RISD Alumni Magazine Spring 2025

RISD Alumni + Magazine Friends Magazine The Long Game RISD grads on what drives them

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Spring 2025

Season/Season Summer Spring 20XX 2025 2023

Contents Departments 3

On Campus News from our faculty, staff and students

7

For RISD’s Future Advancing RISD’s mission through relationships with alumni, families and friends

12

At the Museum The intersection of art, history and education at the RISD Museum

16

In Process Look inside the studio and lean into work happening now at RISD

Features

18

The Long Game RISD grads with decades of experience share the lessons that stay with them and what keeps them going.

24

Nature, People, Planet RISD teams’ innovative sustainability projects win Terra Carta Design Lab competition top honors.

28

Transformative Gradient Geoff Rockwell 86 PT creates a once-in-a-lifetime, large-scale mural in Mexico.

34

The Sweet Creative Life From custom wedding dresses to homemade ice cream, creating is the cornerstone of life for Angela Muir 08 AP.

37

Noteworthy Class notes and alumni spotlights

64

Studio Visit Join an alum in the space that defines so much, the studio

On the cover:

Bill Kienzel 67 ID, aka Font Quixote. Image by Meg Webster

From the President I love connecting with the RISD community around the world. Any opportunity I have to celebrate them and witness them in their element, whether in the studio or classroom, community or corporation is a treat. So here are some reflections on my encounters with the RISD spirit out in the world.

Last spring I saw...

So many alums represented in Italy! Our students were participating in an exhibition they mounted during Milan Design Week called Objects May Shift, which was a significant moment for them and for RISD. A few hours away in Venice, numerous alums were featured in the 60th Venice Biennale in collateral exhibitions as well as the main Biennale shows in the Arsenale and Giardini. I can still remember the awe I felt encountering Shahzia Sikander’s MFA 95 PT / PR monumental sculpture NOW 2023 greeting visitors in the courtyard of the Palazzo Soranzo van Axel, Walton Ford’s 82 FAV magnificent watercolors made in response to the library collection at Ateneo Veneto di Scienze—his first exhibition in Italy, and Julie Mehretu’s MFA 97 PT / PR show at Palazzo Grassi, which was her largest in Europe to date. I was also proud to see RISD represented by Isabel De Obaldia 79 GD at the Panama pavilion, Liz Collins’ 91 TX / MFA 99 works around the Arsenale and Giardini venues—a precursor to Liz’s upcoming show at the RISD Museum, opening July 19, 2025—and so many others.

In the fall, a bit closer to home...

I was thrilled to celebrate Shellf Life and BIOPOD, the winning teams from this year’s Terra Carta Design Lab competition. We are so proud of all of the finalists and participants and look forward to following the development of their sustainable design projects. I hope you enjoy learning more about the Terra Carta Design Lab and their work in the features section.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine Chief Editorial Team Gillian Kiley Julie Powers Lauren Rebecca Thacker Design Once–Future Office Contributing Writers Jennifer Liese, RISD Center for Arts & Language Kaylee Pugliese, Marketing and Communications Katelyn Silva Simone Solondz, Marketing and Communications Special thanks to the Office of Marketing and Communications Publisher Crystal Williams, President, Rhode Island School of Design Amanda Clark MacMullan, Vice President, Institutional Advancement RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine is published by the division of Institutional Advancement.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine Vol. 3 Issue 1, Spring 2025, Copyright 2025, RISD. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Please visit alumni.risd.edu.form-selection to submit class notes for possible publication.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine is printed on Rolland Enviro, certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Printed by Lane Press in Burlington, Vermont.

Over the winter holidays...

I learned about Oaxaca’s long-standing tradition of textile arts and admired its 16th-century architecture. And, in the new year, I went to India—my first visit to the country—where I met so many RISD alums in Bengalaru and Mumbai who are making work in the studio, teaching art to students, working in startups and creating all kinds of businesses. So many of our India-based alums are using their art and design education in such creative and interesting ways.

Tell me more...

Wherever I am, I’m always surprised at how RISD shows up. What are some of your favorite memories of encountering RISD out in the world? Let me know—please email me at president@risd.edu. I would love to hear from you.

Crystal Williams, RISD President

RISD students presented Objects May Shift during Milan Design Week. Image courtesy of RISD

I’m looking forward to...

Keeping connected to alums! Having completed the research phase on three strategic initiatives—Holistic Student Wellness, Preparedness for Life After RISD and Financial Optimization—I’m looking forward to our next steps, informing the development of our new strategic plan, which we will begin work on soon. We are getting ready to celebrate RISD’s 150th anniversary in 2027. I am especially eager to hear the ideas our alums have as we begin planning programs and activities for this milestone in the meantime.

Hands-on work, in and out of the studio

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine On Campus

Sustainability Design Lab Explores the Uses and Histories of Wood Image by Johanna Barthmaier-Payne 3

From making traditional wooden boats to a deep dive into forestry, RISD’s Sustainability Design Lab is centering the many applications and histories of wood during the 2024–25 academic year.

The lab—which launched in 2023 and promotes low-impact design strategies and inclusive, socially responsible practices—supports two studio-seminar combinations each year. The fall studio, Territories of Wood, was led by Landscape Architecture Department Head Johanna Barthmaier-Payne and Associate Professor of Industrial Design Tom Weis MID 08. The fall seminar, Steering the Craft, was taught by Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Fatema Maswood.

Together, the two courses examine the material culture of wood and its relevance across fields of design, delving deep into the environmental, ecological and sociocultural impacts of its use.

Students analyzed land-use patterns in relation to power dynamics and value systems and learned about wood’s physical properties as they worked together to construct a traditional wooden boat.

“By engaging in a hands-on fabrication process, we’re figuring out conventional and more novel ways to use wood as a sustainable material,” BarthmaierPayne explains. “We’re using locally grown timbers and exploiting their fast regrowth cycles, versatility for recycling and adaptive reuse, thermodynamic properties and distinctive aesthetics.”

Students took an extended field trip to Maine, where they met with an ecologist, viewed traditional Portuguese sardine boats under construction and visited the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center for a look at the future of forestry and wood products. In addition, students visited the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, RI. The museum is the former site of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, which designed and built steam-powered fishing boats, racing yachts and high-speed torpedo boats from 1878 to 1924.

There were more smiles on campus this October— 720 to be exact—as parents, family members and friends gathered for Families Weekend. The annual fall event was an opportunity for families to reconnect with their students and experience the vibrancy of RISD firsthand.

By car, train or international flight, family and friends traveled to campus from across the country and around the globe to reunite with RISD students.

The largest representation was from California, New York and Massachusetts. Other states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida were also wellrepresented, alongside international guests from countries including India, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and Japan.

The weekend was filled with a wide range of activities that allowed families to immerse themselves in the unique and often unexpected world of RISD. In open studio sessions, guests saw the innovation and hard work that define the RISD experience. And, in hands-on workshops, they took part in the intense artistic process for themselves.

One of the highlights was RISD Craft, an outdoor art sale held along Benefit Street, where students and alumni showcased their handmade works.

After browsing and buying, the excitement continued as families visited the RISD Museum, attended informative panel discussions and enjoyed a meal at RISD’s dining hall, the Met. Hosted by the Alumni & Families Relations team, Families Weekend 2024 was defined by an overwhelming sense of community.

Planning is already underway for next year’s Families Weekend, October 10–12, 2025.

Left: Image by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH Right: Image by Julie Powers

RISD received a $50,000 grant from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation’s Frankenthaler Climate Initiative (FCI) to support an assessment of RISD Museum buildings and build an action plan to improve energy efficiency. FCI provides grant funding that helps arts organizations assess, develop and implement plans that reduce environmental impacts and operational costs and promote clean energy generation.

With this funding, RISD will embark on work that advances the college and museum’s shared commitment to sustainability and the practice of integrating environmental considerations into the curriculum while incorporating sustainable principles into facility renovations. The museum, the largest, most robust art collection in the state, is the site of educational programming for RISD students as well as students at colleges, universities and K-12 schools in Rhode Island. The energy assessment and action plan supported by the FCI grant will ensure the longevity and efficiency of the buildings that allow RISD to pursue its educational mission.

On receiving the FCI grant, Provost Touba Ghadessi says, “With the support of the Frankenthaler Foundation, we will align our physical presence with the intellectual and creative drives that frame our education and public engagement.”

Established and endowed by Helen Frankenthaler HD 96 during her lifetime, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation advances the artist’s legacy and inspires a new generation of practitioners through a range of philanthropic, educational and research initiatives.

On Campus

RISD Families Land in Providence

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Placeholder description

Grant Supports Sustainability

4

Students at the Flux Factory in New York City

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine On Campus

Trek NYC Brings the Future into Focus Image by Dallas Pride 5

For rising juniors, seniors and fifth-year students, the question of how to plot out a creative career post-graduation can loom large. Enter Trek, a program that takes RISD students behind the scenes at creative sector jobs while connecting them with alumni working in the arts.

In August 2024, Trek NYC took 15 undergraduate and graduate students to New York City to get an insider’s view of career pathways in the fine arts.

Through the free, donor-funded program, students accessed working studios, artist collectives and nonprofits as well as museums, galleries, arts foundations and curatorial programs. In each space, working artists, designers and art world movers and shakers shared insights about the city’s fine arts ecosystem and how it brings art to life.

When students visited Brooklyn Bridge Park to see the public art installation Before the End

by Huma Bhabha 85 PR, for example, they met with staff from the Urban Arts Project, who explained how the fabrication center and consultancy partnered with Bhabha to produce the monumental bronze sculptures.

Students also met one-on-one with RISD alumni working in different creative careers. Alums reviewed student portfolios, offered tips for preparing to enter professional life and shared personal stories about their own trajectories.

“Students walk out of that experience 10 inches taller,” says, Executive Director of Alumni + Family Relations Dallas Pride. “Alumni feedback is worth its weight in gold.”

Trek NYC was offered through a collaboration between RISD Careers and the Alumni + Family Relations Office. Previous Treks explored the West Coast creative tech sector and game design, film and animation industries in Los Angeles and planning is underway for the next trip to Hudson Valley, NY. All focus on preparing RISD students for post-graduation success.

“I did end up shedding a few tears at the end of the program because of how deeply supported I felt by the community,” participant Tori Hong MFA 25 IL says. “Trek NYC and the RISD network really helped me see that I can have a life as an artist in New York City.”

In June 2024, Jennifer Bissonnette was named the inaugural Houghton P. Metcalf, Jr. (HD 96) Director of the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab. Made possible by a gift from Vera and Stephen Metcalf, the position marked a watershed moment for the Lab, creating a permanent leadership role for the beloved research and teaching resource.

“An endowed directorship like this is transformative for advancing sustainable modes of making at RISD,” says Amanda Clark MacMullan, vice president of Institutional Advancement. “We are so grateful to Stephen Metcalf and his late mother Vera for their visionary generosity. As a trustee emeritus, member of the Museum Board of Governors and leading supporter of institutional priorities, Stephen knows RISD inside and out, and this gift makes one of our centers of excellence even stronger.”

Since joining the Nature Lab in 2014, Bissonnette has leveraged its natural history specimens, advanced imaging equipment and other resources to develop novel programming and partnerships.

Now the 88-year-old Lab is a hub for transdisciplinary research on biomimicry, ecosystems research, sustainable design and much more.

“In my opinion, the division between science and art is an artificial one,” Bissonnette says, noting that art is a more powerful motivator than data.

“If we can educate designers from the ground up to understand how their design choices can impact ecologies and societies, that’s a powerful position from which to leverage change. With this incredibly generous gift, my hope is to use our marvelous interstitial space to create new possibilities for the greater community that benefit everyone.”

Submit your favorite item or collection for consideration.

Visit https://risd.libguides.com/yourspecial150 and make your selection by June 30, 2025. This project is part of a broader series of initiatives planned for the 150th anniversary, which will honor RISD’s contributions to art, design and education globally.

On Campus

In honor of RISD’s upcoming 150th anniversary in 2027, Fleet Library is embarking on a project to showcase the institution’s rich history and artistic heritage. Led by Special Collections Librarian and Curator of Collections Claudia Covert, the library is producing a unique publication that will highlight 150 items and/or collections from its Special Collections, which includes over 20,000 important and rare printed books, periodicals and artists’ books. In addition to the publication, the featured items will be highlighted in exhibits and events.

“This project is a wonderful way to celebrate the collection and give us guidance on how to collect in the future as we continue to serve the RISD community, scholars and the general public,” says Covert.

One of the oldest independent art college libraries in the country, Fleet Library has its origins in a single bookcase in the Hoppin Homestead building, where classes were first taught in 1878. Over the years, the library grew and was housed in different campus spaces including the Waterman Building and the College Building. Now in its permanent home, the former Rhode Island Hospital Trust bank at 15 Westminster Street, the library houses more than 155,000 volumes and offers a wide array of services, programs, exhibitions and events. Among the many Special Collections items RISD community members can nominate for inclusion in the publication are fragments of medieval manuscripts and artists’ books dating from the 1960s to the present.

Left: Image © O’Leary, Chandler.

Tacoma, WA: Anagram Press, 2010 Right: Image by Jo Sittenfeld

Endowment for the Nature Lab

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Jennifer Bissonnette

Local conditions: one hundred views of Mount Rainier (at least)

by Chandler O’Leary 03 IL

Fleet Library Celebrates RISD’s 150th

6

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

FOR RISD’S FUTURE

Celebrating Our Past, Creating Our Future You may not know it, but RISD is about to reach a major milestone.

In two short years, we’ll celebrate RISD’s 150th anniversary and, along with it, all the innovation, craft and skill that has flourished in studios and galleries across our campus. There is certainly a lot to celebrate!

As we look back, this important moment in our history also inspires us to look forward. What do we want the next 150 years to look like?

For RISD’s Future

Together, let’s accentuate RISD’s longstanding impact. We can measure it through the contributions our students and faculty bring to the world.

Tavares Strachan 03 GL, renowned artist, RISD trustee and alum, said, “RISD is the place you can make anything you want, from a pair of sneakers to a rocket ship.” RISD’s outsized impact stems from the curiosity, creativity and resilience fostered in our community. Since the college’s founding in 1877, RISD students have always been problem solvers. And, there is no doubt in our minds that the world continues to need them.

That is why I’m so pleased to introduce this new section of the RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine. “For RISD’s Future” is a space to highlight the incredible impact of philanthropy and engagement. As a community, we will shape RISD’s future, working together to ensure talented students, regardless of their financial backgrounds, have access to an education that emboldens them as designers and artists. RISD teaches students to think critically, create boldly, iterate relentlessly and collaborate meaningfully. Let’s center and celebrate this student experience like no other, and share stories of RISD’s impact through the work of our students, faculty and alumni.

Let’s build RISD’s future together and celebrate the inquisitiveness, unfiltered exploration and discovery that have made RISD a remarkable agent of change.

Image by Jo Sittenfeld 7

Warmly,

Amanda Clark MacMullan Vice President, Institutional Advancement

Not Just a Building With intergenerational support, Rubelcy Herrera BArch 25 explores a holistic architecture.

Words by Gillian Kiley Images by Adam Mastoon

Foundation Studies and Drawing) encouraged him to hone his technical skills, explore concepts and different mediums and “go against typical notions of drawing,” Herrera says. He credits Architecture faculty Carlos Medellín and Anne Tate and Professor of Landscape Architecture Lili Hermann with expanding his view of architecture as a discipline and conceptualizing how policies, buildings, people and places function together.

“I’m trying to understand how the human experience, built environment and natural world interact,” Herrera says. “I really appreciate how my advisers have encouraged me to think of architecture as not just a building, but an ecology. To think of the people involved, the materiality, the driving force and the motives.”

Next, Herrera plans to apply to graduate school for urban planning and building technologies “to figure out how these disciplines can also intersect to design a holistic new urban framework,” he says, and to learn more about design practices “that will enhance not just the space but also the experience for the individuals who occupy it,” he says.

Herrera is grateful, he says, that his scholarships have given him both financial freedom and time to focus on his craft and engage with his studies.

He is also glad to be the beneficiary of funds created by or in memory of architects.

“Especially with my Guatemalan roots, I understand lineage and how that can be a very empowering thing. It’s incredible—these people were not only in my position themselves,” he says of Dynia and Guimond, “but understand what it means to be in an architecture program with an atypical background. That helps me envision having a successful career, and really appreciate and explore everything I can here at RISD.”

For RISD’s Future

Rubelcy Herrera grew up just a few miles from RISD, in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood, but the college wasn’t on his radar until his junior year in high school when his friends suggested he look into its Architecture program.

“I didn’t really grow up in an artistic background,” says Herrera, a first-generation student whose parents immigrated from Guatemala. “I was a typical low-income kid growing up in Providence, and I spent most of my time playing soccer, hanging out with friends and being mischievous.”

Herrera’s high school peers, some of whose parents worked at Brown University and RISD, encouraged him to explore College Hill even though it seemed a world apart. He knew he wanted a challenging, growth-oriented academic experience, and considered pursuing engineering. It was not until Herrera spoke with his high school guidance counselor, who emphasized the possibilities posed by studying architecture at an art school, that he felt confident about enrolling.

“I chose RISD for its interdisciplinary focus and because Architecture is such a multifaceted major,” Herrera says. “It’s not just about a building. It’s the built environment and the surrounding ecology.

It’s the furniture, the emotions, the beauty. It’s not just the aesthetic.”

Before applying, Herrera reached out to Scott Lapham 90 PH, whom he had met through a college-readiness program. Lapham walked Herrera through the then-foreign process of building his portfolio.

“I’m very grateful for his help,” Herrera says, noting that RISD alumni have been instrumental in propelling him forward. That includes Stephen Dynia BArch 83, an architect whose eponymous firm has four locations in the United States. Dynia supports Herrera’s academic journey through the RISD Scholars program, which provides significant annual tuition assistance. Herrera also receives the Peter Guimond Memorial Scholarship, which honors the structural engineer and RISD professor of Architecture who was known for his inspirational teaching style.

Now, Herrera is completing his fifth year of the Architecture program and concentrating in Nature, Culture and Sustainability Studies (NCSS) and Drawing. As he has developed his architectural thinking and practice, he has been guided by faculty from across the college.

NCSS faculty Laura Briggs BArch 82 and Jonathan Knowles BArch 84 have helped him explore how to incorporate sustainability practices in architecture, while Gwen Strahl P 16 (Experimental and

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

FOR RISD’S FUTURE

8

Stephen Dynia BArch 83, who received a full scholarship himself as an undergraduate, said his transformative experiences in the Architecture program fueled his desire to help other students find their way to RISD.

For RISD’s Future

“I came from a sort of roughand-tumble downtown New Haven environment, and I remember the first figure drawing class that I went to, and there was a naked woman standing on the podium, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute. This is against the law. What’s going on here?’

That’s how foreign any of that was to me...but I had some sense that I had a spark of something that made me understand the idea of what design was about...I could remember just the desire to see the world differently and make work that expresses something that is a benefit to society, by challenging the norms of the world we live in. Now, if I can help even one person do the same, I want to pay it forward.”

Left & Below: Rubelcy Herrera

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine 9

PAYING IT FORWARD

The Art of Sticking with It Mitch Alamag (Gantz) BArch 84 and A.me Alamag (Alter) 85 PT created a bequest to support entrepreneurial students.

“When we started, if something was selling, I would want to move on and create something new. I was so attached to the starving artist idea, but Mitch taught me to stay with it and that it doesn’t become less ‘art’ because you can support yourself.”

Mitch echoes that, saying, “Being self-employed and supporting yourself is a wonderful way to be an artist.” With the Rokoko Fund, they will help support students ready to make the same bold move that they did, to trust themselves and see where the path may lead.

Words by Lauren Rebecca Thacker Images submitted by the Alamags

“In the beginning, you really put yourself out on a limb and sometimes you don’t know if you’re going to survive. It’s not every artist’s path, but it certainly was ours.

For the artists who want to do that, it’s such a beautiful life. We want to help them stay in the game.”

For RISD’s Future

In many ways, Mitch and A.me Alamag are very different people. Yet, they chose to pursue the same dream—working for themselves and making art— and do it together. Their career has taken them from jewelry to woodworking and from fashion to functional home accessories. They charted a path from Providence to Chicago and from California to New Mexico and have gone from young artists unsure if they could make it work to professionals with a passion for art for art’s sake whose latest dream is to support students who want to go their own way.

In 2024, the Alamags made the decision to include RISD in their will and create a bequest to establish the Rokoko Fund. Named for their company, the fund will support career services programs and entrepreneurship initiatives.

A.me says, “In the beginning, you really put yourself out on a limb and sometimes you don’t know if you’re going to survive. It’s not every artist’s path, but it certainly was ours. For the artists who want to do that, it’s such a beautiful life. We want to help them stay in the game.”

Kevin Jankowski 88 IL, director of the RISD Careers Center, says that supporting life after RISD can make a big difference.

“Our students now have an exceptional range of career workshops, advising and other resources to help them prepare for their careers,” he says.

“Taking advantage of them expands their creative opportunities, entrepreneurial interests, and ability to achieve the beautiful life that A.me describes.”

Mitch and A.me met toward the end of their RISD careers. A.me laughs, saying that architecture and painting were like two different worlds, and Mitch adds, “artistically and aesthetically, we are complete opposites. But there is something in our natures that allows us to work well together.”

After graduation, A.me started making jewelry with a friend while Mitch was working as an architect.

After work, he would help produce the pieces that A.me designed. Thus their collaborative mode was born, with A.me channeling a vision and Mitch developing techniques to produce pieces efficiently and effectively. Their collaborative approach has allowed them to put their individual strengths towards something greater. They sell their work to art and craft galleries and at festivals across the country.

“If we stayed in my mode of ideas and emotion, we wouldn’t reach as many people,” A.me says.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

FOR RISD’S FUTURE

A.me Alamag (Alter)

To learn more about supporting Life after RISD or establishing a bequest, contact Jennifer Raxter, senior executive director, major and planned gifts, at jraxter@risd.edu.

10

Heading to a RISD dance in 1983

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

A recent selfie

For RISD’s Future

Art Santa Fe, a juried international contemporary art fair, in 2023

11

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

AT THE MUSEUM

Collection Catalysts Transformative gifts shape the RISD Museum’s collection, legacy and future.

At the Museum

Larry Warsh: Expanding the Collection’s Global Reach One of the most significant recent collection gifts came from Larry Warsh, whose donation of contemporary Chinese photographs reshaped the museum’s holdings across the Asian Art and Prints, Drawings, and Photographs departments.

Prior to this gift, RISD had almost no representation of contemporary Chinese photography. Warsh, a collector with a keen eye for work that would become historically significant, began focusing on photography produced in the 1980s and 1990s after a visit to China in 2004. These photographs from his collection represent the diverse visions and views of a generation of artists exploring different mediums and modes of expression. Warsh’s gift increases the representation of contemporary Asian works, as well as broadens the photography collection at the RISD Museum.

“This gift isn’t just about the individual pieces; it’s about how they fit into the larger narrative of art history and how they’re used in education,” explains Conor Moynihan, associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs. “This collection was pivotal to RISD and offers students the chance to work directly with rare, contemporary works.”

Words by Julie Powers

Hong Hao 洪浩, Long March in Panjiayuan B, 2003.

Gift of Larry Warsh and Museum purchase.

RISD Museum, Providence, RI. © Hong Hao, courtesy Pace Gallery.

Throughout its nearly 150-year history, the RISD Museum has been fortunate to receive transformative gifts that have expanded the museum’s narrative of art, broadened its representation of various mediums and deepened learning opportunities. By connecting the museum’s holdings with the greater arc of artistic and historical movements, these collection catalysts heighten the experiences of visitors and artists.

At times, a gift of a single work can leave a lasting impression. One such gift helped the RISD Museum establish itself as a true destination. In 1958, American philanthropist and Rhode Island native Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt Gerry bequeathed Édouard Manet’s stunning Le Repos (Repose) to the museum. Her first husband, George Washington Vanderbilt II, had been one of Manet’s earliest American collectors. Gerry, who later married Rhode Island Senator Peter Gerry, recognized the museum’s significance to Providence and greater New England and bequeathed Le Repos to RISD upon her passing. It is now one of the most renowned works in the collection.

There are a near-countless number of monumental, single gifts of art like this one, each with its own stories—of the artist, of the work, of the donor.

Works like Claude Monet’s groundbreaking A Walk in the Meadows at Argenteuil, a bequest from Houghton P. Metcalf, Jr. HD 96; Lippo di Benivieni’s historic Madonna Enthroned, with Saints and Angels, donated by Ambassador J. William Middendorf II; and Bayard and Harriet K. Ewing’s gift of Joan Mitchell’s pivotal painting Mooring all speak in some way to the donors’ commitment to the RISD Museum.

Each of these works also changed the collection.

The museum has also been the beneficiary of remarkable gifts encompassing multiple works.

In the past five years alone, several generous donors have gifted collections that have changed the experience the museum offers. These donors, who have thoughtfully built their personal collections, often over decades, chose the RISD Museum knowing it’s a place where art, history and education intersect, and where curators will expertly manage and exhibit these consequential works. Some were drawn to the RISD Museum for its proximity to students and faculty and how the works will be accessed and studied; others chose the museum for its regional impact or its legacy with a certain medium. “Whatever the reason a donor has for choosing RISD, it’s an honor and a truly special moment when the museum can accept and serve as the steward to these incredible gifts,” says RISD Museum Director Tsugumi Maki.

12

Nicole Cherubini 93 CR, Vase, 2005–2006.

Promised gift of Hope and Mel Barkan.

RISD Museum, Providence, RI. Photograph by Robert Puglisi.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine At the Museum 13

Hope and Mel Barkan: Ceramics That Redefine a Medium Ceramics, a discipline with deep roots at RISD, also benefited from a truly transformative gift by Hope and Mel Barkan that speaks to the history of the medium and its contemporary evolution. The Barkan Ceramic Collection is extraordinary not only because of its range of artists but also because it redefines the way ceramics can be presented at the museum.

Spanning seven decades of contemporary ceramics, the works reflect diverse artistic practices, cultural identities and global perspectives, and also highlight how ceramics—whether functional or sculptural— foster collaboration and dialogue, both within the ceramics community and beyond.

These works significantly expand the ceramics collection and provide a unique opportunity for students and visitors to explore the medium in ways that were previously unavailable. But what makes the Barkans’ donation particularly meaningful is the thoughtfulness behind it—the collection was carefully curated by the couple to underscore the interconnectedness of art and the ongoing impact of those who create, collect and pass on their knowledge and passion. Their mission, they say, “has been for ceramics to be appreciated as sculpture, and not as craft.”

“Every piece in our collection has a story,” says Hope Barkan. “Either how we bought it, where we bought it, who we bought it from, and so on. It’s how the pieces become very personal.”

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Hussein Chalayan, Shirt with Turkish Revolution Print, ca. 2002.

Gift of Jolie Stahl.

RISD Museum, Providence, RI.

At the Museum

Jolie Stahl: A Personal Commitment to Artists and Education Jolie Stahl’s donation exemplifies how a gift can expand a collection and reshape the perspectives of artists, students and curators alike. The gifted works showcase the social and political complexities of 20th-century art and design, raising questions about art as a tool for social reform and highlighting the dynamic ways art, craft and design converge.

As an artist herself, Stahl’s commitment to those pursuing careers in the field, from painters, sculptors and designers to gallery owners, curators and collectors, is both purposeful and palpable in the pieces she chose. Having collected—and now gifted to the museum—thought-provoking art by fully engaged artists like Bob Thompson and Rosemarie Beck, among many others, Stahl makes available compelling works that expand an artist’s exposure or represent the first pieces by an artist to be collected by a museum.

The broad selection of works in the Stahl collection, which includes paintings, sculptures, textiles, prints, drawings and photographs, will serve as a vital interdisciplinary resource for RISD students and faculty, the broader art community and the general public.

Whenever a collection is entrusted to the museum, curators collaborate with donors to honor their original vision, allowing it to grow and evolve within the museum’s larger framework. Through exhibitions and research, the curatorial staff interpret and showcase the significance of these donations.

The museum serves as both a trusted home for the collections and a place where the public can appreciate and engage with them. And the relationship between a donor and the museum doesn’t end with the donation. Curators maintain ongoing dialogue, sharing updates and images of works when they’re on view. This continued stewardship allows donors to see how their collections contribute to education, exhibitions and research.

Donors like Warsh, Stahl, the Barkans and many others have transformed the RISD Museum in profound ways. Through their gifts, they’ve expanded the collection, enriched programming and ensured that the museum’s mission remains vibrant and relevant in the 21st century. Whether through single works of art, curated collections, or the very spaces that house them, the power of transformative gifts is far-reaching.

14

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

AT THE MUSEUM

On View Current

Upcoming

The Art of French Wallpaper Design November 15, 2024–May 11, 2025

Liz Collins: Motherlode July 19, 2025–January 11, 2026

This exhibition explores the vibrant, surprising designs that adorned walls in the 1700s and 1800s.

It features more than 100 rare samples of salvaged wallpapers, borders, fragments and design drawings, revealing the creative process and showcasing the extraordinary technical skills involved in producing these works.

The next issue of RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine will include a closer look at the work of Liz Collins 91 TX / MFA 99 and how this exhibition came together.

A Shared Journey: The Barkan Contemporary Ceramic Collection at the RISD Museum September 13, 2025–April 5, 2026

At the Museum

“I am thrilled with the enthusiasm I’ve received for the exhibition and the collection. Visitors tell me they not only found great joy in viewing the wallpapers but that they also learned a tremendous amount about their histories. Joy and learning? There’s no greater achievement.” –Emily Banas, Associate Curator, Decorative Arts and Design Process Work: Intersections of Photography and Print ca. 1825 to Today February 1–July 20, 2025 From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles December 7, 2024–August 24, 2025

View of Venice Wallpaper; Courtyard seen through Drapery, ca. 1840.

Mary B. Jackson Fund

15

Art, in the Moment Reading theory and learning from guest critics was part of the journey, but for students in Solo Performance, a first-of-its-kind studio course out of Painting, it all came down to the final performance.

Words by Lauren Rebecca Thacker Images by Adam Mastoon

Mayuko Kobayashi 25 FAV says that the class put them outside of their comfort zone. They contrast it with crits in their major, in which it is easier to separate the self and the work. Critiquing an individual performance has the potential to feel more personal and vulnerable.

“But it’s challenging in a good way,” they say.

“I’ve been thinking about replicating and inheriting movement or adopting a sense of timing and rhythm from another being. This semester, I’ve been thinking about how my grandmother moves and what it means to embody another presence.

It’s been challenging and interesting.”

As members of the Providence-based band Banana Pup, Kelewae and Anna Macleod 25 FAV are used to performing. Still, Solo Performance was something new to them.

Kelewae explains, “In a typical RISD class, you do work at home, bring it in and talk about it. But here, the hard work is in class. We do a lot of readings and stuff like that, but the art itself is in the moment.

That can be really exciting or really difficult.”

“In FAV, it doesn’t matter how you feel the day of the critique,” Macleod adds. “But in a performance class, you can do all the preparation in the world, but you do have to be incredibly present in the moment. Success rides on that.”

Key and Dufresne hope that the lessons of the class will last beyond the moment and stretch beyond the genre of performance.

“No matter what department you are in, performance is an essential part of your craft. Performance is inherently supplementary,” Key says. “Having this course, which requires you to think through how you use materials, how you understand yourself in relation to materials, how you can apply your skills from other disciplines–that is really fun and powerful.”

In Process

After a semester of workshops and rehearsals, students in the Solo Performance class have a chance to show what they’ve learned. On the first floor of 20 Washington Place, students rearrange tables and chairs to resemble the lobby of a customs office for a performance by Echo (Fengxiao) Xu 25 PT. Across the room, Bec Patsenker 25 SC, dressed head to toe in blue, arranges their set for a performance of SAFETY BLUE, which draws on OSHA’s code of safety colors and probes questions of when it is or is not safe for queer bodies to be in the spotlight.

Elsewhere, Ian Kelewae 25 FAV has his cello for a performance that combines storytelling and improvisation. With the stage set, all 12 students gather with faculty to go over the final details before the metaphorical curtain rises.

The course, co-taught by video artist and Painting Professor Angela Dufresne and Painting Critic Jarrett Key MFA 20 PT, is funded by the Robert L. Turner Theatrical and Performance Design Fund.

Robert L. Turner 74 IL, an interior designer who has worked as an editor at Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, established the fund in 2014 to support experimental, interdisciplinary courses. Dufresne and Key grounded the course in theory and made sure to include opportunities for students to learn from practitioners.

“The most essential things to read in performance class are about gender studies, about sociology, about history, class, racism and subjectivity,” Key says. “So much about being an artist is about how you relate to yourself and how people relate to you. A lot of the readings were set up to give them skills to address their own subjectivity and create a clear frame for performance.”

In addition to readings and class discussions, students got to meet with composer and performance artist M Lamar, perform for guest critics and interdisciplinary artists Kameron Neal and Felicity Palma and hear a lecture from Rebecca Schneider, a professor of modern culture and media from Brown who, Dufresne says, “blew everyone’s hearts and minds.”

Classes funded with grants from the Turner Fund are required to create opportunities for public engagement. For Solo Performance, one of those opportunities was M Lamar’s visit, which included a lecture and a performance in the Tap Room that was also open to the RISD community.

“It was a packed house,” Dufresne says. “So much energy. Things like that can really be transformative.”

For many of the students, it was a semester-long process of transformation.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

IN PROCESS

16

Ian Kelewae

Angela Dufresne, painting professor, (left) and Jarrett Key, painting critic

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

In Process

Bec Patsenker

17

The RISD grads with decades of experience share the lessons that stay with them and what keeps them going.

Commitment and drive: two qualities that unite RISD artists and designers, despite their individuality and unique paths. It’s evident not just in their intense focus in the studio or the generosity they bring to crits, but in the way they dive headfirst into debates, push creative boundaries or carry massive maquettes or portfolios up College Hill without a second thought. For many, the drive to make began in childhood, blossomed fully during their time at RISD and has since become a lifelong pursuit— transcending age and circumstance.

Long

The alumni profiled here exemplitized their studio time or taken plunges into things entirely new. Their drive comes from an innate curiosity and desire to create as well as from lessons learned from RISD classmates and faculty.

Game

Seventy-four years after her graduation from RISD, JOAN GITLOW 51 PT has a message for current students, young alumni and anyone committed to art making: “Don’t stop doing what you do.”

18

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine The Long Game

JOAN GITLOW 51 PT SAYS GOOD TEACHING IS TIMELESS. Words by Lauren Rebecca Thacker

19

Some things are firmly rooted in a time and place.

Joan Gitlow 51 PT counts her art practice among those things. A painter and printmaker, she says her work reflects her RISD era. Her student years, at the dawn of Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler, gave her a starting point for developing a deep understanding of what happens when you organize colors and shapes on a flat surface.

She’s been an active member of Cove Gallery on Cape Cod for over 30 years. In summer 2024, at age 97, Gitlow was part of a three-woman show there, featuring her prints and collages alongside sculptures

by Silvina Mizrahi and paintings by Ginny Zanger.

Gitlow says she is drawn to printmaking for its elements of surprise and discovery. Still, she muses that her art might look “old-timey” to current

students. But she says that her approach to art education, with its emphasis on process, is as relevant as ever.

Gitlow taught art for more than 40 years at elementary schools, high schools and universities. It was an experience that allowed her to “witness small miracles of discovery every day.” Inspired by her own classroom experiences and her lifelong passion for drawing, Gitlow developed an online figure drawing manual for teachers that included exercises and examples of student work.

“I believe that drawing is visual thinking in its most direct form, the artist’s primary language,” she says.

“I’ve been drawing the human figure since art school and will never tire of it.”

Students of all ages, she reports, were surprised by the progress they could make by focusing their attention on drawing the figure. Watching their growth as artists was incredibly rewarding. It was an experience she had again as she saw her daughter, Kate Gitlow Bramante, and granddaughter, Niki Bramante, experiment, build, explore and develop as artists in their own right.

Gitlow’s love for teaching and appreciation for exploration goes back to her RISD days and the lessons that have stayed with her ever since.

“I could never have become the educator I was and the artist I am if not for the legendary teachers I had at RISD,” she says. “Life drawing with John Frazier stripped away habits, artifice, guesswork.

His complex yet blazingly clear instructions and crits taught us to see, build skills, analyze and own our individual imagery and ideas. I taught life drawing to adults and high school kids honed from all I learned from him. Painting with Gordon Peers, Frazier and Bob Hamilton drove us nuts, making us finally ‘get’ Cezanne. It proved to be a gateway to all ideas that came after.”

“RISD meant everything to me and still does,” she says.

Left: Joan Gitlow. Image by Jordan Tovin Above: Wellfleet Marsh at Dusk, 2023

By age 12, Stan Mack 58 IL was taking Saturday morning life drawing classes at RISD. With other kids, he would draw local high school football players or cheerleaders that were brought in, as he says, “to run around in front of the class.”

Capturing action as it unfolded turned out to be good training for Mack, who went on to pioneer a form of documentary comics that rendered life in New York City in all its fullness and strangeness for The Village Voice. For 21 years, Mack traversed the city, drawing New Yorkers’ interactions at a Bloomingdale’s counter, a squatters’ encampment, a ConEd stockholders meeting or Plato’s Retreat, a swingers’ club complete with a swimming pool. Mack occasionally got kicked out of venues after his sketching, albeit discreet, made people nervous. They thought he was an IRS agent or private

The Long Game

Words by Gillian Kiley

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

STAN MACK 58 IL MADE A LOT OF PEOPLE NERVOUS

investigator. His incredible weekly output for the paper is collected in the anthology Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995, published

by Fantagraphics last summer.

Mack was inspired by the spontaneity of Providence-based journalist-cartoonists Frank Lanning and Paul Loring, and by the New Journalism of the 1960s, a style that pushed the boundaries of traditional reporting by bringing in techniques associated with fiction writing. Those approaches reshaped traditional publishing, but Mack says studying at RISD had prepared him for it.

“RISD had said, ‘Stay open. It’s okay. You can deal with this. You don’t have to be limited by the stuff that we thought was going to be happening back a few years earlier.’”

Over his long career, Mack has been many things, including art director of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, a close observer of the advertising world with “Stan Mack’s Out-takes” for Adweek, a children’s book illustrator and the force behind graphic and narrative books. Among others, he published a history of the American Revolution, a history of the Jewish people and Janet and Me: An Illustrated Story of Love and Loss, a memoir of his colorful relationship with his longtime partner Janet Bode, and the way they as a couple confronted her terminal breast cancer.

Mack is busy giving book talks, working on new book proposals, online illustration projects and more.

“I was talking to my son the other day about some project or talk I was giving, and he said, ‘Dad, why don’t you relax a little?’” Mack says, “but I’m not going to golf. I have always had this drive to draw.

It can’t be as manic and insane as it was when I was doing the weekly strips. I’m smarter now, so it’s maturely insane.”

Above: Stan Mack Below: Mack’s collection spans 21 years of New York City life

20

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine The Long Game

BILL KIENZEL 67 ID FONT QUIXOTE Words by Julie Powers

21

Nobody embraces iterative design like Bill Kienzel 67 ID. It’s been 40 years since he created SpectraConic, a font that pushes the boundaries of letterforms—full-color with tailored kerning supporting a 3D concept. Four decades later, Kienzel is still engaged in design development, hoping that industry progress and technology will catch up to his cutting-edge idea.

“What a ride it’s been,” says Kienzel. “The pure visual joy of working with such glorious color has been exhilarating. Add to that the satisfaction of hard-won solutions through a lot of reworking.

There’s an overall happiness of having given this idea—probably my best one yet—the commitment it deserves.”

That commitment has been driven by design exploration, what Kienzel calls “the higher purpose of art” with gratitude to RISD for instilling the sentiment.

He credits the intellectual challenge RISD presented for creative minds, something he feels connects alumni across all generations and disciplines.

Kienzel’s career in type design began at Compugraphic, a producer of typesetting systems, in 1974, where he worked in type development and

type marketing. “The latter gave me enhanced perspective on using type, as we designed promotional materials for their font library,” he explains. In 1979, Kienzel drove his family cross-country for a new position at Information International in Los Angeles.

There, he was asked to design their 1981 holiday card, a unique opportunity to try out new letterform ideas in collaboration with their Digital Scene Simulation group, CGI pioneers. This was when SpectraConic was born; the sculptural font heralded “Peace on Earth” in a way no one had seen before.

The result was featured in a May 1982 article, “Type Design Enters a New Age,” in Art Direction magazine.

Kienzel’s career took him to the Xerox Font Center and later to the Santa Barbara area, where he continued working on SpectraConic’s design. He developed a Mac-based interpretation in Adobe Illustrator and created extensive documentation about its color structure, letterfit processing and app implementations to chronicle this journey.

After all this time, Kienzel remains unsure if SpectraConic will realize its full potential. And, despite challenges, he’s thankful for the journey.

“I have no clue how this effort will result.

SpectraConic may earn a happy future—I would be thrilled to see it make humankind more joyful,” he says. “Database quandaries and the limits of colorfont formats (it uses 180 colors!) remain obstacles.

Maybe I won’t see it become keyboardable, but it already is a cursor-driven lettering system.”

Kienzel describes this legacy project as something he sensed he owed the world. “I was privileged to invest in it all the typographic principles I’ve absorbed from so many respected colleagues in the realm of type,” he says. “I’m grateful to have been entrusted with this special idea.”

Left: Bill Kienzel. Image by Meg Webster Right: SpectraConic in one form

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Below: Bob Dilworth. Image by Adam Mastoon Right: Bear Witness, 2022

The Long Game

BOB DILWORTH 73 PT PAINTS AT MIDNIGHT Words by Lauren Rebecca Thacker

Bob Dilworth 73 PT was participating in critique before he even knew the word. As a teenager, he enjoyed painting and drawing and connected with a faculty member at St. Paul’s College, a Historically Black College in his hometown of Lawrenceville, VA. She became his mentor and engaged him in in-depth conversations about his work that he later came to know as critique. She encouraged him to apply to RISD and he arrived in Providence in 1969 with a plan to be a painter.

Not just a painter, but a rich and famous one at that.

“Boy, did that plan change,” he says, laughing.

“Those may be the dreams that drive you, but I quickly learned that a desire to be a maker and creator is what really sustains you. Instructors can teach theory and principles, but you become a painter through your own commitment.”

Dilworth maintained his commitment to painting throughout his 30-year career as faculty at University of Rhode Island, where he taught painting, drawing, design and African American art history. His own work never took a backseat. If that meant waking up at midnight to paint before a day in the classroom, that’s what Dilworth did.

Reflecting on this work, he says, “I like to saturate a painting with a lot of stuff. I’ll add layers of marker, fabric, paint. Sometimes I think something is done, but I’ll revisit a week or a month later and see another opportunity. When nothing more can be added and nothing can be taken away, that’s when a piece is done.”

Lately, Dilworth has expanded his work with fabric, constructing pieces using his father’s ties or jeans and stitching portraits, often of family, atop them.

A recent show at the Fitchburg Art Museum, Bob Dilworth: When I Remembered Home, showcased his multilayered fabric and painted portraits. Several of his pieces are in the RISD Museum’s permanent collection and, in 2024, he was honored with the Rhode Island Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts.

It may not be the fame he had in mind when he arrived at RISD in the fall of 1969. But it is a testament to the dedication and hard work necessary to making a life as an artist. RISD professors showed him the importance of that hard work and he, in turn, showed his students. Dilworth lists Mahler Ryder and John Torres as faculty who made a strong impact on him. They took his work seriously, he says, so he put in serious effort. And he’s been at it ever since.

22

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine The Long Game

NELL IRVIN PAINTER MFA 11 PT RECONFIGURE AND REVISION Words by Gillian Kiley

23

In 2006, as Nell Irvin Painter MFA 11 PT stood at a bus stop in New Brunswick, NJ, her first-year classmate at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University turned to her and asked her age. “Sixty-four,” Painter told the student, who gasped in excitement.

That day, Painter straddled two worlds. She was both a new undergraduate student and Princeton University’s Edwards Professor of American History Emerita. An historian specializing in 19th-century Southern American history, Painter had published widely, won accolades and taught thousands of students not all that different from the young woman at the bus stop. Painter was starting over with a BFA before going on to earn her MFA in Painting at RISD. Then, as now, she is “a painter with feet in both visual and verbal terrain.”

At RISD, Painter was most certainly the only graduate student to be interviewed by Stephen Colbert for The Colbert Report, have a book featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review

and serve as president of the Organization of American Historians during their course of study.

Painter juggled critical success, professional recognition, attention to her age from classmates and others and, of course, the demands of her degree programs.

Why did she do it? One answer: the pursuit of pleasure.

“Concentrating on what I could see gave me intense pleasure, and seeing what I could make with my own hand and according to my own eye was even more satisfying. Art stopped time. Art exiled hunger.

Art held off fatigue.”

Painter has made art since childhood and describes her work, which incorporates found images and digital manipulation, as carrying both discursive and visual meaning. Painting allows her to step away from her career-long search for historical truth and engagement with the politics, particularly racial politics, of American life and “reconfigure the past and reenvision myself through self-portraits,” she says. So in addition to pleasure, painting represents freedom.

In her 2018 book Old in Art School, a chronicle of her Rutgers and RISD years, Painter writes, “More than ever I’m obsessed by age and the desire to un-age,” but her pace of activity and production dispenses with conventional ideas of what one does in their eighth decade. She published the book I Just Keep Talking—A Life in Essays in April 2024, chosen as one of the best books of 2024 by The New York Times, the Boston Globe and Kirkus Reviews. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group shows and is in several public collections. She has won artists’ residencies and fellowships, and spent fall 2024 as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

At the Academy, she worked on My Elsewheres, a personal exploration in images and text of place and identity. Reflecting on the formative years she spent in France and Ghana, and later in Germany, Painter’s project examines how experiences outside of the US shaped her self-understanding, perspectives on race and history, and the value of narrative storytelling.

Left: Nell Irvin Painter. Image by Dwight Carter Above: Self-Portrait Tryptich, 2011

Nature, People, Planet

RISD teams’ innovative sustainability projects win Terra Carta Design Lab competition top honors.

Words by Gillian Kiley

Democratizing the process of cleaning up polluted waterways through ingenious devices made from the root systems of mushrooms. Transforming shellfish waste into premium architectural materials and objects, creating a sustainable circular economy along the way. These two forward-thinking ventures, called BIOPOD and Shellf Life, earned teams of RISD students and alumni top honors in the 2024 Sustainable Markets Initiative’s Terra Carta Design Lab (TCDL) competition. TCDL, a global design challenge seeking student-led solutions to the climate and biodiversity crisis, helps innovative projects focused on sustainability scale up and take their designs to market with £100,000 (nearly $127,000) in funding and professional guidance.

His Majesty King Charles III, in his former role as the Prince of Wales, founded the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2020. He then launched the TCDL in 2021 with renowned designer Sir Jony Ive HD 09 in partnership with the Royal College of Art in London. As SMI’s mandate, Terra Carta’s mission is “to build a coordinated global effort to enable the private sector to accelerate the achievement of global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goal targets.”

Terra Carta derives its name from the Magna Carta, which in 1215 provided the foundation for individual rights in the English philosophy of law.

Echoing that foundational text, Terra Carta aims to

give “fundamental rights and value to Nature, ensuring a lasting impact and tangible legacy for this generation.” The competition encourages art and design students and young alums to use their unique skills and creativity to confront the climate crisis.

“The lab elevates the rigorous and imaginative ideas from all these students,” Ive says, “and demonstrates the power and importance of multidisciplinary design and collaboration in meeting global challenges.”

RISD was the only US-based school invited to participate in the competition. Design teams were encouraged to recognize the importance of local traditions, languages, products and cultures while pursuing the goal of delivering a benefit for human and more-than-human societies and ecosystems.

Sixteen RISD teams submitted solutions-focused proposals to the competition. To help them develop their proposals, RISD hosted workshops on creative communication strategies, artificial intelligence, creative entrepreneurship and liberatory design. Students also worked with expert staff at RISD’s Center for Complexity and the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab and shared their projects with hundreds of leaders in business, tech, politics, academia and civil society via an exhibition at Climate Week NYC 2024.

Ten RISD teams were named as finalists and ultimately, BIOPOD and Shellf Life were the college’s winners. Six projects by teams from design schools

24

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

“The lab elevates the rigorous and imaginative ideas from all these students, and demonstrates the power and importance of multidisciplinary design and collaboration in meeting global challenges.”

Sir Jony Ive

Nature, People, Planet

in the United Arab Emirates, India and the United Kingdom were also named winners. Going forward, all eight winning teams will connect with advisors and consultants who will help them navigate business development. For the RISD teams, this process began in January with a financial planning workshop hosted by former RISD faculty member Holly Howard, who specializes in helping startups grow their businesses.

“It has been an incredible honor for RISD to participate in the Sustainable Markets Initiative’s second Terra Carta Design Lab competition,” RISD President Crystal Williams says. “These RISD students and alums are putting our question-based approach to problem solving and solution finding into practice to envision a more equitable and sustainable world.”

For the founders of BIOPOD, the TCDL award is both validation and a pathway to bringing community-based water remediation strategies to the world.

Team members Manini Banerjee 23 ID, Avantika Velho 22 ID, Malvika Agarwal 22 GD, Skylar Perez MArch 23 and Joel Yong 25 ID worked with senior research advisor and former Experimental and Foundation Studies faculty Katia Zolotovsky to make a product that offers a science-based, do-it-yourself approach to waterway and wetland cleanup tailored to the specific conditions of a given location. While many people might look at a river ecosystem that has been degraded by industrial waste and hope

Previous page: Shellf Life Chair by Neuhof and Samuel Aguirre MFA 24 FD Above: Completed BioPods anchored in place.

Photo by Varun Mehta 22 GD / ID

that someone else will take care of it, the BIOPOD team created a way to empower community members to crowdsource environmental data and foster a collaborative approach to environmental stewardship.

The group provides customers like community groups with customized educational and instructional kits so they can deploy biopods tailor-made for their specific locales. The pods are hexagonal floating “mats” made of the root system of the reishi mushroom. The mats have pockets that hold native wetland plants whose roots dangle into the water below. While the mat degrades slowly over time to release plants into the waterway, its material— the network of mushroom roots—filters the water, taking up heavy metals, oils, pesticides and other toxins.

“Mushrooms are really good at breaking down stuff,” says Velho. “They really do a lot of digestion outside their bodies; that’s their main goal in the food web. They’re like the decomposers of the natural world.”

BIOPOD piloted the program in Providence in 2023, working with the nonprofit arts organization WaterFire Providence to launch the pods into the Providence River during their annual Clear Currents Waterfire Festival. That partnership yielded synthesized scientific data on the efficacy of the modules’ natural remediation processes as well as proof of concept that BIOPOD can engage the public

26

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

MEET THE TCDL FINALISTS

Issy Saxton 20 AP created FutureYard, a communityfocused app that empowers people to increase native biodiversity, soil health and carbon storage.

Luca Cuccia & Natalie Rizk MArch 22 are the heads of Hoppi, a project that transforms brewery waste into 100% biodegradable, nontoxic toys, reducing the amount of plastic entering the environment and minimizing the toy industry’s carbon footprint.

Tara Gupta 19 FAV, Piyush Gambhir, Issac Hicks and Jugal Shah founded Map Collective, which provides sustainability and supply chain teams with software that automates supply chain transparency, tracks sustainability metrics and decarbonization planning, and assists procurement decision-making.

Nature, People, Planet 27

in citizen science, says Yong. Next, the team aims to launch projects in Goa, India and in additional sites across New England.

Shellf Life’s winning project also looks to the water. By reassessing the value and potential of the parts of mollusks that are commonly discarded, Shellf Life has developed innovative materials that can be used for a range of purposes while reducing seafood industry waste. Founded by Felicia Neuhof MArch 24 with team members Jason Connell MFA 24 FD and Aleza Epstein MArch 24, the group upcycles seashells and other seafood waste into furniture, tableware, tiles and other home goods.

“Shellf Life is strong like concrete, elastic like steel, and beautiful like ceramic,” Neuhof says. Because mollusks purify water and absorb calcium carbonate as they grow, and because their shells can be used to neutralize acidic soil, “Shellf Life goes beyond net zero and presents an opportunity to fertilize soils, filter water and capture carbon as it grows and cures,” she adds.

One cubic yard of Shellf Life material, a calcium carbonate-based biomaterial made of local Rhode Island-sourced shells from oysters, mussels, and clams, diverts 831 pounds of shells from the landfill while providing material for natural linoleum, compostable furniture and much more. Use of the material, which can be mass produced or used in handcrafted work, can put a huge dent in the

Dway Lunkad 24 SC / FAV, Shagun Jain 23 ID and Felix Arwen 23 ID lead SHAPESHFT, which aims to reframe the conversation about plastics manufacturing and uses discarded mixed plastics to create an artistic medium for producing public art, sculptures and research materials.

Westen Johnson 19 ID and Julie Joo 19 ID created Soilless, an affordable and sustainable indoor garden system that empowers everyone to grow their own fresh, healthy and sustainable food.

Aanya Arora BArch 24 and Michael J. Farris BArch 23 address materials waste in the construction industry with SURPLUS, a peer-to-peer platform that allows contractors on job sites to efficiently offload surplus materials to buyers.

Waste Harmonizes Worlds is a project

by Yechen Zhu MID 24 that explores biocements for binding construction and demolition wastes, creating materials that preserve and extend the life of clay-based building materials.

Wild Lives, created

by Reilly Blum 21 FD and Jasmine Gutbrod 20 FD / MAT 21, uses trail cameras to encourage youth to actively observe, explore and connect to local ecosystems and analyze their findings through creative map making, scientific illustration and storytelling.

46 million tons of shell waste the global shellfish industry produces annually.

Neuhof says, “Winning the Terra Carta Design Lab competition confirmed what I suspected—sometimes the most powerful innovations are the simplest ones.

I look at our empty oyster, mussel and clam shells differently. Instead of seeing trash, I see everything we need: strength, beauty and a material that has been perfecting itself for millions of years. Now those shells that protected ocean life are protecting our homes, and our planet gets a little better and more beautiful with every seafood dinner.”

Below: Velho and Banerjee fabricating the first mycelial mats

Transformative Gradient Geoff Rockwell 86 PT crafts a striking mural for Mexico City’s US Embassy.

Words by Julie Powers

28

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine Transformative Gradient

Geoff Rockwell 86 PT and his wife, Swiss artist Christine Zufferey, own and operate Rockwell Artisan Studio Inc., a New York-based fine arts studio specializing in mural work. Their latest project, Extremes and In-betweens in Two Languages (Extremos e Intermedios en dos Lenguajes) (2024), is a monumental mural for the US Embassy in Mexico City, based on Ed Ruscha’s HD 08 2016 painting GALAXY. Commissioned by the US Department of State’s Art in Embassies, a program designed to create cross-cultural dialogue and foster understanding through the visual arts and artist exchanges, the mural, with a width of 6.78 meters (22' 3") and length of 22.50 meters (73' 10"), was designed for an open-air space above the building’s entry hall and will be the centerpiece of one of the largest US embassy complexes when it opens in 2025.

Above: Artwork by Ed Ruscha. Images courtesy of Rockwell Artisan Studio Inc. www.rockwellartisanstudio.com Previous & Right: © Ed Ruscha. Images courtesy of Gagosian.

Photos by Francisco Kochen

30

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine Transformative Gradient 31

The mural captures Ed Ruscha’s signature use of typography and atmospheric backgrounds. With words that begin large and shrink in scale, the original work, GALAXY, which showed at Gagosian Gallery, used that effect to evoke a sense of infinite space and raise questions about our place in the universe. Its complexity required a unique adaptation as a mural. While Ruscha achieved its fluid, gradient-like effects using spray paint, replicating this in the context of a ceiling mural—26-plus feet above the ground—presented significant challenges. “It would’ve been impossible to replicate the exact spray technique,” Rockwell explains.

“So, we developed a new method using brushes and rollers to mimic the gradient effect.” The studio also replicated a shadow effect that wasn’t technically a shadow at all. They painted two trompe l’oeil cast shadows over the largest words (Galaxy and Galaxia), implying something larger and mysterious hovering over the image.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

“The building is just amazing. I first learned about the architects when I was a student at RISD in the ’80s, so to work on a project like this is full circle.”

Geoff Rockwell

Transformative Gradient

It took six months before arriving in Mexico to map out logistics, develop digital work and test different techniques, textures and paints in order to achieve the desired effect that mirrored Ruscha’s conceptual approach.

“Doing a project like this, especially in a foreign country, was enormously complicated and absolutely everything needed to be planned out in advance,” says Rockwell. Every detail needed to be considered ahead of time, from identifying the correct shades of paint for the gradient to figuring out how to either ship or source those materials in Mexico.

“To replicate the tonal gradient scale, for example, we visited Ed ahead of time and he gave us the lightest and darkest shades. Then, back in the studio, we developed the gradient scale into nine shades and made a topographical map to do a ‘paint by number’ process,” explains Rockwell. They used a mineral silica-based paint, known for its durability and archival qualities, that chemically bonds with masonry substrates.

The paint is resistant to fading, peeling and cracking, making it the ideal choice for an outdoor installation.

Above & Right: © Ed Rusch. Images courtesy of Gagosian.

Photos by Francisco Kochen

32

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine Transformative Gradient 33

Building full scaffolding in the embassy’s entry hall, they tackled the challenge of painting on a textured stucco ceiling. “We had to use special equipment, like long brushes and rollers on poles, and do a lot of work while standing on scaffolding,” Zufferey says. “We only had one shot to get it right.” The Rockwell team worked alongside a group of highly skilled local conservators—an all-woman, all-Mexican artist crew they employed for the project. Together, they relied on their collective expertise and experience to ensure the gradient effect would appear flawless from a distance.

From Rockwell’s view, the catalyst for taking on this large-scale project included the opportunity to work with Ruscha and the US Embassy.

Once the team started the work, they found themselves drawing inspiration from all around, including the beauty of Mexico City and the embassy building’s design, led by acclaimed firms Davis Brody Bond Architects & Planners and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

“The building is just amazing,”says Rockwell. “I first learned about the architects when I was a student at RISD in the ’80s, so to work on a project like this is full circle. And we loved our time in Mexico and are grateful to have learned and experienced as much as we did while we were there. It was all truly an honor.”

The Sweet Creative Life

From custom wedding dresses to homemade ice cream, creating is the cornerstone of life for Angela Muir 08 AP. Words by Katelyn Silva

Customers walking into Boom Town Creamery in Oklahoma City, OK are greeted by oversized ice cream cone sculptures in the window; a neon sign that says, “ice cream is always the answer;” and a sleek mint green display case showcasing long, shallow gelato trays as opposed to a case of deep ice cream tubs that require customers to stand on tiptoes to get a peek. These are all thoughtful design choices made by the owner, Angela Muir 08 AP, a former bridal designer who opened the first of her three small-batch ice cream shops in 2022. A fourth will open in 2025.

“People eat with their eyes. So, the quality of the product must be superior—and it is—but design matters just as much,” says Muir, who graduated from the Apparel Design department in 2008. “I always tell our new staff that we don’t actually sell ice cream.

If someone just wanted ice cream, they would go to the grocery store and buy some. We sell memories, connection and happiness.”

Boom Town Creamery is more than just a place to grab an ice cream cone; it’s a hip after-dinner date night spot where you can sit on a glossy wood banquette and get to know someone better, or it’s a core memory of childhood, the place where you get excited for the special spring flavor after a winning softball game. This is all part of Muir’s careful design.

While Muir didn’t plan to move from fashion to ice cream, she says, “When I look back, everything was a stepping stone to where I am today. I’m not doing

apparel anymore, but design is still one of the biggest parts of my every day.”

She grew up with a creative and entrepreneurial mindset and was always making things with her hands. By third grade, she was charging to paint other kids’ nails on the playground. By eighth grade, she was going to the wholesale market and buying and reselling T-shirts. But wedding dresses were her greatest inspiration. With a mother in the wedding business, Muir spent a lot of time at wedding trade shows, and by age 15, she knew she wanted to be a bridal designer.

Getting into RISD was a dream come true, Muir says. “The idea that I could go to college and make things all day and then share those things with other people who loved making things, that was a revelation.”

While at RISD, Muir interned for the queen of bridal design herself, Vera Wang. Her senior thesis was an original wedding dress collection. After graduating and settling in Kansas City, she realized her childhood dream by designing a line of bespoke wedding dresses. Then she pivoted in 2012 and launched an eco-friendly accessories line; in 2013, she debuted a creative lifestyle and food blog called handmadeintheheartland.com. (Her recipe for crockpot pulled pork is still in the top two to three spots on Google search.)

While Muir’s accessory line was doing well—selling 3,000 to 4,000 pieces a year—she was disillusioned

34

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Angela Muir

Images courtesy of Muir

“When I look back, everything was a stepping stone to where I am today. I’m not doing apparel anymore, but design is still one of the biggest parts of my every day.”

The Sweet Creative Life

by the ways scaling up a business can lead to less creativity. “Many artists realize that when production ramps up, creativity suffers. I came to understand that I didn’t want to sew things to sell anymore, yet I wanted to keep using my creative brain,” she says.

Muir’s design creativity moved in a sweeter, more edible direction.

“I’ve always been a foodie with a sweet tooth...

My blog was a great creative outlet for me and while immersed in that, I realized that Kansas City didn’t have one of my favorite sweet treats, gourmet shaved ice,” she says. “I thought, ‘I can do this really well.’ All you need for a great business is great design. Make it really cool with the right marketing and, obviously, a solid product, and you can be successful.”

In 2017, Lilo’s Shaved Ice was born with an opening day that saw a line down the street. Muir fell in love with the dessert and experience business.

In 2020, when Muir’s husband, a dentist, got a job in Oklahoma City, and her family (with four kids) settled there, she sold Lilo’s. In Oklahoma City, Muir had a thought: their new home was missing really great, homemade ice cream. She traveled to New York City to learn how to make ice cream with Malcolm Stogo, an ice cream legend. At the same time, she was reading Boom Town by Sam Anderson, a book about Oklahoma City history and its rapid growth. Hence, the name of her now wildly popular chain of local ice cream shops.

RISD played a critical role in shaping how Muir approaches the creative—in life and business.

Looking back on her time as a student, Muir described the college as “a whole world” and an “immersive experience,” one that pulled her out of her bubble in her native Tennessee and exposed her to a wider, more creative way of being—one wrapped in art, design and making.

“From the professors to the students, from the classes to the work,” she says, “RISD can’t be described in parts for me, but rather as a whole immersion that gave me depth, knowledge, skill and a critical eye that I’ve carried with me.

It helps me create a multisensory experience where my customers feel welcomed, curious, delighted and surprised.”

36

Aaron Zulpo 08 IL Page 54

Gabriela Fariña von Buchwald BGD 94 Page 48

SUBMIT NEWS & NOTES AT alumni.risd.edu/form-selection

37

Anthony Fieldman BArch 93 Page 47

David Estey 64 PT Page 40

Note– worthy

HANDWEAVING WITH ROBERT AND ROBERTA

Roberta Ayotte 58 TX Robert Ayotte 58 ID The New Hampshire Historical Museum in Concord, NH, now has a permanent exhibit of handwoven work by Roberta Ayotte 58 TX. She created the pieces, including a coat, long hostess skirt, vest and two large wall hangings, while at Ayotte’s Designery in Center Sandwich, NH. She and her husband, the late Robert Ayotte 58 ID, founded the weaving studio and gift shop and ran it from 1966 through 1995, when they retired to Sun City, AZ. A copy of their 16-book home study course “Handweaving with Robert and Roberta” is also included in the museum library.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1950s

Robert died of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2015. Roberta continues to weave in her home studio.

Class Notes

Robert Thornton 52 PT / P 78 In September 2024, Robert Thornton 52 PT / P 78 showed a collection of paintings at the Central Church Gallery in Providence. The opening reception also marked his 101st birthday. Thornton, who served as the RISD Museum’s photographer for 37 years before retiring in 1992, was well known for his work, which was consistently showcased in the annual faculty show at RISD. Throughout his career, he had numerous private sales and gallery exhibitions, with more recent displays primarily at the Bert Gallery in Fox Point.

Lee Bivins, Jr. 59 GD “I absolutely loved being at RISD and it helped my career,” writes Lee Bivins, Jr. 59 GD. “I retired in 2004 after 45 years in retail graphic design; the majority of the positions were as VP Creative Director/ Marketing. I currently live in Towson, MD with my partner Richard Vyse. We married in 2013 and have been together since 1963.”

“I absolutely loved being at RISD and it helped my career.”

Lee Bivins, Jr.

After returning to his home state of Rhode Island in 1945 following his service in World War II, Thornton received his BFA from RISD, got married, had three children and began to paint. To support his growing family, he took the job as the museum’s photographer, a skill he had acquired during the war. While working full-time, Thornton painted in his free time, developing his artistic style. His early works were marked by a wry edge and a cynical view of the human psyche, where familiar anatomical and environmental forms were reimagined with dark humor, often prioritizing two-dimensional design over accurate portraiture. His later pieces delve into darker political themes or offer a soft contrast with impressionistic seascapes of Rhode Island.

38

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1960s

Class Notes FRAZIER DRAWING CLASSES!

MAZUR DRAWING, TOO!

RISD ROOMMATES Nancy S. Silvia 64 PT / P 02 Shelley Lichterman Parriott 64 IL “Attending RISD was a life-changing experience, beginning in September of 1960, when we met and began our impactful art education sharing a small room in Nickerson Hall. It was there that we worked, studied and each found a sense of belonging to a community of fellow artists. The classes we attended together were revelatory and instrumental to our growth and development into the artists we became—together we imagined the future and began our identities as women artists, when that was not an easy path. We were reminiscing recently about the dramatic, never-to-be-forgotten ‘Frazier Drawing’ classes! Do others remember? And ‘Mazur Drawing,’ too! Freshman Foundation was so exciting and we loved every bit of it!

Now, after graduating in 1964, and in spite of the many passing years and physical distances, we are still connected in a close relationship, encompassing all the challenges and experiences of our lives as artists. We continue working and communicating our ideas in an ageless and timeless friendship that began at RISD!”

39

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1960s

Continued

“RISD MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.”

Class Notes

David Estey 64 PT David Estey 64 PT and his wife Karen are living happily in their home studio overlooking the harbor in Belfast, ME. In 2024, Estey had a solo exhibit at the Cove Street Arts gallery in Portland, ME, and was included in Art of Penobscot Bay, a book

by Carl and David Little, which celebrates 175 years of Maine paintings. His work is featured alongside iconic artists such as Eric Hopkins 76 SC, Seaver Leslie 69 PT, Tom Curry 81 PT and Yvonne Jacquette Burckhardt 56 PT. This year, Estey is also co-creating a collaborative public mural project titled Here Is Magic with MJ Crowe MFA 81 PH at Waterfall Arts in Belfast.

Liz Ginsberg 64 TX Liz Ginsberg 64 TX exhibited her mixed media piece WRITING ON THE WALL, which includes text from the Emma Lazarus poem The New Colossus about the Statue of Liberty, in the May–June 2024 exhibition TEXT at Studio Montclair, Montclair, NJ.

Estey serves as president of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA) and is working to reshape the 50-year-old nonprofit to better advocate for artists and the importance of art for the common good.

He is still life drawing twice a week and plans to return to painting in earnest this year. Throughout his career, Estey produced over 100 sketchbooks, 1,200 paintings and nearly 10,000 drawings and prints. He writes, “RISD made all the difference.”

Dana B. Larrabee 68 IL Godzelda Destroys Salinas, a 1950s monster movie send-up by Dana B. Larrabee 68 IL, appeared as an illustrated serial feature in the humor tabloid Foolish Times from 2019–20. In 2025, Godzelda returns to the Foolish Times in a serial graphic novelized version.

FOOLISH TIMES

40

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1960s Genii Diehl Pell 69 PT / P 00 In the summer of 2024, Genii Diehl Pell 69 PT / P 00 presented Showman with A Paintbrush: The Life and Art of Arthur V. Diehl, at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA. The exhibition featured the work of her grandfather, an English-born artist who came to America in 1893 from London. Diehl Pell curated the exhibition to coincide with the release of her grandfather’s definitive biography, Arthur V. Diehl.

Class Notes

Michael J. Russo 69 SC / BArch 74 Cathy Cressy 69 PT / MAT 73 Michael J. Russo 69 SC / BArch 74 and Cathy Cressy 69 PT / MAT 73 share that “there’s been plenty of water over the dam since [graduation], but in 1995 we bought a small house, overlooking Pine Swamp in North Scituate, RI. The more we learned about wildlife on the swamp, the closer we grew to its waterfowl, especially migratory Wood Ducks. We’ve now added and maintain eight Wood Duck nest houses on the swamp and enjoy making video recordings of the activities of these interesting critters.” In 2024, Cressy and Russo submitted a seven-minute video to the RI Nature Video Festival, and their entry received First Place in the People’s Choice Award category.

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

41

Deidre Scherer 67 AE Mother Holding Child, a work in thread on fabric

by Deidre Scherer 67 AE, was included in A Stitch in Time: Contemporary Textile & Fiber Art at Arts Benicia in the fall of 2024. “We associate fabric against our skins from birth through death, linking this visual work with a tactile connection,” Scherer writes, noting the piece contemplates the survival of women, children and families during violent and catastrophic events, either environmental or man-made.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1970s

DUCK STAMPS

Frank A. Stasiowski, FAIA BArch 70 After graduating from RISD, Frank A. Stasiowski, FAIA BArch 70 earned his MBA and founded PSMJ Resources, now the leading business practices consulting and training organization for the global architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. A prolific author, Stasiowski has written hundreds of articles and numerous books for architecture and engineering firm leaders, including his best-sellers The Value Pricing Imperative for Design Firms, Impact 2020 and Impact 2030.

Robert Steiner 71 AE Robert Steiner 71 AE has won more than 80 duck stamp competitions at the state and federal levels.

Duck stamps have raised over $1.1 billion dollars for conservation since their introduction in 1934.

More recently, Steiner broadened his subject matter to include landscapes and imaginative realism. His acrylic painting, Melting Masters, was exhibited in a curated triennial at the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2023–24.

Kathy Grove 71 PT In 2024, the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Chazen Museum exhibited a dozen photo-montage works from The Real Guerrillas Portfolio, a collaboration by Kathy Grove 71 PT and Petah Coyne, in the exhibition How Much a Heart Can Hold. It will travel next to the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY and the Lowe Art Museum of Art in Miami, FL.

Class Notes

THE ONLY MUSEUM IN FRANCE EXCLUSIVELY DEDICATED TO PRINTS AND DRAWINGS

Peter C. Millett 71 SC Built Forms, a retrospective exhibition of works by Peter C. Millett 71 SC, was on view at the Museum of Northwest Art in LaConner, WA from October 2024–January 2025.

Judith Rothchild 72 PT Judith Rothchild 72 PT is having a solo show at the Museum of Gravelines in the north of France through May 25, 2025. This is the only museum in France exclusively dedicated to prints and drawings and is situated in an 18th-century fortress. It will be a major retrospective with 80 mezzotints, 20 artist’s books and a number of large drawings and pastels.

Rothchild has been living and working in the south of France for 50 years.

RETROSPECTIVE

42

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1970s

Class Notes

Al P. De Angelo MFA 76 PT In fall 2024, Al P. De Angelo MFA 76 PT had a solo exhibition of recent surrealist paintings at the Copley Society of Art. His paintings aim to “transport the viewer into a sensual world of provocative beauty and serve as doorways to a compelling visual world.”

Eva Kwong 75 CR Passion Fruit by Eva Kwong 75 CR has been acquired by the Cincinnati Museum of Art. Billy Montella, Jr. MAE 75 Billy Montella, Jr. MAE 75 is an inducted member of the National Arts Club (NYC), the Salmagundi Club (NYC), and the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts.

Pamela Berkeley 76 PT Pamela Berkeley 76 PT was featured in Artful Mind’s March 2024 issue. The multiple-spread Q&A interview was featured on the magazine’s cover, and included several photographs of Berkeley’s work.

BIENNIAL EXHIBITION

43

Deborah G. Garber 77 PR Tetes-a-tetes, a large-format oil painting by Deborah G. Garber 77 PR, was selected for inclusion in True North at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, CA. The biennial exhibition ran through February 2025.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1970s

Continued

Class Notes

John P. Cobb 77 PT Works by John P. Cobb 77 PT, including 27 egg tempera and gold leaf icons in an enclosed superstructure and 20 small landscape works, were on view at the Valley House Gallery and Sculpture Garden in Dallas in fall 2024. The icons were begun in 1983 and just completed last year.

Karen Hackenberg 78 PT In December 2024, Tacoma Art Museum presented the solo exhibition Sea Change: The Art of Karen Hackenberg. This exhibition featured approximately 35 works by Karen Hackenberg 78 PT, including paintings and prints. The artwork focuses on manmade bits of detritus (plastic bottles, cans, toys) that the artist finds on the beaches near her home in Port Townsend, WA. The exhibition is on view through April 2025.

VALLEY HOUSE GALLERY AND SCULPTURE GARDEN

Carol Peligian 77 IL Last spring, Carol Peligian 77 IL presented multimedia work created over the last decade in an exhibition titled Shift and Lift at Atamian Hovsepian Curatorial Practice in New York. Works on paper, painting, sculpture and video were united by Peligian’s ongoing inquiry of individual desire and collective power and independently explored themes of the body, temporality, climate change and the feminine psyche.

44

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1970s

BASED ON A RECENT VISIT TO THE JUNGLE OF DARIÉN Class Notes

REPRESENTING PANAMA

45

Isabel De Obaldia 79 GD In 2024, Isabel De Obaldia 79 GD was selected as one of four artists to represent Panama in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia: Stranieri Ovunque / Foreigners Everywhere. Entitled Traces: On the Body and on the Land, the exhibition arose as a profound reflection on the enduring traces that migration leaves on individuals and their surroundings. De Obaldia presented an installation composed of a series of glass figures, sound effects and large-scale mixed media drawings based on a recent visit to the jungle of Darién, which crosses the border of Colombia and Panama. The “Darién Gap” is traversed each year by more than 500,000 men, women and children from all over the world who seek to reach the United States.

Rebecca Livermore MFA 83 GD Watercolor paintings by Rebecca Livermore MFA 83 GD were presented in a solo exhibition at Phillips Gallery in Salt Lake City from October–November 2024. Phillips Gallery, which opened nearly 60 years ago, represents artists working in a wide variety of media and styles and has represented Livermore since 2009. She lives in Salt Lake City, UT with her husband Dave, longtime Utah State Director for The Nature Conservancy. While Dave has protected Utah’s spectacular natural landscapes, Rebecca has painted them. Their daughter, Jenn Livermore MFA 18 GD, is a lead senior designer at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

FIRST SHOW

Lily Prince 84 PT In March–April 2024, Lily Prince 84 PT presented her first show with Exhibition 532 Gallery, which now represents her work. This fall, she had a solo show of works on view at Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, TN.

Class Notes

Julie Baer 82 PT Work by Julie Baer 82 PT and Stephanie Vecellio 13 IL was selected for the Community Canvas Initiative, sponsored by WGBH, Boston’s public media company. The works were displayed as part of WGBH’s Digital Mural above the Massachusetts Turnpike in Brighton. Additionally, their artwork was showcased at the station’s studio at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square during separate live tapings of WGBH News’ The Culture Show.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1980s

UTAH’S SPECTACULAR NATURAL LANDSCAPES

Michael G. Eder 85 PT Michael G. Eder 85 PT had his second solo exhibition of large abstract oil paintings at Hall Space Gallery in Boston from February–March 8, 2025.

46

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1980s

Class Notes

Paul F. Hebert, Sr. 85 GD Paul F. Hebert, Sr. 85 GD has created, designed and programmed Time Enforcers, a video game for kids and those who are kids at heart. Time Enforcers is a role-playing game and digital comic book that encourages players to learn about other civilizations, cultures and their historically significant impact on our lives.

Andrea Claire BArch 88 Sculptural lighting designer Andrea Claire BArch 88, through Andrea Claire Studio, launched a new collection of Cloudbreak chandeliers and sconces at Garde Shop NYC during NYCxDesign 2024.

25,600 LEDS AND 8 SURROUND SOUND SPEAKERS 47

Monica M. Nask 89 AP At last year’s opening reception for Beyond Horizons, an exhibition by Monica M. Nask 89 AP at the Oyster Point Hotel in Red Bank, NJ, the artist reunited with RIDS friends, classmates and roommates.

1990s

Mel L. Prest 91 PT K. Imperial Fine Art in San Francisco presented Looks Like a Flavor, a new collection of paintings by Mel L. Prest 91 PT, in November–December 2024. In her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Prest explored color and visual relationships through freehand lines and a carefully curated palette.

Anthony Fieldman BArch 93 Anthony Fieldman BArch 93 led the design, engineering, content creation and installation of the Empyrean Gate, a deployable 60-foot diameter, immersive light-and-sound installation composed of 25,600 LEDs and eight surround sound speakers.

It has made appearances at Burning Man 2022 and 2023, and regional burns unSCruz and Love Burn. James Scott 94 AR assisted in its design and construction.

GRANT WINNER

Continued Jules Sherman 94 ID Jules Sherman 94 ID is the Biodesign Program Director at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC (CNH). Last year she and her team from UMD Fischell Institute and The University of Oregon Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact won a Founder’s Auxiliary Grant from CNH to pursue a patent-pending project called “Trach SenseTM” a technology that can detect tracheotomy tube complications in pediatric patients. Sherman’s team presented a poster at the CNH Research Week in April 2024, and in collaboration with Georgetown University students developed a Trach SenseTM connected app for mobile monitoring.

Class Notes

Gabriela Fariña von Buchwald BGD 94 ¡Hola Perú!, an exhibition by Gabriela Fariña von Buchwald BGD 94, was designed to encourage the artist’s home country, Perú, “to value everything it has to offer, and show all the history of the Chinese, African, British, Italian, German and Japanese immigration.” The exhibition was on view through January 2025 at Palacio Municipal y de la Cultura de la Municipalidad de San Isidro.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1990s

Liz A. Einwiller MLA 94 Liz A. Einwiller MLA 94, founding partner of EinwillerKuehl Landscape Architecture, recently won the Architect’s Newspaper award for Best of Practice western region. A juror commended the firm for “approach[ing] its work with humility and a concern for health and relationships. The mix of intentional community and well-designed landscapes is something every firm should strive to achieve.”

Einwiller’s projects, including Township Commons at Brooklyn Basin, the Pleasant Hill Library and others, have won many awards, including the Architizer A+ Jury Winner and The AIA CA Urban Design Award.

Susan Brearey MFA 94 PT / PR Longtime friends Susan Brearey MFA 94 PT / PR and RISD Painting faculty member Duane Slick had their first exhibition together, The In Between, at the Brattleboro Art Museum and Art Center in Brattleboro, VT in the summer and fall of 2024.

LONGTIME FRIENDS

48

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1990s

Class Notes

Jeffrey R. Bye 94 IL A solo show of paintings by Jeffrey R. Bye 94 IL depicting areas of New York City along with interiors of abandoned buildings throughout the East Coast and the Midwest opened at the Art Association of Harrisburg, PA in fall 2024.

Justin Hai 98 ID Forbes Magazine recently featured Rebalance Health, spotlighting Justin Hai 98 ID, who serves as the company’s president and CEO. Rebalance Health makes menopausal care accessible to women.

FIRST SONG

Shani Schermerhorn Palladino 95 IL Shani Schermerhorn Palladino 95 IL released her first song, The Gift, in 2024. Schermerhorn describes it as “a song about the beauty and appreciation of an intangible gift, the gift of music.”

49

Kim A. West 98 PT Ode to Bohemia No. 5 (Inexhaustible Blooms) is a recently activated kinetic mural by Kim A. West 98 PT. The mural is made of 111,692 aluminum pieces that change reflective color throughout the day, flutter in the bay breezes and undulate the composition. Wrapping a four-sided, four-story 250' x 500' parking structure at Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters, the work was inspired by its surrounding environs.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1990s

Continued

Class Notes

MILESTONE ACHIEVEMENT Huckleberry Starnes 94 SC In August 2024, Huckleberry Starnes 94 SC celebrated 30 years of running his studio, Huckmade, in Atlanta, GA. Founded on woodworking and sculptural furniture, the studio now focuses on bespoke garments embroidered on a collection of antique hand controlled machines. Among his collection is a 100-year-old machine that he purchased during the pandemic. His work can be seen in films, commercials, music videos and on stage. Recent customers include Harley-Davidson, Nike, Disney, Stanley and Filson, and Starnes also makes custom jackets for the local high school.

FROM FURNITURE TO GARMENTS

50

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

1990s

Class Notes 51

RISD ROOTS Hana Kassem BArch 95 Hana Kassem BArch 95 has been elevated to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) 2024 College of Fellows. AIA Fellows are recognized with the AIA’s highest honor for their exceptional work and contributions to the field of architecture and to society.

Only three percent of AIA members have this distinction. Kassem was one of five women elevated in the Design category last year. “The education I had at RISD laid the foundation for my design path and the roots of my approach to architecture,” she says. “I always look back with gratitude towards my teachers and peers who made the experience what it was.”

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS 2024 COLLEGE OF FELLOWS

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2000s

Robert Geller 01 AP Robert Geller 01 AP was recently named head of menswear design at the New York-based fashion company rag & bone. In December 2023, he showed a curated selection at a rag & bone meet-and-greet and show at Seaport Boston.

Class Notes

Drew E. Katz 01 ID Drew E. Katz 01 ID had 11 aerial photographs featured at the Boston Children’s Museum in their second-floor gallery space. The framed works were surrounded by an interactive exhibit designed for children, in collaboration with the wonderful museum exhibitions design team. The solo show ran April–September 2024.

LOUIE AWARDS RECOGNIZE INDIGENOUS MAKER OF NOTE

Cynthia C. Farnell MFA 01 PH Cynthia Farnell Projects (CFP) is a new Atlanta gallery focusing on sculpture and works on paper.

Headquartered at the home of Cynthia C. Farnell MFA 01 PH, CFP’s premiere exhibition, Equinox Autumn 24, opened in September 2024, during Atlanta Art Week and the Atlanta Art Fair. Among the participating artists in the studio’s opening exhibition were Frank F. Poor MFA 92 SC, Blaise Dell 18 SC and Serena Perrone MFA 06 PR. Farnell says, “I’ve been thinking about opening my own space for a while now, and it all came together in the casual vibe of my garden. Atlanta combines a temperate climate with a dynamic sculpture scene creating perfect conditions for a gallery concentrating on outdoor work.”

Brigida M. Swanson 02 PT In 2024, Brigida M. Swanson 02 PT was selected as the inaugural Indigenous Maker of Note in the national Greeting Card Association’s 2024 annual Louie Awards. She is the founder of Yardia, a stationery and home goods company.

52

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2000s

SILVER IN THE 2025 GRAPHIS POSTER COMPETITION

David Sieren 02 GD David Sieren 02 GD served as one of nine jury members for the Communication Arts 2024 Design Competition, reviewing over 3,000 design projects from the international creative community. His poster series, You Create Tomorrow, won a silver award in the 2025 Graphis Poster Competition.

Class Notes

Kelly Salchow MacArthur MFA 03 GD In 2024, Kelly Salchow MacArthur MFA 03 GD was accepted for the second time to the Olympian Artist Program, which allows Olympians and Paralympians to share their experiences as athletes and artists on a global platform. MacArthur was an artist-in-residence and worked with Parisian children on a collage project showcasing Olympic values. She competed with the US National Women’s Rowing Team at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia in 2000, and in Athens, Greece in 2004, placing fifth both times. She’s now a professor of graphic design at Michigan State University.

53

OLYMPIAN ARTIST

Emily M. Kalina 03 IL Emily M. Kalina 03 IL was recently featured on Makers Way, a video series that highlights New England-based makers and their products.

The episode included a focus on Kalina and the way she creates her work by painting on an iPad in the same manner she would on canvas, as well as her recovery from a debilitating seizure disorder, including the experience of a grand mal seizure during her RISD graduation processional, with help from a cutting-edge brain implant.

Katie L. Rosenblatt 04 JM Katie L. Rosenblatt 04 JM has been making jewelry from her home studio and recently picked up her watercolors and chalk pastels again. During the day, Rosenblatt works at an elementary school in a special needs classroom. She and her son live in Northampton, MA.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2000s

Continued

Bradley Wood 08 PT Jane Lombard Gallery showed work by Bradley Wood 08 PT at Untitled Art Fair in Miami in December 2024.

Class Notes

Anthony R. Acciavatti BArch 04 Anthony R. Acciavatti BArch 04 was awarded the Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize (2024–25) at the American Academy in Rome. He worked on his third book, titled Groundwater Earth: The World Before and After the Tubewell. Anthony was also awarded a Senior Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) to undertake research in South Asia on how groundwater extraction has changed cities and farms.

GILMORE D. CLARKE AND MICHAEL RAPUANO/ KATE LANCASTER BREWSTER ROME PRIZE (2024–2025)

Richard Haining, Jr. 05 FD Richard Haining, Jr. 05 FD was selected by The Brooklyn Museum for inclusion in the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition that ran from October 2024–January 2025. He showed STACKED Vessel, made of California redwood salvaged from decommissioned NYC water towers.

Aaron Zulpo 08 IL Aaron Zulpo 08 IL had his second solo exhibition, California Deserts, at 1969 Gallery in New York City.

Following his relocation to California, Zulpo’s interest in landscape painting has expanded and become a pivotal aspect of his studio practice.

THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM

54

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2000s

Class Notes

“It’s of unprecedented significance that our anthology of Africandirected films has been recognized in this way.”

Ng’endo M. Mukii

“BEST TV/ MEDIA – LIMITED SERIES” AT THE 51ST ANNIE AWARDS (2024)

55

ANNIE AWARDS Ng’endo M. Mukii 06 FAV Animator Ng’endo M. Mukii 06 FAV won the 2024 Annie Award for Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire.

The Annie Awards, presented by ASIFA-Hollywood, is the ultimate recognition in animation. Mukii wrote and directed Enkai, which is part of Disney’s Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire anthology of all-African animated films. Mukii is pictured above at the awards ceremony with producer Ellen Collins (left).

Since the launch of the Kizazi Moto anthology on Disney+ in June 2023, Enkai has been screened in several prestigious film festivals around the world and nominated for numerous awards.

The series has received critical acclaim setting new standards for animated productions globally.

The series achieved a significant milestone by winning the Best TV/Media – Limited Series at the 51st Annie Awards (2024), with Enkai representing the Kizazi Moto anthology. “It’s of unprecedented significance that our anthology of African-directed films has been recognized in this way,” says Mukii.

“The Annies are animation’s highest honor!”

2000s

Continued

“THE ARTISTS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW”

Melissa Joseph MAT 08 Xin Liu MFA 15 DM Melissa Joseph MAT 08 and Xin Liu MFA 15 DM were named “The Artists to Know Right Now”

by The Artsy Vanguard 2025.

SESAME STREET WIN Yong Joo Kim MFA 09 JM Yong Joo Kim MFA 09 JM was a recipient of the 2024 “Metalwork & Jewelry Award,” hosted by Korea Zinc. The award ceremony took place in December 2024 at the Insa Art Center in Seoul, South Korea.

Following the ceremony, an exhibition showcased the winning artists’ major works. The award recognizes two outstanding Korean metalwork and jewelry artists under the age of 45.

“METALWORK & JEWELRY AWARD”

Laura Manns 09 IL Laura Manns 09 IL celebrated her first Emmy win along with the Sesame Street creative team at the 2nd annual Children’s & Family Emmys in 2023.

They won in the brand new category of Outstanding Puppet Design and Styling. This year, she won her second Emmy at the 3rd Children’s & Family Emmys for Outstanding Costume Design and Styling for Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock. Manns is a senior builder at the Jim Henson Company and has contributed to 11 seasons of Sesame Street as a puppet prop artist, and made 25 new Fraggle puppets with her coworkers for both seasons of Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock.

56

2010s Kelly C. Knapp MLA 10 Beginning in early 2020, Kelly C. Knapp MLA 10 began working as the senior art director for Sphere Entertainment Co, working on Sphere Las Vegas.

While at Sphere she creatively led, conceived of and developed a wide range of creative projects from show design and digital content to the interior design of the building, robotics and more. Knapp’s work spans show design and immersive environments, often merging tech (digital content, robotics, drones, interactivity) with the built environment.

She is currently working with a small team to conceive and develop the experiential and entertainment layers of a large-scale, internationally-based project.

Karen Y. Popa 10 ID Karen Y. Popa 10 ID was promoted last year to creative director at Overland, a boutique event production company. She writes that “the latest thrilling thing I designed was the red carpet for the Tony Awards.”

Paige KB 11 PR In September 2024, the Armory Show’s Gramercy International Prize was awarded to New York gallery Blade Study, co-directed by Ian Glover 12 IL, which presented a solo booth by Paige KB 11 PR. KB’s installation, VERY BEAUTIFUL IMAGES WITH QUITE A BIT OF CONCERNING TEXT LAID OVER THE ARTWORK, explored the critical relationships between source and reproduction, text and image, past and present, craft and technology.

“OUTSTANDING PUPPET DESIGN AND STYLING”

57

Antonia Caicedo 15 IA Antonia Caicedo 15 IA, design director and vice president for Jimeco/Antonia Collection, partnered with Cabot House to carry her new furniture collection. Caicedo’s line launched at the Cabot House Furniture showroom in Framingham, MA in September 2024.

AWARDED A $50,000 INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTIAL ART AND HUMANITIES FELLOWSHIP

Allison (Aj) Baker MFA 15 SC Allison (Aj) Baker MFA 15 SC, associate professor at the Herron School of Art and Design, was recently awarded a $50,000 Indiana University Presidential Art and Humanities Fellowship for academic year 2024–25. With support from the Fellowship, Baker will construct a body of work and monumental public sculptures that memorialize the complexities of late-stage capitalism, illuminating the aspirations and struggles of the American working class and working poor.

Class Notes

Falon Mihalic MLA 12 Abandoned Garden by Falon Mihalic MLA 12 was included in the Meow Wolf Houston’s indoor project Radio Tave. Incorporating painting, porcelain ceramics fired with colorful glaze, and photographs of native Houston plants, the work was inspired by all the major storms the artist survived during a childhood in the Florida panhandle. Meow Wolf collective was co-founded by Sean D. Di Ianni 07 SC.

Xin Xin 12 FAV A year and a half ago, Xin Xin 12 FAV quit a full-time job to start their own company. They just launched their first product called Spellphabet, an app that teaches young kids spelling, phonetics and sight reading. Xin’s hand-painted watercolors illustrate the game, whose development required skills from illustration, animation and design. Spellphabet originated during a weekend Xin spent working with friends at the annual Global Game Jam.

Emily Ann Hoffman 15 IL Emily Ann Hoffman 15 IL was recently recognized with a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Video/Film. A multidisciplinary filmmaker, animator, artist and professor, Hoffman has screened films at numerous festivals, including Sundance, SXSW and Slamdance, which have earned her Oscarqualifying awards.

Sameer Farooq MFA 14 GD Sameer Farooq MFA 14 GD presented three shows in fall 2024: Flatbread Library at Toronto Biennial of Art in collaboration with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre; Gandhara at Biennal Jaou Tunis in Tunisia; and Sameer Farooq: The Fairest Order in the World at McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario.

The NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship makes unrestricted cash grants of $8,000 to New York Statebased artists working in 15 disciplines, recognizing five disciplines per year on a triennial basis. This program is administered by New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), with leadership support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

THEY JUST LAUNCHED SPELLPHABET

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2010s

58

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

NOW STREAMING ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL

2010s

marion eames white 15 TX The Poetry Foundation named marion eames white 15 TX one of their 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows.

Class Notes

Hanna Cha 17 IL Hanna Cha 17 IL was named a 2024 Caldecott Honor Winner for her illustrations in The Truth About Dragons.

The children’s book, written by Julie Leung, was also the winner of the Asian-Pacific American Award for Literature 2024 and named a School Library Journal Best Book of 2023.

YOUNG GUNS 22 WINNER

Elizabeth Goodspeed 16 GD Elizabeth Goodspeed 16 GD was recently named one of the winners of Young Guns 22, a portfolio competition for creative professionals 30 years of age and under.

59

Eloise Sherrid 16 FAV A short documentary film by Eloise Sherrid 16 FAV and Lauryn E. Welch 15 PT, The Body is a House of Familiar Rooms, aired on PBS and is now streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Andrew D. Pick MFA 16 FD Andrew D. Pick MFA 16 FD writes, “A few years after meeting my partner in Vancouver, Canada, we moved to Seattle and recently got married on July 26, 2024.”

Zharia D. Shinn 18 IL Zharia D. Shinn 18 IL exhibited her paper collages at ThirdSpace in Brooklyn in The Possibilities of Paper, a show that ran from November–December 2024. Shinn also created the artwork for the poster of the Broadway show A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical and The New York Times bestseller The Black Friend by Frederick Joseph.

Continued

FOCUS ON THE COLOR BLUE

2020s

Class Notes

Renee Yu Jin 18 SC Renee Yu Jin 18 SC had a solo show I’m Rooted, but I Flow at Santo Hall in Beijing, China in fall 2024.

The exhibition included sculptures, installations and drawings that “explored the paradox of rootedness and fluidity,” Jin writes, reflecting her crosscultural experiences between China and the US.

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2010s

Eli Kauffman 22 PT Eli Kauffman 22 PT created the site-specific exhibition Wheel of Fortune for the Providence Public Library. Funded by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the August–November 2024 exhibition featured life-sized paintings whose subject was young adulthood. In the fall of 2024, Kauffman curated the group exhibition Submerged at Small Format Gallery in Providence. All the participating artists were asked to focus on the color blue.

Nick Adam MFA 18 GD The November/December 2024 issue of Communication Arts opened with an eight-page feature on Span, the design studio led by Nick Adam MFA 18 GD and his business partners. The in-depth article highlights Span’s collaborative approach, which fuses strategic insight with dynamic, interactive brand identities across digital, environmental, social and print platforms, focusing on nine recent projects.

Qualeasha Wood 19 PR Qualeasha Wood 19 PR was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Art & Style list for 2025, noted for her elaborate machine-woven tapestries that mesh conventional craft-making with contemporary themes and materials. In addition, Wood, Paige KB 11 PR and Leyla Faye 17 PT were named to CULTURED’s 2024 Young Artist list.

The publication described the artists’ work as “bursting with idiosyncrasy, curiosity and gumption— all necessary ingredients for great art.”

FORBES 30 UNDER 30 ART & STYLE

Maris Van Vlack 23 TX In fall 2024, Maris Van Vlack 23 TX presented a solo show, Time Warp, at Superhouse in New York City.

Van Vlack uses family history and old photographs to build woven landscapes that bring distant memories to the present.

60

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

2020s

Exhibition A large group exhibition featuring numerous RISD alumni was on view at R & Company in New York City, September 2024–January 2025.

Through nearly 100 objects by 55 visionary makers, the major survey exhibition, Objects USA 24, challenged traditionally understood boundaries between fine art, craft and design and captured the diversity of individuals propelling handmade processes in compelling new directions. Many of the featured works defied easy categorization, teetering between sculpture and functional furniture and between art objects and beautifully crafted everyday tools.

2024 REBECCA BLUNK FUND AWARD WINNER

The exhibition included RISD alumni:

Class Notes

Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos MA 23 GAC The New England Foundation for the Arts announced that Shey ‘Rí Acu’ Rivera Ríos MA 23 GAC is one of two recipients of the 2024 Rebecca Blunk Fund award. The Fund awards annual unrestricted grants to New England artists whose work demonstrates creative excellence and deep community engagement.

Seoyoung Kim 23 PT Seoyoung Kim 23 PT launched Site, an experience and curation service located in Brooklyn, NY, in 2024. Site hosted a 16-artist show in February 2024, a three-person show at Brooklyn Fire Proof / Studio 104 in May and a one-night show featuring seven artists called Winter Solstice on December 20, 2024. Alumni including Soeun Bae 23 SC, Seoyoung Kim 23 PT and Soo Park 24 SC have participated as artists and curators.

MALLORY WESTON MFA 13

JM

17 FD JOYCE LIN

JOLIE NGO 20 CR SZ MFA 07 GL MATTHEW SZÖ CR FA 17 JOR M A M A ANIN

WALLY DIO N MFA

MISHA

13 PT

FD KAHN 11

KATIE STOU T 12 F D

JM MJ TYSON 08

18 SC AKES O N BRIA

2024 PAUL & DAISY SOROS FELLOWSHIP FOR NEW AMERICANS

STEVEN KP M FA 20

Leslie A. Ponce-Díaz BArch 23 Leslie A. Ponce-Díaz BArch 23 was awarded a 2024 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

One of 30 awardees chosen from a pool of more than 2,300 applicants, Ponce-Díaz is the child of Mexican immigrants. She will use the funding for her MArch II at Harvard University.

61

/ MFA 17 JM

AW PAULINE SH

11 SC

CARL D’ALVIA 87 ANN E

LIBB Y

JM

SC

09 P T

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Books Check out these new reads from RISD alumni authors and illustrators.

FEATURED FIRST-TIME AUTHOR: GREG FOLEY 91 AP

Barbara A. Shafer 64 SC This is My Name, and I want to write it down before I forget it

Mumtaz Mustafa 01 GD with co-author Laura Klynstra Gather & Graze: Globally Inspired Small Bites and Gorgeous Table Scapes for Every Occasion

Bonnie Kelso 92 PR wrote and illustrated Wonder of the Woods

Rory Lucey MAT 09 wrote and illustrated SCRAM: Society of Creatures Real and Magical

Ted DiLucia , Jr. 12 FAV illustrated The Washingtonians

Books

Angela Riechers 84 IL The Elements of Visual Grammar

Jodi Levine 92 PT and Margaret McCartney 91 IL Mousetown

Susie Ghahremani 02 IL Memory Garden

Dex Dingo: World’s Best Greatest Ever Inventor is the debut graphic novel by Foley. Published in September 2024 by Disney Hyperion Books, Dex Dingo was three years in the making. The story is about a fourth-grade dingo who wants to be the “World’s Best Greatest Ever...at something.” So when Dex’s teacher asks, “If you could be anything when you grow up, what would you be?” Dex decides that he’s going to be the best at one of the “best jobs ever.”

Dex is able to create an awesome lab and an amazing team of nanobots, but things immediately go wrong when the nanobots start to multiply and form a gray goo that threatens to take over his neighborhood. It’ll take some quick thinking and a rogue nanobot named Nono for Dex to stop the nanobots, save his best friend and become the WORLD’S BEST GREATEST INVENTOR. Kirkus Reviews describes the book as “Strega Nona meets the Singularity in this zany comic....[E]nergetic illustrations and off-the-wall story brim with action and humor; kids will be eager for more of Dex. Frenetic, funny, fantastic, relatable— this dingo is a wild dog!”

Franklin Einspruch 90 IL edited a foreword and afterword for Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art

Stephanie L. Milanowski 90 GD The World’s Smallest Letterpress Shop: a not-soordinary day!

Xinye Lin MArch 18 Artful Awakening– Multisensory Art Meditation

Diane L. Lennea 93 PH under the pen name Zana K. Elin You Got No Guts: Vision Quest for Nontoxic Schools Katy K. Horan 03 IL The Illustrated Book of Murder Ballads

Randy P. Cecil 94 PT wrote and illustrated The Spaceman

Jessica Bugg MA 21 NCSS You Had to Be There: Thoughts on Ecological Grief in the Anthropocene Kay D. Hutchison 04 IL Go with the Flo Paris Stickers

62

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine In Memoriam 63

In Memoriam Alumni

Faculty

Violet Roysten McCluskey Reilly 46 IL Ruth Sailor Lee 49 AP Peter Yang 50 ID Sylvia Maynard Elder 51 TX Edward Rooney 52 IL Virginia Woods Kuhl 53 PT Peggy Boyd Sharpe 53 LA / P 94 Dottie Zeiger Frontiero 55* FD Johannes Von Gumppenberg 55 IL Elisa Tufenkjian Khachian 57 AE Ursula Miskolczy Rowan 58* BIA Esteruth Feldman Rumpler 59 TX / BArch 84 / P 91 Benjamin Wheeler 59* IL Joanna Miller Jacobus 60 AP Robert Vaslet 60 MD John “Fudd” Everett Benson 61 SC / HD 85 / P 05 Don Hughlett 61 IA Mary Virginia “MV” Illig Dye 63 PT Dana Newbrook 63 AR, Emerita Trustee Roberta Van Der Molen 64 IL Patricia “Pat” White 64 IL / P 96, Emerita Trustee Patricia Allen 65 AE Dave Joy BArch 65 Martin Mull 65 PT / MFA 67 PT Rick Shnitzler 65 AR George M. Woolsey 65 PT Elizabeth Emeny Renkert 66* William M. Beutel BArch 69 Toby Williams 69 SC Dorothy Allen Mazeau BArch 71 Elizabeth Shreve 71 PT Ann Douden 72 IL Gary Niswonger MFA 72 PT Bruce Hendler BLA 73 Andrea Sears 74 SC Catherine West 75 IL Susan Ekahn 77 AP Lynn Bobowick 78 PT William “Nim” MacFadyen 78 PT Jeffrey Beers BArch 79 Mary Louise Pierson 81 IL Jan Yager MFA 81 JM Jackie DiPrete Zannini BArch 81 Angel Smith 82 TX Liza Kenny Cox 85 PT John Beadle 89 PT Traci Hillebrecht BArch 89 Melissa Morrill Apostolides 91 PT Christine Shaughnessy 93 PT

Jonathan Bonner MFA 73 SC Baruch D. Kirschenbaum Friedrich St. Florian Staff Hope Alswang Serena Livingston Alan Tracy

In Memoriam is a list of RISD alumni, faculty, staff and friends who recently passed. Visit https://alumni.risd.edu/in-memory to access remembrance posts and obituaries, where available. To submit a memory, visit https://alumni.risd.edu/form-selection.

JAZZMEN LEEJOHNSON 08 FAV

RISD Alumni + Friends Magazine

Studio Visit

Studio Visit Image by Adam Mastoon

My studio is in Atlantic Mills, at the Warp Collective in Providence. Eight artists work here. We each have our own little bay, with shared space for printmaking, weaving, spreading things out. This is one of the last mill spaces in Providence occupied mostly by artists, nonprofits, entrepreneurs and a flea market. It’s a really important space for the community, and it’s currently under threat of sale to a developer.

Kara Walker MFA 94 PT / PR HD 06 used to have a studio across the hall, so I feel like there’s good juju here, good vibes. It’s generational energy.

Edited and condensed from a conversation with Jen Liese, Director, RISD’s Center for Arts & Language. Find a longer narrative at https://alumni.risd.edu/Jazzmen-Lee-Johnson.

64

RISD Club of the Gulf Region RISD alumni and friends gathered at the Museum of Modern Arts in Kuwait City on January 18, 2025 for a keynote lecture by printmaker, installation artist and RISD Architecture Professor Gabriel Feld.

Hosted by the RISD Club of the Gulf Region, the event helped close out the second annual TIBA’A Creative Printmaking Conference, a two-week celebration of printmaking in all its forms founded

by Jawaher Al-Bader BArch 98.

Organized around the theme “oasis,” referring to the way the printing studio can be a meeting place and a sanctuary for creativity, collaboration and learning, the conference included hands-on printmaking workshops, lectures, exhibitions and networking opportunities. The Club of the Gulf Region, which brings together alumni from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, is led by Anika Azad 97 GD (Gulf Region/UAE) and Dr. Al-Bader (Gulf Region/Kuwait).

All RISD alumni clubs and groups welcome alumni and students with interest or affiliation regardless of race, ethnicity, orientation, gender expression and identity, cultural background or regional location. Are you interested in starting a regional club in your area? Please email alumni@risd.edu to get started.

RISD Fund When you give to the RISD Fund, you fuel: • Boundless curiosity • Creative problem-solving • Impact that transforms our world Make something big!

Make your unrestricted gift to the RISD Fund today! risd.edu/magazine-spring25

Photo by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH

Rhode Island School of Design 20 Washington Place Providence, RI 02903

The North American cowboy boot is a symbol of individualism—blending design, making, function and fashion—and construction techniques have remained unchanged since the late 1800s. Wintersession students in The Cowboy Boot, taught by Apparel Critic Sarah Guerin BArch 99, measured their feet, adapted boot lasts, created uppers and assembled the boots, resulting in bespoke leather footwear. Guerin sees this course as part of a lifelong culmination of her degree project as an architecture student in the ‘90s, which questioned the artisan’s place in contemporary society. Work and photo by Daniel Park MID 26.