into

Maureen McCabe SC (Quaker

one, retaining the name of David’s

Hill, CT) with a retrospective

(Brookline, MA) had a solo show

practice: Tecton Architects

exhibition in February. Swan

titled Dissonant Worlds at Fourth

(tectonarchitects.com). “Having

Song featured examples of her

Wall Project in Boston. On view

worked together previously and

art—mixed media assemblages

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OK) is a blues musician with the band Selby and Blues on the Move. Visit dcminnerblues.com for song clips, performance dates, Blues Club nights in Rentiesville, OK, and the annual Dusk Till Dawn Blues Festival, which was founded by her late husband D.C. Minner. Selby

Beach, FL; loisbrezinskiartworks

Moments of Grace: Fine Art

through September 22 at the

40th Reunion October 14 – 16, 2011

1970

1967

Sconset Cafe in Siasconset,

1971 Bernice Mast PH (see page 3)

in Doylestown, PA. Marsha

slips are applied to the slab.

This spring Christy (Bradley) Colebank IL coordinated an exhibition at the Wimberley [TX] United Methodist Church and participated in events at the Wimberley Valley Art League and the New Braunfels [TX] Art League. In March she concurrently exhibited colored pencil drawings at both galleries; called Flying Frog and Song of the Owl, they were a “flash back to Nature Lab days,” she writes.

galleries around the world.

describes her technique: “The

The slips are layered, altered with

Breakers, Palm Beach; Ritz Carlton, Grand Cayman; and Marriott Grand Harbor, Orlando. (see also page 7)

Phyllis Limbacher Tildes 67 IL Will You Be Mine? A Nursery Rhyme Romance, Phyllis’ 18th picture book for Charlesbridge, was released this spring. It’s a compilation of Mother Goose rhymes that, when strung together, create a whimsical love story between a cat and a poodle. Phyllis works out of her studio in Savannah, GA.

year, as a tribute to my late mother,” writes Candy Kugel IL (NYC). “After caring for my mother who suffered a massive stroke in 1994 and then survived with expressive aphasia (the inability to find words) for another 12 1/2 years, I produced and created a 17-minute animated film, It’s Still Me! A Guide for People with Aphasia and Their Loved Ones. The National Aphasia Association (NAA) is distributing it for us

Jennifer Davies 68 IL

and I worked with 4 aphasia

The pieces on view in Jennifer’s recent solo show at City Gallery in New Haven, CT represented a variety of materials and techniques, including layered or woven abaca and kozo fibers, sometimes dipped in a slurry of handmade paper, as well as clay, plaster and earth. Jennifer lives in nearby Branford, CT.

guide I give hints about how to

groups in its creation. In this communicate without words…. I continue to get letters from family members of people with aphasia, saying how much it has meant to them. The NAA just

assembled From Black Town

Diane Tasho TX and Barbara

To Blues Festivals, an exhibit on

Fleischer IL along with faculty

view last winter at the Frisco

members James Fowle and

Depot in Muskogee, OK.

Dean Richardson 56 PT , can

Neal Rantoul PH/MFA 73

(Boston; nealrantoul.com) had two solo shows last fall and winter: Twenty-Five Years at Boston’s Panopticon Gallery in

be seen on YouTube.

1973

got a grant to translate it into Spanish and we will re-record

Jo Ann Secor 73 AE

the voiceover and remake it to

A principal at the Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership in NYC, Jo Ann recently worked on a nontraditional and highly acclaimed design for Summit Elementary School in Casper, WY. The $16.6-million facility features moveable walls, a cross-disciplinary creativity suite and a “village center” that doubles as a public event space. The school grounds house wind turbines that send excess power to another part of the state.

serve this very large community. I love that this film, above all my other work, has made a big difference in people’s lives!”

Brian Dowley PH/MFA 75 FAV

Masters of Studio Glass: Toots

(Cambridge, MA) was director

Zynsky, a survey of the work

November 2010, and Collections

of photography on Dinosaur

of Toots Zynsky GL , is on view

Wars, a documentary about the

at the Griffin Museum’s Digital

at the Corning [NY] Museum

discoveries and feuds of pioneer

Silver Imaging in Belmont, MA

paleontologists Edward Cope

in January and February. He also

and O.C. Marsh. The film aired

was an invited speaker at the

in January on the PBS series

February Yuma Art Symposium

American Experience.

in Arizona. In addition to teaching in the Department

Henry Isaacs PT (Sharon, VT)

of Art + Design at Northeastern

will be offering the third annual

University, Neal serves on the

Islesford [ME] Plein Air

boards of the Photographic

Workshops in September. Visit

Resource Center in Boston and

his website (henryisaacs.com)

the Griffin Museum of Photo-

for more information on the

graphy in Winchester, MA.

three-day painting program.

1972

showed paintings in Scale:

The 1972 film Maiali delle Strade, directed by Barry Koch IL (Nyack, NY) and featuring EHP alumni Rob Saunders IL (Brookline, MA), Jeff Janson* (Rome), Beth Miles GD (Washington, DC), Carlton Fletcher PT (Washington, DC),

and the RISD Museum Board

explains. Students and faculty

of Glass through January 29,

of Governors.

from Webster University [in

2012. The exhibition features her signature filet de verre (glass

1974

Kodachrome from May through

thread) vessels—pieces that

Susan Hacker Stang 71 PH/

December 2010. Susan’s essay

St. Louis, MO] engaged in shooting

MFA 74 recently co-edited a book,

in the book, which includes

and deserved acclaim for their

Kodachrome, End of the Run:

a selection of 69 images from

often extraordinary and always

Photographs from the Final

the Webster project, discusses

unique explorations in color,”

Batches (2011, Webster University

the film’s historical importance,

in the words of the show descrip-

Press), with colleague Bill

its unique scientific formulation

tion. Toots lives in Providence

Barrett. “The book grew out of a

and how the introduction

and is an active member of

discussion in my color photo-

of Kodachrome gave birth to

both RISD’s Board of Trustees

graphy class last spring,” she

modern color photography.

“enjoy a widespread popularity

C. Richard Kattman BLA

Experiencing Size, Surface and Story, a three-person exhibition held in April and May at the Attleboro [MA] Arts Museum. He lives in nearby Holliston, MA. “I thought you might be interested in a project I did last

Chip Simone 67 PH The Resonant Image: Photographs by Chip Simone, which runs at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art from June 18 to November 6, features 64 color photographs, including 11 pieces the museum recently acquired for its photography collection, and presents what Chip describes as “the most intimate images I’ve ever shown, not for what they depict but for what they reveal.” Chip made the photographs in and around Atlanta, where he lives, and in his home state of Massachusetts.

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

spring/summer 2011

Christine Hanlon 76 PT Christine (christinehanlon.com) created the cover and was profiled in the winter 2010–11 issue of Sea History, a publication of the National Maritime Historical Society. She has work in the current show Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Response to Homelessness from the New Deal to the Present, which is traveling around California until 2012. Her painting in the show is from her 1997 MFA thesis exhibition at the Academy of Art University, which was produced as a fundraiser for the Coalition on Homelessness. She also participated in the 22nd Annual Spring Open Studio 2011 at Hunter’s Point Shipyard in San Francisco.

led to growth of the business,

held in February and March at

local community and will also

Pawtucket [RI] Arts Collaborative.

allow him to take on high school apprentices. The Owl Stool was featured in the Furniture Society booth at the March Architectural palette of both washed-out

Digest Home and Design Show in

tones and dense, electric hues,”

New York City.

according to the gallery.

1976

CT since 1978, Karen Rand Anderson CR (karenrand

(Washington, DC), a tour guide at the US Capitol, was selected by PBS.org as its photo of the day. Wendy Hollender TX (see

page 7) Patterns of Love and Beauty, Barbara’s solo site-specific installation with related drawings, continues through June 28 at Artspace in Raleigh, NC. A lecturer in RISD’s Sculpture Department, she recently teamed up with Jeff Poland in RISD’s HPSS Department to teach a spring course called Truths and Consequences, which was supported by a Kyobo Grant for Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Teaching.

1975 Charles Cunniffe BArch (see

page 9) Peter Curran PH helped to organize DECON’11, the biannual conference of the Building Materials Reuse Association (BMRA). Held in May at Yale University, the conference focused on how to make building demolition greener by addressing issues including building material salvage and reuse, deconstruction and workforce development, rebuilding distressed neighborhoods and recycling construction and demolition debris. Paul Housberg PT/MFA 79 GL (Jamestown, RI) was selected to create a series of glass installations for the corridors

RISDXYZ

of Princeton University’s new Frick Chemistry Laboratory. Bold, large-scale watercolors on paper by film director Gus Van Sant FAV were on view earlier this year in Gus Van Sant / James Franco at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA. The exhibition featured a film called My Own Private River that actor/multitalented media star James Franco MFA 12 DM made from out-takes—mostly focused on River Phoenix—from his friend Gus’ well-known movie My Own Private Idaho. Working from found images, Gus created complementary portraits of young men who recall characters in My Own Private Idaho, “employing brushwork that alternates broad, limpid strokes with an assiduous attention to detail and a varied

After having lived in Stonington,

October 14 – 16, 2011

of Chandini Bachman AP

Barbara Bernstein 75 PR

1977

35th Reunion

On January 11 an AP photo

for The Literary As Muse, a show

which creates more jobs for the

anderson.com) relocated to Providence last fall and reports that she’s “impressed and inspired by the dynamic art scene in the ‘Creative Capital,’ and I have a studio at the 545 Mill in Pawtucket. I received my

George Clark BLA (Harwich,

MA) writes: “Daughter Carolyn got married last summer and Anna will be married this summer. Sons are doing well. Tim is at BC and the hockey team has done awesomely. He is in charge of their communications etc. Keith is at CORO in St.Louis, training future leaders.” See more about his business on page 7. During her artist residency at the Morris Graves Foundation in May, Deborah Gavel IL (Albuquerque, NM) focused on

MFA in 2010 from Johnson State College/Vermont Studio Center;

Geoffrey Warner Studio

my work is 2- and 3-dimensional

(geoffreywarnerstudio.com),

mixed-media. My daughter

the Stonington, ME furniture

Danica Mitchell 15 ID has just

workshop operated by Geoffrey

completed her freshman year in

Warner PH* , has been awarded

the Brown/RISD dual degree

a $25,000 federally funded

program, majoring in Industrial

micro loan/grant to support

Design at RISD and Environ-

expansion. He explains that the

mental Studies at Brown.”

success of his Owl Furniture has

Karen had two pieces selected

Linda MacNeil 76 SC In March Linda was one of five artists throughout the country to earn national recognition as a winner of the 2011 Master of the Medium award, presented by the James Renwick Alliance (a nonprofit affiliated with the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC). Linda lives in Kensington, NH.

In Terza Rima, which ran at Alt/Space LA in Los Angeles, where he lives.

1979 Terry Siebert SC (Bainbridge

Island, WA) has a new website: terrysiebert.com.

1980 David Laferriere IL is working

as a graphic designer at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, where one of his primary responsibilities is handling design and illustration for their alumni magazine.

Sally Mara Sturman 76 PT As a full-time illustrator and part-time fishmonger, Sally (sallymarasturman.com) has embarked on a series of watercolors called Fish Chronicles. “I started doing them last November when hit by a huge wave of claustrophobia, hemmed in by my giant co-workers and impatient customers [at the Brooklyn NY farmers market]!... The paintings are my observations, painted from memory, of the other side of the counter.”

Stacy Jannis Tamerlani FAV

(Silver Spring, MD) let us know that she “completed a computer animation package for the Alzheimer’s Association, and a series of videos for the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Atlas. I also worked as

and idea.” One of the works from

Education in Bronx, NY, and

the series was also included

her exhibition The Dream

in Couplings at Gallery 110 in

Paintings was shown in December

Seattle, where it won an

and January at Galeria NH in

David Coleman BArch 79

honorable mention from curator

Cartagena, Colombia.

David was recently elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for making “a significant contribution to architecture and society on a national level.” He’s principal of David Coleman Architecture in Seattle, which just launched a new website (davidcoleman.com). The firm’s Zig Zag House was featured in the March–April issue of Design Bureau magazine.

Rock Hushka and a people’s choice award.

SKD, the product design firm where Stuart Karten ID

Valerie Hird PT (Burlington,

(Marina Del Rey, CA) is principal,

VT) created two paintings for

won a 2011 CES Innovations

the new book The Canal of Many

Award for the Hitachi LifeStudio

Colors: A Whimsical Trip Through

digital devices.

the Panama Canal by Carlos Weil. a collage series “using vintage

awards.com), a competition

Her video animation Superheroes

In April David Schoffman PT

stamps, drawings, watercolors

whose mission is to “showcase

was featured in a winter show

showed work in the three-person

and the codes of text messaging,”

the global best digital

at Casita Maria Center for Arts &

exhibition The Gasp Of Love

she says. “Code-Talking is

advertising creative work, the

a continuation of a series

pioneers of the 21st century

of collages I showed in Rota

in creativity, design and

Kenneth Lewis BArch 83

Fortunae last summer.”

advertising communications.”

As an architectural project manager at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Ken oversaw the design of two new buildings for the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. He recently gave a talk at RISD about the challenges SOM has faced throughout the five-year process, including designing structures that could withstand future attacks while providing art and inspiration for tenants and visitors. Glass maverick James Carpenter 72 IL collaborated on the project, installing active surfaces that illuminate a wall with blue LEDs as pedestrians walk by.

Last winter Carol Peligian IL (NYC) had a solo show titled Sosomuch at Dean Project in New York City. New paintings by Daniel Rosenbaum PT* (Brooklyn)

were on view this spring in Terra Aerial Visions, a month-long solo show at Yes Gallery in Brooklyn. His canvases focus on real and surreal landscapes presented from soaring heights and incorporating layers of ink on paper or polyester that are then covered with iridescent, metallic and fluorescent acrylic paints. Robert Tucker ID* (NYC)

He recently married Misa Hirai, designer/owner of Hagi Jewelry.

1978 In February and March Karen Hackenberg PT (Port

Townsend, WA) had a show

a K-12 outreach coordinator for student programs for the first USA Science & Engineering Festival, and I’m preparing for the 2012 festival.”

1981 30th Reunion October 14 – 16, 2011

1982 On a recent trip to China, Donald Friedlich JM (Madison, WI;

donaldfriedlich.com) delivered lectures at China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Tsinghau University in Beijing and Shanghai University. He was also a visiting artist at Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Canada. This summer he will be teaching at The Studio of the Corning Museum of Glass and will be the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the International Society of Glass Beadmakers in Louisville, KY.

titled Watershed at Vermillion Gallery in Seattle. In her artist’s statement for the show, she writes: “Beach-found detritus— PETE water bottles, plastic toy animals, and consumer product packages—are the subject and medium of my current artwork. Painting traditionally with oil and gouache, I lovingly and meticulously craft images of trashed commercial beach

is CEO of Global Best Digital

flotsam, creating a provocative

Advertising Awards (digitalad

visual juxtaposition of form

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

spring/summer 2011

Poulin + Morris, the NYC design

In February Eileen Ferara IL

firm where Douglas Morris GD

(Jersey City, NJ) participated

is a principal, recently completed

in 365 Days of Print (365days

environmental graphics and

ofprint.com), an online artist’s

identity design projects for MSG

residency/blog for which artists

Media and Hudson Square

read and interpret the newspaper

Connection, both in NYC, and

through their art. Last year she

the Sephardic Center in Brooklyn.

was one of three artists who

They also designed Building

created a centennial mural for

Connections 2010, the annual

the Greenville firehouse of the

exhibition of the Center for Archi-

Jersey City Fire Department.

tecture Foundation illustrating the benefits of design education.

1986 25th Reunion October 14 – 16, 2011 Manhattan-based interior designer and writer Patrick J. Hamilton GD (NYC) recently

contributed his personal stories to It Gets Better: NYC Designing Men (itgetsbetter.org), a series of videos for teens about growing up gay.

This RI-based sculptor recently completed one of his “most challenging and significant commissions to date”: The Ark at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, MA and the accompanying Yahrzeit Memorial, which includes more than 1,500 names on individually engraved bronze plates. The project involved sensitive spiritual and ceremonial issues along with spatial and architectural needs and a complex fabrication and installation process. Over a five-month period, Peter incorporated more than 4,000 pounds of bronze, a quarried slab of limestone imported from Israel, a custom carved and cast glass panel, a structural steel substructure, upholstery and custom wood veneer panels to create “a spiritually charged design intended to last for generations.”

In March and April Meg Alexander GD showed drawings, sculpture, prints and digital media in New Landscapes, a solo show at Gallery Kayafas in Boston. She lives in nearby Concord, MA. Richard Goulis FAV

(Providence) filmed the videos and Scott Lapham 90 PH (Providence) shot the stills for NetWorks, a series of documentaries about Rhode Island artists that aired on PBS (and is now available on YouTube). Joseph Chazan produced the videos in conjunction with AS220, the Newport Art Museum and Gallery Z; among the RISD alumni profiled are Ben Anderson 84 SC , Leslie Bostrom MFA 85 PT , Daniel Clayman 86 GL, Yizhak Elyashiv MFA 92 JM , Erminio 50

RISDXYZ

Pinque 83 FAV , Kenn Speiser

and McDonald Wright 96 PH .

three shows this spring: Waiting in Memery: Imitation, Memory, and Internet Culture, at MASS MoCA through July 31; OMG! in A Tool is a Mirror at the Hampden

[RI] Arts Center (JAC; jamestown

Gallery Incubator Project Space

artcenter.org) several years ago

at UMASS Amherst, March-April;

to encourage local interest in the

and the installation Free WiFi

arts; the organization recently reached an ambitious fundraising

in RISD’s Illustration Departin On Location: Drawing Every Day, a show at Monstserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. Ki Ho Park PH/MFA 10

(Barrington, RI; kihoparkphoto. com) showed photography in Everything Must Go, a winter solo show at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

1987

a building. Once remodeling In honor of Women’s History

of the former boat repair garage

Month, Lisa Ann Palombo IL

is complete, they hope the JAC

(Caldwell, NJ; lisapalombo.com)

will become a hub of artistic

gave a lecture on Women

activity in the community.

Impressionists and Myself at Reeves-Reed Arboretum in Summit, NJ in March. The talk was the opening event for Impressions of the Garden, an exhibition of Lisa’s oil-on-linen paintings of garden scenes.

Gender and Activism in a Little Magazine: the Modern Figures of the Masses, a new book by Rachel Schreiber GD , was

released by Ashgate Publishing in February. She completed her PhD in History at the Johns

Kate Petrie BArch and Lizzie

Hopkins University in 2008

Congdon founded the Jamestown

and is currently director of

cock.com) presented an evening of short films and poetry at Furman University in Greenville, SC. Titled An Urban Peacock’s Journey, the program included

NY) recently shot compelling portraits of Pete Seeger, Sheryl Oring, the late Howard Zinn and a dozen other activists profiled in Something to Say—Thoughts on Art and Politics in America (2011, Leapfrog Press), written by her husband Richard Klin.

four of her short films and her

Madeleine Bolger PT* (Norfolk, MA), Karole Nicholson CEC 95 (Attleboro, MA) and Judith Moffat, an instructor in RISD’s Continuing Education division, exhibited together in February at the Norfolk [MA] Public Library.

Brian Kane PT (Cambridge,

MA) has had sculpture work in

Claudia’s nail polish painting Apparition won the Roger King Fine Art Award (for First Place in Painting) in the 2011 Annual Members’ Juried Exhibition at the Newport [RI] Art Museum. The show ran from February to May.

goal, allowing them to purchase

Lily Prince PT (Stone Ridge,

1985

of Autophagy magazine.

Claudia Flynn 84 SC

Council gallery, March–May.

(Simpsonville, SC; urbanpea68 SC , Wendy Wahl MAE 85

for the November 2010 issue

at the Cambridge [MA] Arts

In March Kavita Bali GD

1984

NY) created the cover illustration

Fred Lynch IL , a senior critic

ment, exhibited work last winter

Peter Diepenbrock BID 84

Trine Giaever IL (Piermont,

poem “The Horseman Has Come.”

David Holmes 84 GD David’s painting Welcome to Minneapolis was chosen by the State Department for display at the US embassy in Sarajevo; it was also one of three pieces that he exhibited in the juried realism invitational held in April at Mason Murer Gallery in Atlanta. He recently had a solo show at Robbin Gallery in Robbinsdale, MN. David lives in Minneapolis.

Humanities & Sciences and an associate professor at the California College of the Arts

KEY

in Oakland/San Francisco.

current majors

1988

Lucas Michael: 10 Years in LA,

CR Ceramics

a show of video, sculpture,

photographs and drawings by

Emma Gray HQ gallery. In March Caroline Rufo GD (Needham, MA) and her husband John showed paintings together in Adjacent Rooms,

Suzanne Scripps 89 PT

Suzanne has opened a new gallery in Santa Fe, where she shows her own paintings—like this one, Grand Central Annie (oil on canvas, 36 x 36")—along with sculpture and jewelry.

GD Graphic Design

Public Library.

(Los Angeles) showed ceramic

IA Interior Architecture ID Industrial Design IL Illustration

work in a winter group exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum

JM Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Scott Lindenau BArch 86 recent solo shows: Infinity: The Dreamtime, held in February at Kean University in Union, NJ, and Urban Patterns in April

of Ceramic Art at Acme gallery.

at Manhattanville College in

1989

also included a photographic

Purchase, NY. The exhibitions

Scott established Studio B Architects (studiobarchitects.net) in Aspen, CO in 1991. “In 20 years in practice,” he writes, “I/we have garnered 50 AIA design awards, including the Colorado Young Architect of the Year 2000, AIA Colorado Mentoring Firm of the Year 2003 and AIA Colorado Firm of the Year 2009.” Scott was recently elected to the College of Fellows (FAIA) and will teach a grad studio at the UC-Denver school of architecture this summer.

installation by Karen Gelardi

were included in the exhibition

I’m still a painter. But the food

PT (South Portland, ME), was

River, IL. A four-page spread of

for the Photography Prize 2011

writing has become quite

exhibited in February at Gallery

So Yoon’s Dreamtime paintings

of the Canton of Bern, on view in

important as well.” Check out

was featured in Cabinet

March at PhotoforumPasquArt

both aspects of Peter’s work

Magazine #40 (winter 2010-11),

in Biel, Switzerland, where he

online: barrettart.com and

which was themed “Hair.”

lives (see more on page 8).

acookblog.com.

Four photographs by Jon

1990

Ian Bohorquez PT married

Haledon, NJ) exhibited hair and braid pattern paintings in two

Naiman PH (jonnaiman.com)

NYC-based artist SoHyun Bae PT is excited to announce

her new website: sohyunbae. com. Please check it out and let

Farsad Labbauf BID 87 left: Farsad showed this recent painting in My Super Hero, a group exhibition that opened simultaneously at Morono Kiang Gallery in Los Angeles and Aaran Gallery in Tehran, Iran and was on view at both venues in March. Farsad lives in Jersey City, NJ.

her know what you think. Peter Barrett PT (Woodstock,

NY) writes: “I just got the [XYZ Winter 2011 issue] today, and it looks great. I was a little disappointed, though, that I didn’t know you’d be focusing on food; I’ve been writing a food blog for five years that recently both New York magazine and Michael Ruhlman have mentioned positively. I also have a gig as the food and drink writer for Chronogram, a monthly magazine here in the Hudson Valley. This is all a side project to my art career; first and foremost

Siulam Iliana Fernandes CEC

on May 9, 2009 in Providence.

PR Printmaking SC Sculpture TX Textiles

Ethel’s mixed-media sculptural work was on view earlier this spring in a solo show at OK Harris Gallery in NYC. The artist (ethelpoindexter.com) is based in Vancouver, BC.

LA Landscape Architecture MD Machine Design TC

Textile Chemistry

Textile Engineering

5th-year degree BArch Architecture former 5th-year degrees

is founder and creative director

BGD Graphic Design

of Creative:interactive, Inc.

BID Industrial Design

in Providence, and Siulam is a graphic designer.

BIA Interior Architecture

After working as an art teacher

BLA Landscape Architecture

for years, Emily Cohen IL (Los Angeles) discovered a gift for teaching kids to swim, and has built a successful business called The Water Whisperer (see page 6). “In the off season I work as an illustrator,” she says. “I have a separate art website

master’s degrees MA

Art Education (formerly MAE)

MArch Architecture MAT Teaching MFA

Fine Arts

MID Industrial Design

(lovemily.com) and recently had

MIA Interior Architecture

a drawing published in the new

MLA Landscape Architecture

book The Good, The Bad, and The Barbie (2010, Viking Juvenile).”

OTHER

A recent article in The Sherman

CEC Continuing Education Certificate

Oaks Patch (2.11.2011) described how Emily used her art as

Ethel Poindexter 88 ID

Advertising Design

AE Art + Design Education

They live in Lincoln, RI. Ian

a springboard for swimming.

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

PT Painting

print of the field project she conducted in June 2010 in Leaf

So Yoon Lym PT (North

PH Photography

former majors

In the Outside, a mixed-media

37-A in Portland, ME.

Furniture Design

GL Glass

an exhibition at the Dover [MA]

Adam Silverman BArch

Digital + Media

FAV Film/Animation/ Video

Lucas Michael ID (NYC), was

on view last winter at the city’s

Apparel Design

Arch Architecture

In April and May Patrick Keesey PT (NYC and Marfa, TX)

FS enrolled for Foundation Studies only * attended RISD, but no degree awarded

showed new drawings and paintings in Fragments & Refractions, a solo show at Blackston gallery in New York City. spring/summer 2011

premiered at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich in March 2010.

1994 Alyce Santoro CEC (Fort Davis,

TX; alycesantoro.com) exhibited

Marcia Patmos AP was among

at the Marfa [TX] Ballroom as

the dozens of New York-based

part of the spring Texas Biennial.

designers who joined forces for

She is a member of Sonic Dis-

Fashion Girls For Japan: 60+

obedience, a group devoted to

Designers/60+ Rolling Racks,

“works of sonic activism.” In

a designer sample sale to benefit

December their piece WIKILEAKS

Japan Society’s Japan Earthquake

SAMBA—“an ode to freedom

Relief Fund, the Red Cross,

of speech and press in perfor-

and NYC’s Japan Earthquake

mance-art form”—appeared on

and Tsunami Fund. The event

democracynow.org and hit the

took place in April at the

top spot in the UK viral video

Bowery Hotel.

chart. She entered the 2011

1992

with her project The Instant

Recent paintings and large-scale

& Efficient Comprehensive &

drawings by Bo Joseph PT

Synergetic Omni-Solution.

the Sears-Peyton Gallery booth

In February Dan Sousa IL

at the Pulse NY art fair.

(Providence) discussed his

Denyse Schmidt GD

announced her company’s first quilt sewing pattern for the

animation work in a talk at Harvard’s Carpenter Center, interspersing his commentary with screenings of his five films.

McCall Pattern Company. Based

Work by Nakhee Sung PT was

on Denyse Schmidt Quilts’ Spool

on view in April in Within, a solo

design, “the pattern makes it

show at Doosan Gallery in Seoul,

Liz Collins 91 TX/MFA 99

easy to replicate the improvisa-

Korea, where she lives.

Liz (top) and her partner Julie Davids have a son, Winter Edward Collins, who was born at home on December 23, 2009. Liz is an assistant professor of Textiles at RISD and recently received a 2011 MacColl Johnson Fellowship for Visual Art (see page 40). As part of a fall exhibition at ICA Boston called Dance/Draw, she will stage two different, day-long KNITTING NATION events in the magnificent theater space there—on October 30 and November 25.

tional feeling of my design, so no two blocks look alike,” she says.

curated Lucien Aigner: Photo/

gratification, the finished quilt

Story, a major exhibition that

is also available via Denyse

1993 Mark Callahan PR (Athens,

20th Reunion October 14 – 16, 2011

Annette Ferdinandsen JM

GA) is showing work in Memery:

(Clinton Corners, NY) crafts

Imitation, Memory, and Internet

delicate gold, silver and

Culture, a group exhibition that

gemstone jewelry that can now

continues through July 31 at

Katherine Daniels PT (NYC;

be found at Egan Day boutique

MASS MoCA. His work inspires

katherinedaniels.com) showed

in Philadelphia.

work last winter in Veil, a site-specific installation in the Donnell Library windows in NYC, and in the group show An Uncommon Thread at Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn. Chris Eboch PH (Socorro, NM;

chriseboch.com) has had two books for juvenile readers published recently: The Eyes of Pharaoh (2011, CreateSpace), an adventure story set in ancient Egypt, and Rattled (2011, Pig River

Karen Meleney Green SC

“subtle, sedate portraits of popular Internet content that

Weathervanes, a bespoke

are both familiar and uncanny,”

sculpture studio based in

according to the show’s site.

was commissioned to create a monumental 3D copper weathervane of Lady Liberty to celebrate the opening of the American Museum in Britain’s

In March Andrew Crawford SC

(Palm Coast, FL) submitted this good news: “I wanted to share that I am now a Fulbrighter! I was selected by the Fulbright Commission in Ireland and the National College of Art &

sculpture in Forged from Nature, Botanical Garden of Georgia. LEVEL UP, a TV movie David

opened with the unveiling of the

Schneiderman FAV (Sherman

Oaks, CA) co-wrote and coexecutive produced, premieres

Allyson Hollingsworth JM

on the Cartoon Network this fall

name Kris Bock), a suspenseful

(Oakland, CA) had photographs

and will be followed by the

romance that takes place

featured in the program book

series, which will start airing in

in “the dramatic and deadly

accompanying Dialogues

early 2012. An online video game

southwestern desert.”

des Carmélites, an opera that

will be released at the same time.

RISDXYZ

Vanessa (Brawn) Cruz FAV

a solo show at the State

Books; written under the pen

Nathan Bond PT and his wife Elisa were each diagnosed with aggressive cancer within days of each other. Find out more at friendsofnathanandelisa. blogspot.com.

(Atlanta, GA) exhibited recent

new Folk Art Gallery, which new weathervane on March 12.

1995 After nearly five years leading the design and user experience of New York Media’s digital products (nymag.com, menupages.com, vulture.com, among others) Ian Adelman ID joined The New York Times this spring as director of Digital Design. In this capacity, he’s working with a team of visual designers, information architects and creative technologists to shape the Times’ multiple digital publishing platforms, including the nytimes.com website and news applications.

new perspectives on popular culture and media through

is the head designer at Greens

England. Last fall the studio

ran earlier this spring at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA.

Chryssa Udvardy 91 SC Shadow (2010, stoneware, 20 x 13 x 34") is one of the sculptural works in Shadows and Objects, a solo exhibition held in February at AS220 Project Space in Providence. Chryssa lives nearby in Bristol, RI.

left: photo by Karen Philippi

1991

Jennifer Uhrhane PH guest

(And for those seeking quicker

Schmidt Quilts’ website.)

Farm Stand Display, Fryeburg Fair was among the photographs included in At the Fair, a solo show held in March at Clark Gallery in Lincoln, MA. Thomas is based in Harmony, ME.

Buckminster Fuller Challenge

(NYC) were on view in March at

(Bridgeport, CT; dsquilts.com)

Thomas Birtwistle 91 PH*

Design for a US Fulbright Scholar Award in Mixed Media Art at National College of Art & Design, commencing in January 2012. My research will focus on my new animated film/installation with the working title of Ruin.” Inigo Elizalde PT lives in New York City and has a textile and rug design company called Inigo Elizalde Rugs (inigoelizalderugs. com). The company exhibits regularly at trade shows, including the annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair held in May in NYC.

1996 15th Reunion October 14 – 16, 2011 Christine (Knof) Arakelian

GD and her husband Steven welcomed their second son, Shayne Aurelius, on January 31, 2011. Shayne joins his big brother

Blake, who is two. The family lives in Maplewood, NJ. In recognition of his social activism work in the Philippines, Carlos Celdran PT (Manila; celdrantours.blogspot.com) was named to Forbes magazine’s list of People You Need to Know in 2011. Carlos is an advocate of reproductive health and education for the poor, and is an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church’s stance on contraception and reproductive freedoms. Anthi Frangiadis BArch

(Onset, MA) was recognized by the City of New Bedford, MA/ Mass DOT for her entry in the Whale’s Tooth Station Design Competition. Hailed by the judges as “fun, creative, and… a signature gateway,” The Whale Over Route 18 received an Honorable Mention Award for the Iconic Treatment of New

Arnor Bieltvedt 92 PT Halos (36 x 24") was among the works featured in Flowers, a March solo show at the gallery Estudio Luna in Winnipeg, Canada. Arnor (artistarnor.com) creates work based on his childhood memories of the spectacular Icelandic landscape and his interest in the flora and brilliant light of Southern California, where he now lives (in Pasadena).

Anne Frost 97 GD Anne and Joe Morse were married on August 28, 2010 in her hometown of Bronxville, NY. Joe is a sales engineer at Salesforce.com and Anne is “still running a maintenance gardening business in San Francisco but [is] in the process of making a career change (career yet to be determined).”

Bedford’s Character. Anthi drew from the composition of a whale’s skeleton in a nod to New Bedford’s long history of whaling. The design can be see at archit8 .com/issuu.php. Christopher Frederick PH stars in Snuggle Bunny (funnyordie.com/snugglebunny), a three-part web series directed by Joe Leonard, who edits for the hit TV series Glee. Christopher designed the news anchor backdrops used in part 2 (where he appears in full bunny costume) and retouched the still images in part 1.

In March Tess Giberson AP opened a flagship boutique on Crosby Street in New York, and during Fashion Week she was selected as one of the emerging designers promoted through the W Hotels’ 2011 Fashion Next program. Her collection is also available at Barneys New York, Intermix in New York and Ron Herman in California. Jody Goodman BArch (San

Bruno, CA) is curating Japanese Art, a show at Gensler’s home office in San Francisco. The show runs from September 29 through December 2, with daily public viewing hours. Turtles Swimming in a Plastic Ocean, a painting by Lee Lee PT (aka Lee Erin Leonard), was a finalist in The Chaco Waves for Change Art Contest, which addresses the environmental impact of plastic on the planet’s oceans and sea life. Lee splits her time between Denver and Taos, NM.

1997 Ellen Godena PT (working under the name Sara June; Boston) had a solo show titled

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

PLEO SERIES III: Convergence

pop-up shop at the Lace boutique

in March at Mobius Artists Space

(all in Miami Beach, FL) and had

in Boston. The 48-hour intensive

a Pop-Up Studio in New York

performance/installation event

City for a week in January (see

featured “multiple late-Creta-

also page 11).

ceous dinosaurs, birds, humans, and robots in performance of their evolution…[to] provide commentary on the attachment relationship as a key neurobiologically-evolved component of survival in several species,” she explains.

Work by Tina McCurdy IL (East Haddam, CT) will be included in the Colored Pencil Society of America’s 19th Annual CPSA International Exhibition, which runs June 29-July 30 at the Charles W. Eisemann Center in Richardson, TX. She also had

Karelle Levy TX (Miami),

work in three shows last winter

the knitwear designer behind

and spring: RANDOM at Paris in

KRELwear, discussed her

Plantsville [CT], [un+art] Show

creative process at an Artists in

at ArtSpace Hartford [CT], and

Action! event in March. Presented

Tina’s Art at 70 Main Coffeehouse

in Fort Lauderdale by Girls’ Club,

Gallery in East Hampton, CT.

the series introduces local artists to the public through informal talks and presentations. Karelle has also participated recently in a pecha kucha event at the Bass Museum and a fashion presentation at the Mondrian Hotel, opened a temporary

Minh Reza 96 IL + Ali Reza BArch 96 Big sister Ara Reza (3) joined her parents in welcoming a new baby girl, Minaal Reza, into the family on October 12, 2010. The Rezas are having fun together in Walnut Creek, CA.

spring/summer 2011

In March Anna Schuleit PT

blog apartmenttherapy.com. The

presented a visiting artist lecture

couple and their toddler daughter

at Brown University titled Sites

Gere live in Providence’s

of Memory/Memory without

Monohasset Mill complex.

Site: Painting, Public Art, and Mild Acts of Trespassing. Anna was interviewed by the

Several RISD alumni were recipients of this year’s Rhode

Spark on Marfa Texas Public

Island State Council on the Arts

is available at marfaspark.com.

Bear With Me, the first children’s book Max has written and illustrated, was released in May by Penguin. The story follows Owen as he deals with major household change—in the form of Gary, the bear his parents bring home “without even asking!” The book is aimed at the 4-8-year-old demographic and has received positive reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Max works out of his studio in Los Angeles.

2000

songwriter Tift Merritt for The Radio; the 40-minute interview

Max Kornell 02 IL

featured recently on the design

(Dublin, NH; annaschuleit.com)

1999 Joe Bradley PT* (Brooklyn)

showed in two simultaneous exhibitions last winter: Mouth and Foot Painting at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Human Form at CANADA (both in NYC). He was interviewed on Art International Radio by Brooklyn Rail publisher Phong Bui. Joe was in the band Cheeseburger when he was at RISD. James Holland FAV (Brooklyn)

created the motion graphics

Fellowship Awards: Tzu-Ju Chen JM , Victoria E. Crayhon

MFA 97 PH , Ruth F. Dealy 71 PT/ MFA 73 , Joshua J. Enck MFA 03 FD , Lorelei Pepi 87 IL and Daniel Sousa 94 IL (all are RI

residents). The fellowship winners’ artwork was exhibited in February at the Artists Cooperative Gallery of Westerly, RI. Jewelry by Lara Kurtzman PT (NYC) was on view in the winter group show HONEY at Liloveve Gallery in Brooklyn (see also page 11).

1998

title for the Ford Foundation’s

2001

Wired for Change conference,

10th Reunion

Stephanie Diamond PR

held in New York City in

October 14 – 16, 2011

(NYC) collaborated with Adia Millett on You Are Here, an interactive project that opened in January at Cabinet Magazine in Brooklyn and MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA.

February.

Claire Bigbie ID and Jay

The converted mill living space

Shapiro welcomed a son,

that McKenzie and Joel Taplin

Nicko Rhodes Shapiro, on

ID outfitted with salvaged, thrift

December 4, 2010. The family

and handmade furnishings was

lives in San Francisco.

Ben Blatt IL (Brooklyn) showed

Andrew Kennedy 02 IL

watercolor paintings last March

Veteran of the Bulge (oil on canvas, 72 x 44") was included in Emerging Artists 2011, on view in April at the Limner Gallery in Hudson, NY. Andrew is based in Montclair, NJ.

in Hotbox Devolution, a solo

Nancy Wells 03 AP Last fall Nancy (nancywells.com) presented a new collection of women’s contemporary garments—her first in four years—including highly detailed, feminine interpretations of classic women’s designs, suitable for office, evening and weekend wear. She launched her eponymous line in 2003, and in addition to her design work and fashion journalism for Examiner, Plaztikmag and Smashing Darling, she is currently working toward a certificate in Creative Entrepreneur Ownership at Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC. In February Nancy was filmed for a TV pilot as a fashion expert and style correspondent. Editor’s note: Apologies for the inaccuracies about Nancy’s career presented in the Fall 2010 issue of RISD XYZ.

show at Half Gallery in NYC. Last winter Jonah Koppel PT (Long Island City, NY) showed three large-scale paintings on canvas at the new location of Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York City. Towards a New Impending Idiot Utopia was his third solo show with the gallery. Margaret Wuller FAV (Los

Angeles) and Rachel Tiep-Daniel, co-workers at Dreamworks Animation, have started a 501c3 nonprofit organization called The Picture Book Project Foundation. Their mission is to “create an avenue for animators and illustrators to help and inspire children in need,” and they recently organized a charity

RISDXYZ

Disney, AOL, Digital Domain and others for an eBay auction on March 12. Proceeds from the auction will pay for boarding and education costs for 13 orphaned children in Ho, Ghana. For more information and to support the project, visit picturebookproject.com. In addition to managing the foundation, Margaret is a visual development artist at Dreamworks Animation, where she recently worked on the film How To Train Your Dragon. Mint Condition Homes, the

art auction to benefit orphaned

urban redevelopment company

kids in Ghana. Art Blocks for

operated by Mila Zelkha BArch

Ghana collected 200 original

(Palo Alto, CA), was named Build

works by artists and illustrators

It Green’s 2010 Green Building

from Dreamworks Animation,

Champion, in recognition of its

Pixar, Blue Sky, ILM, Sony,

efforts to transform residential

real estate development in Oakland, CA. Build It Green is a nonprofit whose mission is to promote energy- and resource-

2003 Nina Freudenberger BArch

(NYC) was named one of 20 up-and-coming designers to

efficient homes in California.

watch (dubbed the “new tradi-

2002

tionals”) by Traditional Home

Louise Lemieux Bérubé FS

focus of the first issue of trad

(Quebec) exhibited jacquard textile work last fall in Jacquard

magazine. The hot list was the home, the magazine’s digital spin-off, which launched in May.

Tiffany Pollack 03 PT Tobacco Flowers (colored ink on silk, 50 x 72") was among the paintings in Tiffany Pollack: Room, a winter solo show at Gasser/Grunert gallery in NYC. The exhibition featured more than a dozen silk paintings shown alongside her first largescale dyed silk installation. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

2X2/Montreal-Tokyo, a show at the Embassy of Canada in Tokyo.

In March John C. Gonzalez IL (Boston; johncgonzalez.com)

answered with the production

Jason Herron GD submitted

showed his MFA thesis

of 52 oil paintings, which contrast

this upbeat message: “For the

exhibition for the School of the

the anonymity of the individuals

past eight years, I have been

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

depicted within them against

an art director in the movie

at Lufthansa Studios. His work

the Western construction

advertising field in Los Angeles.

consisted of a collection of

of an aesthetic concerned with

I am currently at a company

paintings purchased from an

hyper-individuality that places

called Ignition and have designed

oil painting manufacturing

value on individual autonomy.”

movie and TV posters for The

company in Dafen, China. The

Pacific, Friday the 13th and Red

curatorial statement accompa-

Ridinghood, and I received a Key Art Award for my design for the

nying the show explains: “Assuming the various roles

Bjorn Iooss PH (see page 10)

2004

Anthony Dihle GD (Washing-

michaelneff.com) and Brad

a cover illustration, title and

Ewing MFA PR (Woodbury, CT)

masthead redesign for the “Sex,

exhibited together in Light Leaks,

Drugs, and Rock n Roll” issue

a show held in February and

of Barrelhouse magazine. His

March at Joe Bar in Seattle.

work was included in FLURRY,

Michael exhibited photographs

a holiday 2010 show at Pleasant

and sculpture, Brad showed

Plains Workshop in Washington,

screenprints and letterpress

DC, where he lives. Additionally,

Step Brothers in-theater standee.

of client, artist, collector, and

Noah Breuer PR (Brooklyn)

I am grateful that I’m in a field

curator, he presents paintings

created the cover artwork for

that hasn’t been affected by the

made in response to his request

the newly released book The

Plains on February 24 at GMU’s

he writes: “I gave a talk on design/ printmaking/Fire Studio/Pleasant

economy. But it didn’t come

that each artisan hand-paint

Internet of Elsewhere: The

Fairfax Campus. I showed many,

without hard work. This industry

a portrait of him or herself.

Emergent Effects of a Wired

many slides detailing my design-

is extremely fast-paced and my

This self-reflective task was

World by Cyrus Farivar.

print process, and talked some

graphic design skills grow daily.

about opening a bricks-n-mortar

I try and give back to RISD as

work/show/sell space. I also

much as possible by volunteering as a portfolio reviewer at the National Portfolio Day here in Southern California for the last four years. Our RISD community here in LA is growing and the camaraderie between alums is life-changing. RISD truly has a worldwide family.”

Jessica Hess 03 IL Jessica (San Francisco) is collaborating with Berkeley-based sculptor Christa Assad on a project titled Street Wise, which features Jessica’s paintings on Christa’s porcelain objects. Their work is on view through July 23 in Pursuit of Porcelain at Ferrin Gallery in Pittsfield, MA, and has also been exhibited recently at SOFA New York (April) and ArtMRKT in San Francisco (May). Jessica showed work last winter in Vivid Summit, a group show at Pandemic Gallery in Brooklyn, and It’s a Strange World at Brick Bottom Gallery in Somerville, MA.

Michael Neff PH (Brooklyn;

ton, DC; ant-hive.com) created

hosted an art/printmaking workshop at the [pop-up shop] Mt. Pleasant Temporium open to second graders only. I’m also on board with the Temporium as a sponsor and vendor. Stemming from the Temporium workshop, a big new group show at our little

prints, and the two collaborated on a letterpress and inkjet edition that was available as a take-home for visitors. Michael and his work have been featured lately on Craft + Creative, a series produced by Advertising Week Social Club; the GOOD magazine website; Urban Omnibus and This Blog Rules.

2005 “Aloha from Hawaii!” writes Jamie Allen IL (jamierallen.

com), who left New Jersey last June for the tropical islands. In

space on Georgia Ave, WE ARE

April he took part in a benefit

MONSTERS, opened in May.

for local artists and the Contem-

Look for our work in Reinventing Screenprinting (Rotovision UK) out this spring.”

porary Art Museum in Honolulu, “which is going through some drastic changes and economic hardships. Mahalo!”

Elizabeth Hostetler FAV (Los

Angeles) sent in two updates: on

Work by Jenny Bradley JM

the professional front, she is a

(High Falls, NY) is on view

producer on the Iron Chef America

through June 25 in Jewelers of

series on the Food Network. And

the Hudson Valley at The Forbes

on the personal side, she and

Galleries in Manhattan.

Kory Lanphear will be married on September 24, 2011.

Christina Rodriguez 03 IL Christina (christinarodriguez .com) created the illustrations for My Mom’s Deployment, a new children’s book written by Julie LaBelle. The activity book is geared towards children of parents deployed in the military and is a companion to My Dad’s Deployment (2009).

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

spring/summer 2011

2005 continued Hillary G. Broder FAV wrote

in to let us know that her art class at JFK High School in Bellmore, NY was chosen “to design and construct a 25' wide x 10' high collage depicting the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. The project was done in conjunction with Adelphi University and will be shown at Cooper Union’s Great Hall in recognition of the centennial of the disaster that inspired many changes in worker’s rights in the 20th century.” She also participated in a panel discussion held in March at Cooper Union about how art can be used to instruct students in other disciplines. As the owner of Spirare Surfboards (spiraresurfboards.com), Kevin Cunningham BArch

(Providence) is undertaking a new project to “use reclaimed debris and trash in production on functional fine art surfboards,” he explains. “The beaches we

award for web design. The

IL , was published last spring by

open a new natural food store

all love to visit are being plagued

founders have been getting a lot

Houghton-Mifflin. Alison works

and café on Westminster Street

with trash: trash that washes up

of positive press on their startup,

out of her studio in Providence.

in downtown Providence. The

onto the shores from the massive

including several recent profiles

drifts of debris in the ocean.”

in Forbes (11.18.10 and 4.5.11).

He plans to use that trash to build surfboards for exhibition

Regina Mamou PH (Chicago)

2006

initiative was started in 2009 “by a group of artists, farmers,

Last winter, as an artist-in-

and generally resourceful folks

residence at the Fairmont Dallas

who wanted to be more in touch with the earth and our sources

and sale around the country;

co-curated Remember Then:

[TX] Hotel, Sean Springer SC

a Kickstarter campaign is

An Exhibition on the Photography

(Dallas; springerdesignstudio.

of sustenance here in the city

underway to support the project.

of Memory, held in the spring

com) worked on two lines

and bring neglected spaces

AirBnB, the web-based budget travel service founded by Joe Gebbia ID and Brian Chesky

Jennifer Chachenian 06 TX Jennifer and her husband Christopher welcomed twin girls, Jewel Simone and Pearl Simone, on October 13, 2010. The family lives in Houston, TX and Jennifer already has them pegged as “future RISD graduates.”

at the Center for Government

of furniture and showed work

to life through art and food

and International Studies at

at the hotel’s Ross Akard

gardens,” Andrea explains. They

2008

Harvard University.

Gallery; at the conclusion of the

plan to open the food store as

A graphic and web design

residency he presented a piece

a worker-owned co-op in June,

consultant by day, Alex Blue ID

and have a Kickstarter campaign

(Seattle) recently began

04 ID (both San Francisco), has

Sunday Love, the second

been nominated for a Crunchie

children’s book by Alison Paul

for the hotel’s permanent collection. Sean crafts furniture,

going to support the build-out.

producing and selling handmade

home accessories and sculptures

Jessica Pollock 07 IL is

kitchen knives under the

from salvaged wood, creating

creating screen-printed promo-

company name Blue Knives

functional pieces from landfill-

tional posters to give the store

(blue-knives.com). He makes

bound materials.

a graphic boost, too.

each knife himself from Damascus or carbon steel—a

The Fertile Underground (fertileunderground.com)— an urban agriculture and art initiative spearheaded by several alumni, including Andrea Starr BArch and Nina Maxwell PR —won the bid to

Lisa Petty 11 IL Lisa recently completed a commission to illustrate Matilda & Maxwell’s Good Night, a picture book for kids designed to accompany Good Night, an advice book that’s part of the new GoodParentGoodChild book series.

RISDXYZ

2007 Megha Khandelwal GD and

Ajit Gupta were married earlier this year, with a ceremony in India and a wedding on April 15 in NYC, where they live.

process that takes more than 10 hours, most of it at a belt grinder. He reports that “starting a business in this economic climate has been a tough but rewarding challenge. I appreciate all of the skills that I picked up

Celeste Rapone IL (Wayne,

at RISD and I use them every day

NJ) exhibited new work in April

to create my knives.”

in Costume Required, a solo show at SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery.

Jemima Kirke PT (NYC)

Jay Zehngebot PR showed

Furniture, a 2010 indie film

new prints in Our Sentry, a solo

written and directed by her high

show held in March at R.K.

school friend Lena Dunham.

made her acting debut in Tiny

Projects in Providence, the city

She was interviewed by Esquire

where he lives.

about her budding acting

career and the film, which won

Will Harris 10 ID

the grand prize at the SXSW

Building on a project he started in the RISD course Product Design and Development, Will has been working at Design that Matters in Cambridge, MA on a low-cost device to treat newborn jaundice in Vietnam, built using locally available materials. Design that Matters has been developing the Firefly design concept he and Alicia Lew 11 ID initiated as students and Will recently helped field-test the system in Vietnam. “It’s a very exciting project,” he says. “It demonstrates the thoughtfulness of the RISD education and the amazing opportunities afforded to RISD alumni even in this difficult job market.”

film festival. In May SHOOT magazine named Hayley Morris FAV (Brooklyn,

NY) to its New York Directors Showcase, selecting her as one of the top 32 best new directors in the world. She was also invited to be one of six panelists to present during a screening of the directors’ films. Hayley’s music video for Joker’s Daughter is also featured in Papercraft 2, a new book about paper art.

was held in March at the Starving

work for Pentagram, Apple, Inc.,

Artist in Keene, NH. She’ll be

and The New York Times, among

illustrating next year’s issue as

other clients.

Sophy Tuttle IL (Jamaica Plain,

well (and she got the job through

MA; sophytuttle.com) had a solo

RISD’s ArtWorks job board).

show in conjunction with the release of Antioch University’s

New York-based designer

Whole Terrain magazine,

Jessica Walsh GD was selected

“Significance of Scale” issue

as a 2011 NVA (New Visual

(no. 17), for which she did all the

Artist) winner by Print magazine,

illustrations. The exhibition

based on the strength of her

As the maker of Bound Again Books, Angela Wehrle FD (Providence; angelawehrle.com) turns old books into new blank journals and sketchbooks using the Coptic stitch. She sells her creations on Etsy and was interviewed in February on bookbindingteam.com.

Lila Ash 11 PT Lila (lilaash.com) recently designed the logo and branding for the 2011 Valentines Day Luncheon at the Plaza Hotel hosted by Rush Philanthropic, a nonprofit group spearheaded by Russell, Joseph ‘Rev Run’ and Danny Simmons. The event, called Rush HeARTS Education, raised funds to provide public school students with arts education and emerging artists with exhibition opportunities.

2009 Photography by Tom Prado PH (NYC) was on view in March and April at Raandesk Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition Optical: Staged featured work by the five finalists in the gallery’s annual international competition; Tom was awarded second place. He also presented Construct. Repeat. at Salon Ciel in NYC, also in March.

2010 Staci James CEC and Jason

Korske were married at the First Congregational Church in Falmouth, MA on July 31, 2010. As a user experience designer at Google, Willem VanLancker

Project, a museum “street view” feature that allows computer users to roam the halls of museums around the world and

GD (willemvanlancker.com)

inspect artworks up close. The

contributed to the Google Art

application launched in February.

2011 Rebecca Manson CR (see

page 28) Evan Murphy FD , founder

of the RISD Cycling Team, managed to make competitive cycling RISD’s first varsity-level sport this year. “We’re the only art school in the whole nation

Send us your XYZ info!

Tell us what you’re up to and we’ll share your news with the RISD community.

Here are some of the ways you can contribute to your magazine:

upcoming deadlines:

1/ submit updates (professional and personal) to class notes

September 1 for Fall 2011 (due out in October)

2/ comment on the content of each issue

February 15 for Spring 2012 (due out in April)

3/ submit exhibition information for current + upcoming shows

To submit information via post, write to:

email risdxyz@risd.edu

RISD XYZ, Two College Street, Providence, RI 02903 For address updates/mailing issues: ksouza@risd.edu

competing in cycling as an organized team,” he says. “It’s kind of a big deal.” Evan also qualified for the Collegiate Road Nationals, competing in Madison, WI in early May. After graduation he plans to work with artist Tom Sachs building and maintaining “quasi art bikes” for Sachs’s 2012 Armoury show. He’ll also continue racing in NYC and already has a team to support him there.

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

spring/summer 2011

2011 continued RISD swept the Animation category at the Society of Illustrators 2011 competition with graduating seniors Caleb Wood FAV winning a $750 First

Place prize for his film Little Wild, Ted Wiggin FAV placing second for Terra Firma and Kenneth Onulak FAV winning

third prize for Paper Dreams. Caleb also won first prize in the 2010 competition.

2012 Work by Rose Dickson PH (rosedickson.com) was selected

entries. She also took second

One weekend in January Max

for publication in Aesthetica

place in the Workbook Next

Frieder PT brought his

Magazine’s Creative Works

Generation Competition for two

Foundstrument Soundstrument—

Annual 2011. She was one of 30

Photoshop montages inspired

an interactive percussive

artists selected from 4,000

by family photographs.

sculpture created from found materials and reclaimed junk—to crowds of curious kids

Nathalie Jolivert BArch 12

at the Providence Children’s

Nathalie is thrilled to have won the 2011 Gensler Diversity Scholarship, which will cover the cost of her fifth year at RISD and offer her a full-time internship at the San Francisco-based architectural and design firm this summer. The scholarship recognizes emerging talent among African-American college students and was awarded based on the quality of the work she submitted—a project to create sustainable buildings for an indigenous group in Colombia. “Not only does this scholarship bring financial relief to my family,” the Haitian students notes, “but with the mentorship and internship programs provided, my education will surely be enriched.”

Museum. As children explored the sounds, from “bops of plastic pipes to chimes of cast glass to the bing of reverberating metal,” he also led a collaborative mural-making activity. The Fabled dress, a garment that Ryan Novelline IL constructed

out of recycled children’s Golden Books, was featured on the

Armando Veve 11 IL + Ivy Tai 11 IL Several Illustration majors won cash prizes in the 2011 Society of Illustrators competition in NYC. Armando won $2500 for Mysteries that Howl and Hunt (above left) and Ivy won $1000 for Absolute Ivy (above). In addition, JooHee Yoon 11 IL (see also page 29) won $5000—one of two top prizes—for her mixed media piece Elephant, while Dadu Shin 10 IL earned $2500 for his piece Lost Dog and Kevin Laughlin 11 IL won $1000 for Minotaur. Works by Ole Tillman 11 IL, Marina Loeb 11 IL and Kyle Norris 11 IL were also selected for inclusion in the SOI NY exhibition.

Today show on April 1.

2013

Egle Paulauskaite AP

earned an honorable mention in the RateYourStudyAbroad .com Fall 2010 Travel Writing & Photography Contest for the essay Inside Out—about interning at a sewing atelier

deaths Jacqueline Yvonne Horning William Brandau Landgraf

50 TX of Beaverton, OR on

William C. Perry 59 ID*

DIP 33 MD of Dublin, OH on

November 11, 2010.

of North Smithfield, RI on December 23, 2010.

March 23, 2011. Esther Lois (Rosenberg) Nemtzow 42 GD* of Coconut

Creek, FL on December 25, 2010. Catherine Walcot (Rodwell) Hill 43 PT/MAE 64 of New York,

Ralph J. Hartman 51 LA* of Pawtucket, RI on March 16, 2011.

J. Paul Guertin 61 ID of East

Donald A. Jasinski BArch 51

Greenwich, RI on January 29, 2011.

of Waterville Valley, NH on January 5, 2011.

NY on December 23, 2010.

Thomas Sanford Bockoven,

Richard Ballou 49 PT of Rhode

2010.

Island on March 21, 2011. Robert Edwin Hill 50 AR of

Bristol, RI on December 5, 2007. 58

RISDXYZ

Sr. 53 ID of Hanover, PA on May 1,

E. Michael Horn 54 PT* of Rumson, NJ on November 18, 2010.

Robert E. Leach 61 MD of

in Rome during her RISD EHP experience. Rudy Maxa, host of The Savvy Traveler on NPR and RudyMaxa’s World on PBS, judged this year’s travel essay contest.

Maria Canada AP was selected as the winner of Project Beethoven, a garment design competition that challenged student designers to create eveningwear inspired by Beethoven’s music.

Ronald O. Wilczek 64 SC of Dighton, MA on January 20, 2011. Michael Dinsmore Bigger

Carol J. Pentleton Robinson

68 SC* of Minneapolis, MN on

74 GD of Chepachet, RI on

February 16, 2011.

February 2, 2011.

Patricia (Cseplo) Sloan

Peter V. Grajirena 75 PT* of Mancos, CO on February 18, 2011.

69 IL* of Fort Worth, TX on

October 15, 2010.

Knoxville, TN on December 29, 2010.

of Taos, NM on January 13, 2011.

Jean Blake White 63 PT* of

Eileen Yee 70 IL* of Portland,

Franklin, MA on March 12, 2011.

OR on October 14, 2010.

Charles “Pete” Libby 64 IL* of Alburgh, VT on February 12, 2011.

Donald Janney 72 GD of New York, NY on February 18, 2011.

Richard N. Tipton BArch 69

Robert Seydel MFA 90 PH of Amherst, MA on January 27, 2011. Dennis Charles Theisen

MFA 95 FD of Grand Rapids, MI on April 6, 2011. Justin M. Yuen 06 IL of NYC/

Hong Kong on March 4, 2011.

Commencements Past RISD graduates have historically had a natural knack for celebrating Commencement right, embracing the event for what it is—the exciting culmination of a crazy, wonderful, intensely meaningful period in their lives. While other colleges opt for a stiff interpretation of whatever “pomp and circumstance” suggests to them, RISD prefers to do it differently, whether that means draping a live boa around your neck as the accessory du jour, chatting with a puppet counterpart or processing across the stage buck naked. And in 1990, when hundreds of oldsters were invited back to campus to collect “honorary BFAs” because they graduated in the years before RISD was first allowed to grant bachelor’s degrees, the long wait simply made it that

images courtesy of the RISD Archives

much sweeter to finally receive a degree from RISD.

spring/summer 2011

Graduate Class Notes

Susan Jamison MFA 91 PT Above the Pack (egg tempera on panel, 88x72") is among the recent work featured last year in Into the Forest, a six-month solo exhibition at the Taubman Museum of Art in Virginia. Susan (susanjamison.com) works out of a fun studio in Roanoke, VA.

1965 In April Alan Stecker MFA PT (Barnesville, GA) exhibited digital art in People in the Paint, a solo show at A Novel Experience in Zebulon, GA.

barrel and has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, which wrote: “Van Allsburg’s foray into nonfiction is filled

1975

with the same suspense,

Queen of the Falls, the latest book by Caldecott Medalwinning author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg MFA SC (Providence), was released in April by Houghton Mifflin. It tells the true story of the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a

have thrilled readers of his

Alan Metnick MFA 73 PT This spring Alan showed photos from Poland at Providence College and works on paper at Gallery Z in Providence, where he lives. The prolific artist also creates serigraphs, silkscreen prints and colorful glass works such as this one 166 Valley Street (2001, stained glass, 16 x 28").

surrealism, and menace that fiction.” Chris is best known for his picture books Jumanji and The Polar Express, both of which were made into movies.

Shahzia Sikander MFA 95 PT/PR

MFA PT (NYC), was included in

Shahzia Sikander: The exploding company man and other abstractions continues through June 25 at the San Francisco Art Institute. This still is from her HD video animation The Last Post, which is among several animated drawings and live performances included in the exhibition.

Artillery magazine’s video screen-

1979

1983

wright MFA SC (Dorchester, MA)

NH. He also participated in

exhibited in Love, a solo show

a show at Thorne-Sagendorph

of sculptural work at Boston

Art Gallery in Keene, NH, where

Sculptors Gallery.

he was awarded third place

exhibition at the Upstairs

for service to the field at the

in the 2011 Biennial Regional

Artspace in her hometown

annual conference of the

Juror’s Choice Competition.

of Tryon, NC.

National Council on Edu-

In February and March Kristin

1980

(NCECA), held in Tampa at the

1978 Ronnie McClure MFA PH

(Canterbury, NH) showed work in a variety of media in

Occhino MAE (Attleboro, MA)

Ambiguities and Lucidities,

exhibited paintings in a four-

a spring exhibition at the Rivier

person show at the Woodshed

College Art Gallery in Nashua,

Gallery in Franklin, MA.

In February Linda Hudgins

Linda Arbuckle MFA CR was

MAE showed work in an

presented with an honors award

cation for the Ceramic Arts

In May Sharon Lynne Safran

end of March. Spirit of Ceramics,

56 PT*/MAE (Annandale, VA)

an artist DVD series produced

exhibited A Colorful Life: A

by NCECA, also focused on the

Retrospective of Sharon L. Safran’s

Florida-based ceramist and was

Multidimensional Art at the JCC

released at the conference. Linda

of Northern Virginia in Fairfax.

contributed to 21st Century

The career-spanning show

Ceramics: The First Decade (2011,

included all types of work—

Lark Books) and had work

1982 Brad Buckley MFA SC has been

promoted to professor of Contemporary Art and Culture at Sydney College of the Arts at the University of Sydney in Australia, where he is also the associate

RISDXYZ

call for entries, was screened at The Standard’s Purple Lounge in West Hollywood, CA.

Last winter Joseph Wheel-

from watercolors to scarves.

ing in April. The selection of eight films, culled from a national

published in Majolica (2011, A&C Black) by Daphne Carnegy. Anne Karpis MAT has retired

from Fulton County Schools in Atlanta, GA and is now working full-time as an artist in Nicosia, Cyprus.

dean of Research.

1984

My Atlas: Lindsay/A Report to

teaching at RISD as an adjunct

an Academy, a short film by

instructor for several years and

Anne Sherwood Pundyk

is also a professor of architec-

John Hendrix MAT has been

Dale Chihuly MFA 68 CR

for Helsinki—designing smart

Through the Looking Glass, a major retrospective of Dale’s glass work, is on view through August 7 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The selection includes chandeliers, a 60' Mille Fiori, a Persian Ceiling and several other installations.

demand management solutions to enable people to save energy. The project is called Low2No and is a joint project with Arup engineering, Sauerbruch Hutton architects and us. We will design and build by 2012 a district in Helsinki Harbor to the highest energy-efficient demands.

part by grants from the RISD Professional Development Fund.

1991 Daphne Minkoff MFA 91 PT

tural history at the University of

showed new work in Transfor-

Lincoln in the UK. He recently

mations, a March-April show at

published three books: Renais-

the Seattle Art Museum’s SAM

sance Theories of Vision (Ashgate

Gallery. The exhibition in her

Publishing); Architecture as

home city focused on artists who

Cosmology: Lincoln Cathedral

“recycle, re-purpose and reuse

and English Gothic Architecture

discarded materials to create

(Peter Lang); and Robert Grosse-

their artwork.” Daphne’s work

teste: Philosophy of Intellect and Vision (Academia Verlag). The books were supported in

included collage and encaustic on board.

Our task is very specific: using design to support behavioral change.” He and his wife Marguerite Kahrl MFA 95 SC

live in Torino, Italy.

1996 Work by Milissa Galazi MA is on view in June in two twoperson shows: at The Mill Gallery in Pawtucket, RI and Ernden Fine

Kana (kanatanaka.com) recently completed Bubbles to the Sky (2011, glass and steel wire, 8x7x8'), a public art project for the Bay Farm Island Branch Library in Alameda, CA. Commissioned by the city, the suspended sculpture is composed of thousands of handmade glass beads, with blue tinted beads forming a mother dolphin and a baby dolphin, and clear beads representing bubbles in the ocean.

Art gallery in Provincetown, MA.

1997 Architects Peter Gill Case MArch and Joe Haskett MArch 02

Matt Monk MFA GD , a Graphic

(both of Providence)—creators

Design professor at RISD,

of The Box Office, a RI office com-

exhibited work in Abstractions,

plex built of recycled shipping

Christine Vaillancourt MAE 75

a recent two-person show at

containers—have teamed up with

Providence’s Lenore Gray Gallery.

RISD and Brown to investigate

(christinevaillancourt.com) is an art teacher in the Newtown, MA public schools, and is represented as a painter by galleries in San Francisco, Georgia and Toronto. She and her husband live in a 47-unit artist building in the Fort Point neighborhood of Boston.

1993

the potential for building sustainable and energy-efficient homes

Jan-Christoph Zoels MID is

and other buildings from similarly

senior partner and design director

repurposed containers. The

at Experientia, an international

partnership has been awarded

experience design consultancy.

a $150,000 federal grant from

He writes: “Currently we are

the Small Business Administra-

working on a beautiful project

Kana Tanaka MFA 99 GL

tion; RISD students in the spring course Re-BOX developed design plans and researched viability. Peter and Joe also just launched the new startup UbiGO to bring their concepts to market.

2001 El Velador (The Night Watchman), a new film by Natalia Almada MFA PH (Brooklyn;

altamurafilms.com), premiered at the March New Directors/New Films festival in New York City. The film, which looks at the war on drugs in Mexico from the point of view of a cemetery guard, screened at Lincoln Center and MoMA.

2002

Ren (going on 5) is adjusting to his new baby sister. Yuki is still designing products (modern goods.com) and making art in sunny Santa Fe. Building on his inspiring personal experiences in Ghana, Jonathan Thurston MFA SC

(Edgewater, NJ) founded the International School of Art, Business and Technology (isabt. org), a nonprofit focused on bringing educational resources

Yuki Murata MID and her

to impoverished communities in

husband Chris Long welcomed

West Africa. He has succeeded in

their second child on October 28,

supplying schools with computers

2010. Tei Nozomi Murata-Long

and thousands of books, and

is named after her paternal

has developed a program to

great-grandmother and maternal

allow schoolchildren to create

grandmother. Tei’s older brother

their own published books.

GAME, a two-person show featuring the work of Gayle Mandle MFA PT/PR and her

David W. Radabaugh MFA 01 GD

daughter Julia, was on view

Last summer David (Denton, TX) began working as design director of American Way, American Airlines’ twice-monthly inflight magazine. In January he and his team launched a cover-to-cover redesign of the publication; the first issue featured musician John Legend, Frank Gehry’s New World Symphony building in Miami and a look at the inner workings of Google Labs.

from April 27–May 20 at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery in NYC. Gayle is living in Doha, Qatar with her husband Roger, who served as RISD’s president from 1993–2008.

1998 Since 2006 Kristin Surette Undhjem MLA has operated

gardenstore, an artful landscape and gardening shop in Telluride, CO. She plans to launch an e-commerce website later this year. She also continues to run KSLA, her landscape architecture firm, and do floral design for weddings.

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

spring/summer 2011

Mark Pack MFA PT showed

work in New Wilmington Painting, a winter exhibition sponsored by the New Wilmington [DE] Art Association.

2005 Jesse Burke MFA PH (Rumford,

RI) had a winter solo show titled Low at the Perth [Australia] Centre for Photography, and has had work in several group shows over the past few months: The Truth is Not in the Mirror: Photography and a Constructed Image

Gabriela Salazar MFA 09 PT

at the Haggerty Museum of

Gabriela’s installation Robert Moses, He Knows Us was on view from December to February at flatbreadaffair in Brooklyn. She also showed work in 2010 Studio LLC, a group exhibition held last winter at the Jamaica [NY] Center for Art & Learning, and had a piece published in the “Black and White” issue of Color & Color magazine.

Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee; the RISD Faculty Biennial; Postcards From The Edge, a visual AIDS benefit hosted by CRG Gallery in New York City; and Let’s Be Friends at Residence

glass and glass-related sculpture”

Hye Yeon Nam MFA DM

Gallery in Long Beach, CA.

was selected from more than

(Atlanta, GA) had a show titled

Last winter Greg Hopkins MFA

Heather McPherson MFA 08 PT Washingtons was among the new paintings and drawings Heather exhibited in Success Story, a solo show at Providence College’s Reilly Gallery. She is an assistant professor of painting at the college, but commutes from Brooklyn.

the best in the arts, cinema

PT (Brooklyn; greghopkinspaint

and new media to highlights

ings.com) had a solo show of

from sports and video gaming.

acrylics on canvas and linen at

2004 In March Katie Commodore MFA PR (Brooklyn; kcommodore.

com) and Kelly McCallum 01 PH (Toronto, Ontario) showed

work together—Katie’s new drawings and paintings and

2003 Joshua Enck MFA FD , who

Kelly’s sculpture and jewelry work—in London vs. New York,

teaches in RISD’s Foundation

an exhibition at space fiftyfour

Studies and Furniture Design

in Shoreditch, London.

programs, has won a 2011 Fellowship in Three-Dimensional Art from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. One of his new metal sculptures was included in the 2011 RISCA Fellowship Exhibition and he had his first solo museum show, entitled The Gesture Contained: Recent Sculptures by Joshua Enck, earlier this year at the Museum of Art at the University of Maine in Bangor. The show included nine sculptures in wood and metal, as well as process sketches. Jecca MFA PH (NYC) was

Last September Regin Igloria MFA PT (Lake Forest, IL)

opened North Branch Projects (northbranchprojects.com), an arts project space in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood “that serves as a community bookbinding facility,” he explains. “The space provides an outlet for exploring the creative process in a neighborhood where few resources for the arts exist. We are working on a neighborhood archive, consisting of sketchbooks hand-bound by visitors and made available to the public, to record stories, drawings, ideas,

involved in the New York

thoughts, etc., along with other

Foundation for the Arts’ recent

projects which utilize the book

participation in The Big Screen

format…. Our aim is to encourage

Project (bigscreenproject.org),

dialogue between artists, non-

a jumbotron HD format LED

artists, and everyone in between

screen in a midtown Manhattan

in an inclusive setting, making

plaza that showed an eclectic

it possible for ideas to have

range of cultural content—from

a positive impact in society.”

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Sloan Fine Art in New York City. His work was also featured in New American Paintings, no. 92. Li Li Zhao MFA CR (Stamford,

CT) launched a handbag line last fall—check it out at zhaodesigns.com.

2006 Helen Lee MFA GL (Fremont,

CA) worked with Alexander

200 submissions from artists

Singularis last winter at Buffalo

in 13 countries; the organizers

[NY] Arts Studio.

funded the effort through a successful Kickstarter campaign.

2007

They explain their organizing

Christopher Robbins MFA DM ,

principle: “This show features

John Baca MFA DM and Chris

artists whose works inhabit so

Mendoza MFA DM (Little Neck,

many places simultaneously

NY; Nevada City, CA; and Pro-

that they might not fit into any

vidence, RI) collaborated on next

of them. {SUPERPOSITION}

time almost, a March installation

consists of works that directly

in a bank of windows in midtown

address this condition of being

Manhattan. The piece presented

in multiple places at once,

a network of conveyor belts

as well as projects produced by

made of fake grass that dropped

artists who inhabit the fringes

hollow plaster houses on the

of genres.”

floor, causing them to smash.

Rosenberg GL and Matthew Szosz 07 GL to organize

{SUPERPOSITION} (hyperopia projects.com), a group show on view in June at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle. The juried exhibition of “sculptural

Sarah Gross MFA 09 CR Sarah’s piece The Street Where You Live 2 (2011, recycled clay) was among the works on view in Arabesques, her recent show with Sanam Emami at the Belger Art Center in Kansas City, MO. “I seek to activate space by building screens,” Sarah explains. “My exploration is rooted in the institution of veiling in Islamic society.”

are paid 5¢ per drawing, which are automatically assembled into a large computer-generated grid,” explains an article posted on wonderhowto.com. Bowie Zunino MFA SC and Jeff Barnett-Winsby MFA 06 PH

(jeffbarnettwinsby.com) will be married on June 18, 2011 in Wassaic, NY. The pair are codirectors of The Wassaic Project (wassaicproject.org), an arts organization in upstate New York dedicated to supporting emerging artists. Bowie founded the project as a free summer festival while she was at RISD, and it has since expanded to include a residency program in addition

Ben Blanc MFA 04 FD

depictions of our built environ-

Ben, a critic in RISD’s Furniture Design Department, has a solo exhibition of sculpture and design work at Louis Boston from April to August. Among the steel tube structures on view is elephant, a full-scale sculpture of a female African elephant.

ment and its relation to the

2008 Moon Jung Jang MFA GD had

a solo exhibition titled A Minor

2009

is an arc of a circle measuring

far right: photo by Kristina DiTullo 96 IL

Chace Center’s Gelman Gallery. Work by 20 graduate and undergraduate students was included in the show.

2012 Andrew LeClair MFA GD was

among a handful of other RISD MFA alums who worked with RISD Graphic Design Critic John Caserta (thedesignoffice.org)

to create Flatfile, a website template for visual artwork. John notes that the platform is “perfect for a portfolio, for an exhibit catalog, to announce shows and press, and more. The

RISD alums at our festival, and

look, feel and functionality of Flatfile is inspired by the

used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

continue to have great RISD

labor market to “guide workers

alums as artists in residence,”

physical flat file cabinet…. There

through the execution of simple

she says. And: “Jeff and I also

are infinite ways to put it to use.”

LeWitt forgeries. The workers

run a bar in Wassaic!!!”

Visit flatfile.ws for a tour.

Reconfiguring the Ordinary, a brooch piece by Yong Joo Kim MFA JM (Providence), has

less than or equal to 180°. My

been selected by curator Ursula

recent research focuses on the

Ilse Neuman for the permanent

transformation of a minor arc

collection of the Museum of

or a minor arc sector in visual

Arts and Design in New York City.

communication. I explore the

This highly selective collection

dynamic relationship of colors,

houses nearly 500 art works

angles, orientations, scales

documenting the development

relating to metaphors and nar-

of jewelry art, ranging from the

rative principles. This exhibition

pioneering work of early American

consists of books and research

Studio jewelers to the ground-

posters, visualizing the meaningful

breaking and nontraditional

metamorphosis of a variety

methods of contemporary artists.

of minor arcs.”

exhibition held at RISD in the

is where these two meet in dyna-

County Public Library in her

“Mathematically, a minor arc

Phoebe Stubbs MFA GL

curated Break It Down, a winter

construction; and the third world mic reaction and adaptation.”

describes the theme of the show:

natural landscape.” He has also

Mimi Cabell MFA PH and

world is one of Western Imperial

Arc last fall at Athens-Clarke hometown of Athens, GA. She

to the festival (August 5–7). “We have shown a number of

2011

Eli Levenstein MFA FD (NYC)

Courtney Leonard MFA CR

and his work were featured

(Southampton, NY) exhibited

in the Korean interior design

mixed-media pieces involving

magazine BOB (2.2011). A new

video, audio and tangible objects

area rug he created was on

in Cur.rent Car.ri.er, a winter

display in February at

show at the Julian Akus Gallery

Meulensteen gallery in NYC.

at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic. She

Recent projects by Clement

describes the thematic basis

Valla MFA DM (Brooklyn)

of her work: “As an Indigenous

include Postcards from Google

woman [a member of the

Earth, Bridges, a “conservation”

Shinnecock nation], I navigate

project of screenshots from

three worlds: the first world is

Google Earth to preserve the

that of indigeneity; the second

software’s “strange, surrealist

To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

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spring/summer 2011

Sarah Haskell 76 TX

RISDXYZ

My life always comes back into focus through my artwork. I recently got back from a 5,000-mile trans-Atlantic passage on a 43-foot sailboat and kept

a journal while I was on the voyage. It was a way for me to process the experienceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;through a combination of drawing, writing and collage.

Please submit a page from your own sketchbook (showing anything thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on your mind). Our favorite will appear in the next issue. Questions? Email risdxyz@risd.edu.

How much of the monthly emailed

newsletter (formerly known as eviews, now called XYZmail) do you read? all of it most of it some of it I delete it without opening

If there were more XYZ content

and updates about alumni available online, how likely would you be to go to the website to read it? very likely I might look on occasion not at all likely

Rate XYZ

10 )

Please indicate any actions you

have taken as a result of receiving RISD XYZ:

Now that you’ve seen the first four issues of the new alumni magazine, we’d like to know what you think of it. Please take a few minutes before June 21 to respond to the online version of this same survey at www.risd.edu/xyzsurvey. Or fill out this one and mail it to: RISD XYZ, Two College Street, Providence, RI 02903 before June 21, 2011.

contacted a classmate/friend/ faculty member

recommended RISD to a potential student submitted information for inclusion discussed or shared an article/copy saved an article or issue

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Please rate the quality of RISD XYZ in terms of the

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How often do you refer to RISD XYZ for the

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11 )

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RISD XYZ?

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the broad value of art and design to society

16 )

small groups of alumni who are collaborating on projects

from RISD?

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the impact of creativity on issues such as educational or healthcare reform

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Rhode Island School of Design Two College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA

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october 14 – 16, 2011

alumni reunion + parents’ weekend risd by design 11 connect relax recharge

Return to RISD from Friday, October 14 – Sunday, October 16 for a weekend full of people you want to see, artwork and other great visual stimuli and fun things to do. travel + lodging suggestions: www.risd.edu/rbd more program info: rbd.risd.edu questions? contact claire at: crobinso@risd.edu | 401 454-6379 Illustration by Aaron Meshon 95 IL (www.aaronmeshon.com)