RISD XYZ Fall/Winter 2019/20

fall/winter 2019/20 rhode island school of design

// navigating the unknown

inside

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fall/winter 2019/20

FEATURES

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Shaping Our Future

The Matter of Making

Building on RISD’s mission and strong roots, we’re reassessing everything we do so that students can flourish in a world of uncertainty.

For artists and designers, material isn’t just what we work with, it’s what we live in and think through.

DEPARTMENTS

// 06 // 02 comments online, incoming, ongoing

// 06 listen reflections, opinions, points of view

// 40 // 08 look

• considering liberty for all • natural responses • designed for better living • exploring new worlds

// 36 campus news re: faculty, studios, initiatives

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Exploring Extremes in Iceland

Contested Places Environmentalist Bill McKibben (a RISD honorary degree recipient) sees urgent messages in alum David Benjamin Sherry’s disruptive landscape photographs.

Alumni Michael Lye and Daniel Leeb teamed up to lead a summer 2019 expedition to advance space research here on Earth.

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// 70 unravel our major abbreviations

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// 50 impact

// 56 looking back

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who’s giving to risd + why

changes over time

graduate class notes + profiles

// 52 six degrees connecting through the alumni association

// 58 moving forward undergraduate class notes + profiles

moving forward

// 96 sketchbook sketches, doodles, ideas in progress

start here

// thoughts from RISD’s president

Next for RISD Empowered with the gifts of questioning, making and communicating, the RISD community is ready to address urgent global challenges at the intersection of justice, innovation and sustainability. NEXT: RISD 2020–2027, the new strategic plan we have launched this year, sets a clear direction for our community in anticipation of RISD’s 150th anniversary.

In this and upcoming issues of the magazine you will learn more about our plans to support faculty and their teaching practices, advance equity and inclusion, expand our research capacity and output, prioritize health and wellness for our community and much more—all while working to impact global issues of social and environmental justice.

As RISD’s president, I am proud of the values we articulate in our strategic plan—values that will guide how we use our resources to support our ambitions.

President Rosanne Somerson

This detail of an image from Crystal Landscapes (2019) by Maria Constanza Ferreira 17 FAV/GD (see also page 85) reveals the kaleidoscopic “paintings” found in synthetic crystals. After discovering the allure of chemical crystallography at the Nature Lab, she’s now pursuing a residency with the Kahr Research Group in the Chemistry Department at New York University.

E D ITOR / LEAD WR ITE R

comments

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Liisa Silander lsilande@risd.edu LEAD D E S I G N E R / PR OD U CTI ON COOR D I NATOR

Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD WR ITE R S /COPY E D ITOR S

Robert Albanese Simone Solondz

RESPONDING TO SPRING I’ve just received the latest beautiful issue of RISD XYZ. The magazine seems to keep getting better with every issue! My congratulations to you and your team.

CONTR I B UTOR S

Jessica Walsh 08 GD pages 6–7 Rosanne Somerson pages 16–19

spring/summer 2019 rhode island school of design

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Kent Kleinman pages 20–25 Bill McKibben pages 32–35

Missing Credits

Leora Maltz-Leca pages 48–49

My wife and I enjoy reading the XYZ magazine. Superb publication and we thank you for that.

However, we were somewhat dismayed when seeing the Considering Chairs article (page 45) that no credit was given to those students whose work was used in that piece. They work extremely hard and if that work is deemed worthy of inclusion in an article, they deserve recognition for that. Perhaps an addendum can be made in the next issue?

Christy Blanchard pages 51 + 54 George Lange 78 PH pages 62–63 David T. Hanson MFA 83 PH page 88 Sonya Sklaroff 92 PT pages 96–97 PH OTO I LLU STRATI ON S

Jordan Gushwa pages 16–18 FR ONT + BACK COVE R S

photos by Daniel Leeb 00 FAV see more on pages 26–31

Inspiring BTW, the recent XYZ magazine is inspiring.

I’m soon to be 70 so Maurice Burns 72 PT (pages 34–41) and Alden Cole 66 AP (62)—their philosophies, work ethic, work and spaces—were powerful and meaningful to me.

Amazing stories. THANK YOU. MJ Viano Crowe MFA 81 PH Belfast, ME

E X E CUTIVE D I R E CTOR OF ALU M N I R E LATI ON S

Christina Hartley 74 IL PR I NTI N G

Lane Press, Burlington, VT F ONTS

Quiosco designed by Cyrus Highsmith 97 GD and Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk R I S D XYZ

Two College Street Providence, RI 02903-2784 USA risdxyz@risd.edu risd.edu/xyz Published twice a year by RISD Media (in conjunction with Alumni Relations) AD D R E S S U P DATE S

Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Advancement Services RISD, Two College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA

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David T. Hanson MFA 83 PH Fairfield, IA

Received RISD XYZ today. Loved the shocking cover, plus the nicely designed first spread with Start Here, your comments about Finding Freedom. Thanks for including me; I’m a natural for such a theme.

Now to devour the whole beautiful issue, which I scanned quickly when it arrived.

Looking forward to reading the article on Maurice Burns 72 PT, whose art is “awesome” (to use an overused—but nevertheless accurate—term for his work). Right ON! Alden Cole 66 AP Philadelphia, PA

Dave and Cathy Doctor Woodstock, CT

Editor’s note: Agreed, students work incredibly hard at RISD and deserve recognition for what they do. Often we run so many images in such a small amount of space that it’s impossible to fit as much type as is needed to tell the full story. The designers of the three chairs shown again here are (clockwise from left) Jeff Shen 19 ID, Benjamin Doctor 21 TX and Juan Pablo Gutierrez MFA 19 ID.

You shouldn’t know where you’ll end up on the basis of where you start.

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, a new assistant professor of Photography (see also page 46)

More Mitski

Biodegradable but Well-Preserved

I saw the Channeling Mitski piece in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue and thought it would be fun to mention that another RISD alum helped create this photo illustration (above) for the NPR piece that’s being quoted.

We’re everywhere!

RISD Archives is delighted to have received an intact 1974 design diploma from Diane Howley 74 TX , who had stored a framed version of the giant cookie in her attic for 30 years and passed it along to RISD before relocating to Arizona. “We have another ’74 design diploma,” reports archivist Douglas Doe, but unsurprisingly, “it’s in pieces.”

Students first started the Design Diploma tradition in 1970—the same year the graduation ceremony was almost cancelled due to national student strikes against the Vietnam War. Instead, an informal ceremony was held on the grounds at Woods-Gerry and graduates received both a student-produced and a more official RISD diploma, a practice that continues to this day.

Designed by Lisa (Serotta) Carrino 74 SC —who started her first professional cookie business at age 10 and sold her baked goods in the dorms when she was at RISD — the memorable 1974 Design Diploma is made of bona fide gingerbread, molded into a 10 x 16" bas relief sculpture.

Fellow students helped the Sculpture major bake 500 of these edible diplomas in the Foundry’s burnout kiln.

And for Carrino and her husband, their lifelong passion for baking continues through their Round House Bakery at Pompanuck Farm in Cambridge, NY.

Angela Hsieh 17 IL NPR staff illustrator Washington, DC

Commencement al Fresco I was reading back through the spring/summer XYZ. In Looking Back (page 59), upper right: “..., Commencement used to be held outdoors—on the lawn behind Woods-Gerry.”

I believe that should be: on the lawn behind Nickerson Hall. I was a student from 1962–68 and our graduation was on the Nickerson Green (if it was titled that). I was likely not on campus for ones prior to that, but my wife graduated there in 1969.

And thanks. XYZ is certainly a major vehicle and success for RISD. Bill Newkirk 68 GD Providence, RI

Editor’s note: As it turns out, the outdoor tradition continued into the 1970s, when Commencement was held on the grounds of WoodsGerry shortly after students and faculty saved the mansion from planned demolition.

Please let us know what you think — about this issue or anything else on your mind: email risdxyz@risd.edu.

Somehow it’s just nice to wake up—before I’m fully awake—and listen to pre-culture stuff.

Korakrit Arunanondchai 09 PR on listening to audio books about the ancient Gobekli Tepe temple (The New York Times,11.11.19)

The freedom that comes with running your own studio is the opposite of job security. multidisciplinary artist Liz Collins 91 TX/MFA 99 (see also page 15) speaking to students at RISD (11.18.19)

The artwork becomes a type of medicine for the community.

Jess X. Snow 13 FAV speaking about a mural of queer women of color completed in Providence last summer (Hyperallergic, 8.6.19)

I’ve never come across people like RISD students. They blow my mind every single day.

Anastasiia Raina, a new assistant professor of Graphic Design (see also page 46)

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CONFLICTS OF INTEREST On July 19, 2019, alums Korakrit Arunanondchai 09 PR and Nicole Eisenman 87 PT (see also pages 48–49) and two other artists sent the following letter to Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, co-curators of the most recent Whitney Biennial. Four more artists with work in the exhibition signed on the next day.

We respectfully ask you to withdraw our work from the Whitney Biennial for the remainder of the show. This request is intended as condemnation of Warren Kanders’ continued presence as vice chair of the Board….

We care deeply about the Whitney. Over the years, many shows at the museum have inspired and informed our art. We were angry when we learned of Kanders’ role as CEO of Safariland, a company that manufactures tear gas and other weapons of repression. At the time, we had already accepted your invitation to participate in the Whitney Biennial and

Art and design courses for credit and professional advancement

some of us were well into fabrication of major pieces for this show. We found ourselves in a difficult position: withdraw in protest or stay and abide a conflicted conscience. We decided to participate.

But the museum’s continued failure to respond in any meaningful way to growing pressure from artists and activists has made our participation untenable. The museum’s inertia has turned the screw, and we refuse further complicity with Kanders and his technologies of violence….

Before the work of these artists was withdrawn from the biennial, Kanders resigned on July 25 and his wife Allison simultaneously left the Whitney’s painting and sculpture committee.

6-week and 2-week sessions

June 22 – July 31

RISD alumni tuition discounts

summer.risd.edu 04

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Rhode Island School of Design

6-week summer program for high school juniors and seniors

June 20 – August 1

PreCollege Art school before art school

precollege.risd.edu

Scratching Out a Living In October The New York Times began publishing Scratch, a new biweekly column in the Business section illustrated and handwritten by Julia Rothman 02 IL , with reporting by Shaina Feinberg. The two focus on finance-related human interest stories “about people who don’t usually get their stories told,” as Rothman puts it.

In its first few columns, Scratch offered a window into the economics of being a drag queen, opening a coffee shop and working as a fishmonger on the docks in New Orleans.

The fresh approach brings personality and welcomed warmth to the calculated world of finance.

Feedback welcomed at risdxyz@risd.edu.

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listen

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// reflections, opinions, points of view

TAKING THE LEAP

by Jessica Walsh 08 GD

AS I LAU NCH MY CR EATIVE AG E NCY &WALS H , I am over-

whelmed with emotion: elation that this is finally happening, exhaustion from the nonstop work that brought me to this point— and an anxious excitement about what’s next.

I’m also overwhelmed with gratitude since very few women make it to creative leadership positions and even fewer have founded their own creative agencies.

The lack of representation in leadership and the pay gap for

women and nonbinary people have been a focus of mine through Ladies, Wine & Design, a nonprofit initiative born out of personal experiences with sexism in the design industry, not only from men but from other women. I find that sometimes women are unsupportive of one another, possibly because our chances of reaching the top are much slimmer than for men.

The numbers say it all: 70% of design students are women, but only 5–11% of creative director positions are held by women. Only .1% of creative agencies are womenowned. POINT. ONE. PERCENT. How does this make any sense when women drive about 80% of consumer purchasing? Diversity in leadership at agencies drives profit.

In addition to the leadership gap, there is still a pay gap for women and an even larger gap for women of color. All too often feminism only champions equality for white, cisgender, straight women instead of everyone—no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, age or physical ability.

While we’re living in divisive times, it’s exciting to see younger generations breaking down traditional ideas of gender, beauty, relationships, work culture, etc., towards a future that is more fluid, genderless and accepting of all humans as we are. My dream for our industry is to see much more representation at the top. This will not only make our work stronger and more inclusive, it will make the creative process function better.

As women, we are constantly told what we can or cannot do. At every step of the way, forces tried to tell me “I couldn’t” or “I wouldn’t.” An elementary school teacher once told my parents I was too fearful and introverted, and would never make it in the world.

When I was suffering from severe depression and eating disorders as a teenager, a woman in the hospital told me she could tell I would never recover.

Even when we achieve success, our legitimacy is doubted. When I became a partner in Sagmeister & Walsh at 25, many men and women said (publicly!) that I only got the position because I slept with Stefan.

Can you imagine them saying that about a man? Then, as a partner, I was ignored and talked down to by older men in more meetings than I care to remember.

On top of external forces, sometimes we try to stop ourselves. I suffered from severe self-hate and selfdoubt in the beginning. I could never have imagined in my earlier years fighting mental health issues that I would one day find joy and passion and purpose, let alone success and the ability to really love myself and my life. Early in my career, I had so many moments

70% of design students are women, but… only .1% of creative agencies are women-owned. POINT. ONE . PERCENT. BATTLI NG S E LF-DOU BT

I’m definitely privileged—white and cisgender in a heteronormative relationship. My family could afford my education without leaving me in debt. I found a career I am passionate about. I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with amazing creative people who inspire me, to work on projects that challenge me and to find success along the way.

In this next chapter of my career, I’m determined to focus on social initiatives that champion and amplify underrepresented voices, to pass on what I’ve learned to others and to give back to those less privileged.

And while I recognize my privilege, I also want to acknowledge that I’m really fucking proud of myself.

This is a dream I’ve had since I was young, and I worked my ass off nonstop to make it a reality.

Learn more about Jessica’s creative agency at andwalsh.com.

of almost giving up, feeling I wouldn’t make it in this big city or that I wasn’t good enough.

If you have a dream, keep moving towards it.

There will always be obstacles, naysayers and those who don’t believe in you (including yourself). The path might not be as straight or simple as you thought, but don’t be deterred if it takes longer than you think.

And don’t be under the illusion that once you achieve a certain award, title or raise, your life will be happier or more complete. The real joy is not in any accomplishment, but in the creative pursuits, discoveries, personal growth and people you meet along the way.

And if you’re unsure about making a big change that you know deep down is right, trust your gut.

Take the leap. // RISDXYZ

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// considering justice for all

Layers of lush, kinetic abstraction connect the chaos of contemporary events in paintings by Julie Mehretu MFA 97 PT/ PR , which reveal hints of everything from California’s raging wildfires to human rights abuses around the world. The compulsion to capture these moments is “like an earworm [that] doesn’t leave you alone,” she told The Wall Street Journal just before the November opening of her first mid-career survey exhibition—which continues through March 22 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ( LACMA ) and then moves on to the Whitney in NYC from June 26–September 20.

Called simply Julie Mehretu, the exhibition presents 40 works on paper and 35 paintings made by the MacArthur Award-winning artist since 1996. And there’s “fresh work” that responds to “this moment in time,” she told ARTnews.

Mehretu hopes that visitors to the survey on both coasts will take time to process the intricate, slowly unfolding details of her paintings and prints. “They’re large in scale and there’s a lot of information in them,” she says, “but they’re very slow experiential works.” lacma.org + whitney.org 08

above: photo by Tom Powel Imaging | left: LACMA – The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

TIME TO THINK

Of Agony, Ecstasy + Paradise In Anchoress and other stained glass pieces, Judith Schaechter 83 GL transforms the religious overtones of the medieval medium to create intriguing narratives about the human condition—especially as experienced by women. The Philadelphia-based artist’s remarkable body of work is on view through January 5 in Agony and Ecstasy, a solo exhibition at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA. The Path to Paradise, a second major show celebrating Schaechter’s 35+-year career, runs from February 16–May 24 at the Rochester [NY] Memorial Art Gallery before traveling to two more venues in 2020. judithschaechter.com

Figures of Autonomy “I want them to feel glorious,” Shona McAndrew MFA 16 PT says of the women depicted in her portraits of full-figured and nonconforming female bodies. To create the work for Muse—her first NYC solo exhibition, at Chart Gallery in Tribeca—she played a 21stcentury game with 19th-century Western art: the French-born artist photographed herself posing in classic Manet or Delacroix style and then painted her friends’ own reinterpretations of her reinterpretation. “Thrice removed from their art-historical sources and depicting a diverse selection of bodies,” a New Yorker review applauds, “McAndrew’s compositions transform the female muse from a hidebound cliché into a figure of vibrant autonomy.” shonamcandrew.com

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////// // natural responses to climate change

T-SHIRTS TRANSFORMED Danica Sunbeam, a fall solo show of functional sculpture and other objects made mostly from recycled t-shirts, takes its name from one of the freighters in Florida that regularly carts away tons of used t-shirts destined for developing countries throughout the world.

As he watched this endless stream of consumer waste leave from the ports of Miami, Emmett Moore 10 FD began playing with the material himself to create a range of 3D objects. The vibrant and highly textured chairs, tables and other furnishings that emerged make marvelous reuse of an unwanted commodity.

The work included in his second solo show at Miami’s Nina Johnson gallery (which represents him) simultaneously references 20th-century design movements and 21st-century supply chains.

Danica Sunbeam gave Moore an opportunity to “turn his eye for irony and material refinement towards third-world economies and disposable consumerism,” as the exhibition statement puts it, “allowing viewers to reconsider the everyday materials and forms of the surrounding world.” emmettmoore.com + ninajohnson.com

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Recycling Rain As a grad student, Allison Newsome MFA 83 CR was the only “nonfunctional ceramist” in the studio, more interested in making abstract sculpture than bowls, mugs and other vessels. These days she’s a “functional sculptor,” working in her Warren, RI studio to design pieces that are “evocative in form and content, but also utilitarian.”

Newsome’s patented, site-specific RainKeep designs are attracting growing attention at tech fairs and eco-conferences, where she’s finding plenty of like-minded people receptive to her goal of collecting and redistributing rainwater in favor of tapping into tap water for gardening. rainkeep.com + allisonnewsome.com

Carbon-Negative Coat Using petroleum-free, algae-based plastics, Charlotte McCurdy MID 18 has designed a carbon-negative raincoat— an object that actually consumes more carbon than it emits during the manufacturing process. The Brooklyn-based designer and RISD Global Security Fellow named her inspired coat After Ancient Sunlight to suggest a path that veers away from fossil fuel-based manufacturing towards models that harness solar and other sustainable energy sources. McCurdy hopes that her work of “nonfiction art”— which is on view through January 20 in Nature, the Cooper Hewitt’s design triennial—will help inspire “a citizen-led movement” to make environmentally responsible production and consumption not just feasible, but inevitable. charlottemccurdy.com // RISDXYZ

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////// // designed for better living

ALL GONE As an avid racer and former member of RISD Cycling, Lizzie Wright 18 ID has long hated how much waste athletes create after consuming the energy bars and gels needed for on-the-go fuel.

The trails of trash left along open roads and pathways inspired the Industrial Design major to develop a sustainable alternative to single-use, petroleumbased plastic packaging.

Following months of research and iteration, Wright created Gone, a collection of flavored energy gels in 100% biodegradable wrappers designed to help consumers do the right thing— without sacrifice. “Everything it’s made of you can buy at the grocery store,” the San Francisco-based designer says.

Since the translucent, bioplastic wrappers break down with a little help from rainwater or insects, athletes would be able to drop them outdoors— while they’re on the move—confident that they’ll soon be… gone.

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So far the project has been included in an exhibition of environmentally friendly packaging at the FachPack 2019 trade fair in Nuremberg, Germany. But before Wright can actually bring Gone to market she’s fine-tuning such issues as its understandably shorter shelf life compared to traditional snack foods in conventional packaging.

“Obviously, bioplastic is not the perfect solution,” Wright told the South China Morning Post.

But as a renewable one, it’s definitely got a future. iamlizziewright.com/gone

Easy Being Green As graduate student Hyunseok An MID 20 wraps up his final year at RISD, he’s hoping to bring his micro-algae farming kit (called The Coral) to market.

Both Dwell and Fast Company have applauded his kitchen-friendly system for growing algae as a healthy food additive as “shockingly easy” to use.

While adding a hint of natural wonder to often sterile apartment living, An’s wall-mounted bioreactor cleanses the air around it while producing two grams of blue-green micro-algae (also known as spirulina) every day and providing growers with a healthy dose of protein and vitamins that boosts the immune system. ulr.im

Looking to Living Systems “We use nature as our inspiration and manufacturing as our medium,” says George Dubinsky 08 FD in explaining the philosophy behind his Philadelphiabased studio Edgewood Made. Vase Section, a series of recently released modular vases, references the vascular networks found in trees, people and other natural systems. Three handmade porcelain vases— called simply A (shown here), B and C—can be arranged in different configurations, suggesting a harmonious integration of urban and botanical landscapes. These intentionally brutalist vases are part of the studio’s growing body of intriguing, thoughtfully manufactured objects evoking the wisdom of living systems. edgewoodmade.com

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////// // exploring new worlds

MEOW SET TO ROAR When the House of Eternal Return opened in 2015, the 20,000-sf art space in Santa Fe signaled a new phase in the evolution of Meow Wolf, the local arts collective Sean Di Ianni 07 SC and Caity Kennedy 06 PT helped found in 2008. Built inside a former bowling alley, the choose-your-own-adventure installation has captivated visitors of all ages and provided a fantastical proof of concept as Meow Wolf grows into what The New York Times Magazine predicts may become “the Disney of the experience economy.”

Among the expansive projects in the works are a 75,000-sf Meow Wolf installation in Washington, DC,

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a venue in Denver, CO that will house “more art exhibit space than the Guggenheim” and a hush-hush endeavor at AREA15 in Las Vegas—an “immersive bazaar” set to open on the Vegas Strip in 2020. “What was once a loose confederation of scrappy punks [is now] a corporation with a nine-figure valuation,” the Times observes.

But as Meow Wolf expands exponentially, its founders still relish the innovative ethos and wild imagination at its heart. “I [will] sit in a room… with a bunch of real estate developers in golf shirts,” says Di Ianni (now the COO), “and think: You have no idea how weird we are.” meowwolf.com

Sweet Suite Capping a productive year full of exhibitions in the US and Europe, Liz Collins 91 TX/MFA 99 spoke at RISD in November. Among the projects she discussed was Summit Suite, which grabbed plenty of attention at last spring’s Milan Design Week. The over-the-top, threeroom installation at Spazio Rossana Orlandi—created in collaboration with the American textiles firm Sunbrella

and the French design house Ligne Roset—made mostanticipated and best-of lists in Surface, Interior Design and Elle Decor. In September Metropolis also applauded the Brooklyn-based artist’s “theatrical displays of fabric,” along with her focus on identity, labor and sustainability issues in her multidisciplinary practice. lizcollins.com

Disruptive Weaving After launching the virtual loom Weft, Associate Professor of Textiles Brooks Hagan MFA 02 TX and Steve Marschner, a computer science professor at Cornell, are continuing to push the bounds of knowledge through the Virtual Textiles Research Group ( VTRG ). With Weavecraft, their open-source design tool, the group has figured out how to weave an athletic shoe on a loom—a feat Hagan calls “a real triumph.” When he and recent grads Claire Harvey 18 TX and Emily Holtzman 18 TX presented the work at last summer’s SIGGRAPH conference, people could clearly see why Weavecraft is “opening the doors to wildly disruptive innovation,” as Holtzman puts it. vtrg.squarespace.com // RISDXYZ

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features

//  navigating the unkown

Building on RISD’s mission and strong roots, we’re reassessing everything we do so that students can flourish in a world of uncertainty.

SHAPING OUR FUTURE

by Rosanne Somerson, RISD’s president

that we are living in confounding times. Yet I remain optimistic about the future—and the vital role RISD will play in shaping it—especially now that NEXT: RISD 2020–2027, our new strategic plan, has been formulated and finalized for the start of this academic year. The plan outlines how we will prepare RISD to lead creative education through this era of momentous change and great uncertainty.

We are committing our community to the creation of just societies, a sustainable planet, and new ways of making and knowing that equip humans to live in mutually enhancing ways with each other and with the Earth.

I DON’T HAVE TO TE LL YOU

RISD was among the first academic institutions to embrace the ideas of the Bauhaus [in the late 1930s].

This is not a grandiose goal. Two important anniversaries in 2019 have highlighted the consequential role that art and design thinkers, educators and makers have played in shaping our world for the better. The first (in February) marked the bicentennial of the birth of the visionary British writer and artist John Ruskin. Through his proto-socialist critiques, he not only changed the way we see art and design, but was also among the first to call out the social inequities and environmental degradation caused by unbridled industrial capitalism in Victorian England. His observation that fine

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art is a practice in which “the hand, the head and the heart… go together” might be one of the earliest and most poetic descriptions of “critical making,” which is at the very foundation of a RISD education.

Ruskin inspired William Morris and his utopian Arts and Crafts movement, which in turn helped shape the pedagogic philosophy of the German architect Walter Gropius, who founded the Bauhaus a century ago last April. That experimental school lasted a mere 14 years, yet its influence on the modern world is incalculable and enduring. Through the

Now—on the threshold of an entirely new technological existence—artists and designers are taking on roles that grow wider and more complex by the day.

Bauhaus, Gropius hoped to dissolve the boundaries and hierarchies among the fine arts and crafts and to unite them with technology. His goal was to humanize the machine, not mechanize society.

For Gropius hands-on learning was essential to a creative education. Through the exploration of material, color and form, he believed artists and designers might escape convention and find their own voice, and in so doing, make the world anew— as one that is more just, equitable, collaborative and decidedly more intelligent and beautiful.

previous spread + left: illustrations by Jordan Gushwa

BAU HAUS FOU N DATION

RISD was among the first academic institutions to embrace the ideas of the Bauhaus, which began being disseminated in the United States in the mid 1930s as Bauhauslers fled Nazi Germany. In 1938 the RISD Museum hired Alexander Dorner, a Bauhaus supporter and dynamic former head of the Landesmuseum Hannover, as its director. Dorner passionately believed that museums should no longer serve as temples of high art, but instead become democratic forums for interactive encounters with the cultures of the past and present. Although his tenure was short, his revolutionary approach remains topical at RISD to this day.

In the early 1940s, RISD sent Edna Lawrence, a Painting alumna from the Class of 1921 and founder of the Nature Lab, to Chicago to study at the design school recently established

by Gropius’ right-hand man, László Moholy-Nagy. No doubt encouraged by Lawrence’s experience, in 1946 the school hired Samuel Hershey, who had studied with Gropius (by then at Harvard), to head what RISD called Freshman Foundation at the time. It was Hershey who brought Bauhaus-style experimentation with materials, color and form into the studio-based first-year program, which was already considered advanced.

The compass of art and design has expanded considerably since the days of Ruskin and even Gropius, when Bauhaus innovations to the domestic realm caused profound social change. Now—on the threshold of an entirely new technological existence informed by artificial intelligence, advanced robotics and synthetic biology—artists and designers are taking on roles that grow wider and more complex by the

day. Given this, RISD must develop new methods of teaching and learning that continue to provide students with the concepts, skills and experiences necessary to bring their creative practices to bear on challenges that scale from the local to the global.

CR EATIVE VI S ION

In his 1928 book The New Vision, Moholy-Nagy observed that every cultural period has its own defining conceptions of space. An acute awareness of our planetary interconnectedness certainly brings a new dimension to this century, as does the vast potential of the digital realm. Data and virtual reality are among the new materials with which students need to be proficient.

What also defines this period is the altered way in which artists and designers work. No longer are they the sole conceivers of form on a project; instead they originate, facilitate and collaborate on interdisciplinary teams that may span multiple time zones. With that in mind, at RISD we are doing more to frame and support cross-institutional inquiry in both material practices and existing and emerging technologies so that students have opportunities to ply their creative skills in cross-disciplinary collaborations.

To excel in such complex networks of activity also requires students to be fluent in and receptive to diversity in all its myriad forms. It is essential that they see and create from different perspectives. To this end, this fall we opened a Teaching and Learning Lab to promote inclusive and innovative pedagogy that advances principles of social equity and inclusion and global perspectives in our curricula.

What Gropius imagined a century ago—the merging of art and technology, the dissolution of boundaries and hierarchies between disciplines—is today a reality. Gropius also held to the belief, as did Ruskin, that at its essence creativity is a lifeimproving force. It is a belief that we share at RISD and intend to promote through the strategic plan, which will culminate in 2027 with the 150th anniversary of our founding.

And so, as we activate our strategic plan this fall, we intend to influence the world in ways that promise to be incalculable and enduring.

Read RISD’s full strategic plan at risd.edu/next .

For artist and designers, material isn’t just what we work with, it’s what we live in and think through.

THE MATTER OF MAKING

by Kent Kleinman, RISD’s provost

In the late 1920s Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein

worked intensely on the design of this house for his sister. Many see Villa Stonborough as a material translation of the formal logic of his early writings. below: The resistance of material makes even a simple formal proposition—like centering a window from both the interior and exterior— impossible, as his plan options demonstrate (from Jan Turnovsky ’s Die Poetik eines Mauervorsprungs).

The messiness, complexity and intractability of life as lived always undoes conceptual purity.

than you might imagine.

I arrived at RISD a few months ago and feel the same mix of enthusiasm and nervousness as the 761 students who started here this fall. I also feel the same pride of being surrounded by some of the most creative hands and minds in higher education and the next generation of art and design leaders. Like you, I am inspired by RISD’s credo of making and thinking as deeply intertwined acts.

So, I want to offer a few speculations on this complex subject—of mind and matter. And since this is RISD, I will rely on examples of art and design work both to bolster a point and perhaps even inspire you.

Let me start with a small tale, really nothing but a historical trifle, but one that might help frame the issue at hand. It is a tale in which a simple concept meets an ignoble end. Our protagonist is the famous mid-20th-century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. During his lifetime Wittgenstein published only one book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in 1921 when he was just 32 years old.

After publishing the Tractatus he suffered something of a crisis and his sister thought it would do him good to take on a more concrete task than thinking about formal logic—namely to participate in the design of her new villa in Vienna. Wittgenstein did just that, apparenty with enthusiasm bordering on

YOU AN D I HAVE MOR E I N COM MON

obsession. In some circles the Villa Stonborough (1928) is considered an analogue to the formal logic presented in the Tractatus—an attempt at rendering order in brick and plaster.

During the planning of the villa our philosopher encountered a very simple design challenge, something so basic as to hardly seem worthy of such a sophisticated analytical thinker. He wanted to center a window in a recessed wing of the building, and naturally he wanted the window centered on both the exterior and interior.

Let’s be generous and call this will for a window centered on a wall a concept: metrical precision over slack; order over chaos; logical disposition of solid and void versus random openings. Super simple. Child’s play. A mere bagatelle.

So Wittgenstein tries—and tries again. But each time he fails. What is easy with lines is impossible with material.

He cannot simultaneously center an opening on both interior and exterior walls, or rather he can do so only if he accepts an illogical solution of building two separate buildings.

This is not a failure due to lack of effort or expertise.

Wittgenstein is hardly lazy and certainly not without imagination. Rather, this is an epic failure—the failure of the conceptual when faced with the empirical; the collapse of abstraction under the weight of the concrete; the demise of the ideal when practiced in our material world.

MATE R IAL MATTE R S

The messiness, complexity and intractability of life as lived always undoes conceptual purity. Or in short: material matters.

It is not what we work with but what we live in and think through. And working in and through material is a messy affair—loopy, iterative, indirect, frustrating, imperfect, exhilarating.

This condition is catalogued in Parcours d’Atelier, an extraordinary drawing-cum-psycho-cartography by South African artist William Kentridge. It shows him making one of his stop-motion animations. The red figure at the center represents his camera and the red rectangle to the right is the drawing. The flurry of knotted lines and multiple annotations trace his process.

But wait. Shouldn’t there be a crisp straight line from the camera to the drawing and back? Isn’t stop-motion animation an art of advanced conceptualization, planned mark-making (or mark-erasing) and precisely calibrated moves? Why is the process so tortured, indirect, full of delay, hesitant, interrupted by sleep and cold water and downright chaos? Why this wild battle with doubt, discovery, despair, elation, an echo of an echo of emptiness, a short nap, shallow breathing? What kind of immaterial thought could be so convoluted when confronted with material execution?

Associate Professor Leora Maltz-Leca (see page 48), head of RISD’s Theory and History of Art and Design department, introduced me to this extraordinary drawing and offers an explanation for its form. “Drawing is more about not thinking, about avoiding or repressing thinking, about the worlds we don’t understand. Most often, drawing serves less as a line of thought per se than as a line cast out into the depths of the unconscious to fish for errant thoughts.”

So drawing is not a form of thought materialized in charcoal.

Rather, drawing is a material act that cracks open precisely that uncharted territory that rational thought avoids.

MATE R IAL I S CU LTU RAL

It is a particular legacy of the 20th century that material can become an abstraction, ahistorical and anti-gravitational, approaching a Platonic state of pure sensation, unburdened by politics, economies or social context. But if you think through rather than merely with material, this neutrality falls away.

We can see this in the provocative work by Associate Professor of Experimental and Foundation Studies Paula Gaetano-Adi and architect Gustavo Crembil titled Mestizo Robotics. Culturally rooted in Latin American creation myths and made in the Peruvian highlands, the surfaces of these quasi-spheres proudly bear the marks of their origins and

Working in and through material is a messy affair—loopy, iterative, indirect, frustrating, imperfect, exhilarating.

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making. They are rough and imperfect, definitely not passive, inanimate objects elevated through art to a realm beyond human strengths and frailties. They are not timeless and placeless, but rather geographically specific. And they refuse to be objectified: a small interior robot makes the mud spheroids jiggle, lending them agency and attitude.

To the degree that material is understood as a specific embodiment of economic and social conditions, it becomes a potential lever for surfacing cultural issues. A material as seemingly abstract as pigment can become a medium for excavating the realities of lived life, as demonstrated by Color(ed) Theory, a project by artist Amanda Williams.

Expanding on the work of Joseph Albers, Williams posited an “interaction of colors” based not on our perceptual apparatus but as an index of environmental justice. She developed a color palette in which the hues were derived from products marketed to African-American consumers, and used this palette to mark foreclosed and abandoned houses in Chicago’s lower East Side, shifting abstract color theory into the charged space of race, power and urban form.

far left: In Parcours d’Atelier (2007) artist William Kentridge depicts the convoluted process of making one of his stop-motion animations.

above: Quinchabot is one of the mudbot prototypes conceived by Associate Professor Paula Gaetano-Adi and architect Gustavo Crembil as part of Mestizo Robotics. Culturally rooted in Latin American creation myths, it jiggles around with agency and attitude.

left: In her Color(ed) Theory (2015) series in Chicago, artist Amanda Williams painted abandoned houses with the hues of products marketed to African-American consumers, shifting the notion of color into the charged space of race and power.

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MATE R IAL I S R E S PON S IVE

It seems we have spent the better part of the past few millennia pounding material into submission. By the 19th century, “advanced” economies were predicated on material behaving well.

The Industrial Revolution introduced machine production; machine production introduced the assembly line; the assembly line demanded repetition; and repetition requires that materials be predictable. Economies based on modularity, interchangeability and standardization demand vast regimes of control, and these extend not only to manufacturing processes, but to all manner of systems and structures, including human labor.

One of the interchangeable com-

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ponents in any assembly line is us.

This is why B-Set, the critical work by Hella Jongerius (who spoke at RISD in early December), is so poignant.

Starting with identical, serially produced ceramic plates, she deliberately fired the clay at a slightly elevated temperature, causing each plate to deform differentially. Out of a process of serial production comes bespoke individuality. It takes little imagination to transpose this modestly deviant (material) behavior into the realm of human affairs generally.

MATE R IAL I S ALIVE

Indeed, just such a transposition—from inanimate material to human body—has taken place in some recent visual art

practices. In Rembrandt’s early painting, The Artist in his Studio, he is shown at a remove from the giant panel that dominates the foreground. Like a tactician plotting an offensive, Rembrandt is armed with the mediating tools of his craft—in his left hand a palette and a maulstick, in his right a brush—that calibrate a carefully controlled distance between the artist and the work surface.

A radically different subject/object relationship undergirds the contemporary work of Stelarc, an artist for whom the tools of his craft force the very opposite of distancing. His body, fragmented into three parts—first, audio input from New York City; second, VR input from London; and third skeletal

Light, humidity, temperature: these are the emerging materials for art and design practices focused on pressing the most urgent issue of our age into the well-defended consciousness of a complacent species.

manipulations sourced from online participants controlling an exoskeletal arm—is the canvas. More hauntingly, RISD alumna Jenny Holzer MFA 77 PT replaced the maulstick and brush with messages inked directly on skin, rendering the body both subject and material for a statement about war and sexual violence.

Once the human body and mind are understood as inextricably emmeshed— and that the latter is neither distinct nor

superior to the former—a number of powerful dualities (figure/ground, object/context, thought/material, mind/ body) become unstable.

Nowhere is this more salient than in the domain of climate change. Artists and designers are increasingly foregrounding climate not as a given condition “out there in nature,” but as a material condition for which we must take responsibility. Light, humidity, temperature: these are the emerging

materials for art and design practices focused on pressing the most urgent issue of our age into the well-defended consciousness of a complacent species.

At RISD we embrace the messy, experimental and deeply material work that all of you shape and that in turn shapes you.

Provost Kleinman presented a version of this piece as his RISD Convocation address on September 3, 2019.

left: In B-Set (1997) Hella Jongerius

showed how bespoke individuality could emerge from the process of serial production. above: In The Artist in his Studio (c. 1628) Rembrandt depicts himself at a distance from his own painting. right: The haunting Lustmord (1993) series by Jenny Holzer MFA 77 PT

presents the body as both material and subject.

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EXPLORING EXTREMES

IN ICELAND VE RY, VE RY WH ITE—–EVE N I N M I D SU M M E R, reports

Michael Lye 96 ID in recalling his week in Iceland last summer.

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

“White snow, white fog, white sky—just completely white,” the longtime RISD faculty member and NASA coordinator in Industrial Design explains. “As far as running analog missions goes, there aren’t many places as otherworldly as Iceland.”

Fellow alum Daniel Leeb 00 FAV couldn’t agree more. As a founding partner of the Iceland Space Agency (ISA), a new NGO focused on establishing the rugged North Atlantic island as an international hub for space-related research, he was the one to make a cold call (or email, actually) to ask Lye if he might be interested in a “concept operation” on that particular out-of-the-way speck of the planet.

When Leeb stumbled across a story about the Mars Suit 1 (MS1)—created in 2016 through a Rhode Island Space Grant-funded research project Lye led with then-students Kasia Matlak MID 17 and Erika Kim 18 AP/ID—he was excited to learn that the suit was developed at RISD and immediately decided to reach out. Designed to help better understand the human experience of space exploration, MS1 seemed perfectly suited for the experiential research that he and his ISA colleagues want to advance in Iceland: missions that leverage the country’s climatic and geological similarities to Martian and lunar terrain.

For Lye, who has served as RISD’s NASA coordinator since 2004, the surprise invitation from a fellow alum he had never met offered an opportunity to push MS1 research in a new direction after a planned test at the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii was abruptly cancelled in 2017. “The suit had just been sitting there,” he says, “and I was trying to figure out the next step.”

So after months of planning and securing backing from United Airlines, the Explorers Club and several other outdoor and adventure brands, Leeb and Lye found the ideal window for a six-day expedition on the Vatnajökull ice cap, a 3,050square-mile stretch in southeast Iceland, and into Grimsvötn, an active volcano at the center of this glacier. During the analog mission—a set of field tests in locations that emulate extraterrestrial terrain—an eight-member crew of scientists, explorers and documentarians tested MS1 and themselves in extremely challenging conditions.

“My goal was to get as many people into the suit as possible to try as many exploratory activities as possible,” Lye says— “to treat it as a preliminary test of what might go wrong and what changes we should make for future missions.” By measuring MS1’s performance in an extreme environment, he hoped to gather information for future iterations of the suit and, in turn, understand how to improve the physical, social and emotional conditions for future space explorers.

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Discovering common cause from across the Atlantic, alumni Michael Lye and Daniel Leeb formed the core of a summer 2019 expedition to advance space research here on Earth.

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by Robert Albanese + Liisa Silander

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I never could have foreseen how my early interests in Norse mythology and outer space would come together in this way.

Dan Leeb 00 FAV

previous spread + right: photos by Michael Lye 96 ID | left + above: photos by Daniel Leeb 00 FAV

A MOST U N EXPECTE D TRAJ ECTORY

For Leeb the path to this serendipitous collaboration—along with his newfound home in Iceland—was anything but linear.

Growing up he had been fascinated by the Norse myths and heroic tales his father would read to him, and in third grade participated in a NASA-supported after-school program.

But both of these interests faded away while he pursued other things—including earning a degree in Film/Animation/Video, which instilled in him (among other things) “the no-bullshit commitment to work that sets RISD apart.”

After graduation Leeb returned to his home turf in New York City, where between working as a bike messenger and founding an advertising and production company called Cinecycle, he got a job as the production manager for Index, a New Yorkbased arts and culture magazine designed by his RISD friend Claudia Wu 99 GD that was printed in Iceland. “I traveled there every two months, familiarizing myself and making connections,” he says. And it was during those trips that he realized: “Someday, I want to live here.”

Opportunity knocked in 2017 when a friend asked Leeb to drop everything and join a production house in Reykjavik.

“I was sold when they got me a plane ticket,” he says, but then when initial plans fell through he had to readjust on the fly.

That’s when he first met Gunnar Gudjonsson, the CEO of Iceland Pro Guides, and started testing Sleipnir, the largest and most advanced glacial expedition vehicle in the world. The two immediately saw its potential for scientific research expeditions and eventually landed on the idea of helping to support this research via experiential expeditions that would allow tourists to both participate in and help fund the research.

As these ideas were developing in Iceland, Leeb’s friend Dave Hodge invited him to an Explorers Club event in NYC. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, it was part of “a global space zeitgeist that helped move things forward with the ISA in an organic way,” he says. icelandspace.agency

“I never could have foreseen how my early interests in Norse mythology and outer space would come together in this way,” Leeb admits. After he and his partners put stakes in the ground, they began investigating how to run what NASA calls “concept operations” (or ConOps) in Iceland.

DOWN-TO-EARTH S PACE R E S EARCH

“Traveling with the suit is kind of ridiculous,” says Lye, who admits that he never quite knows what to say when checking in two 70-lb crates as his luggage—as he did when heading to Iceland in July. “If I say: ‘It’s a space suit,’ I get some very weird reactions.”

Once in Reykjavik, Lye met the full expedition team. In addition to Leeb and Gudjonsson from ISA, it included Hodge, scholar and extreme environments expert Benjamin Pothier and volcanologist Helga Kristin. Together they were an official flag expedition of the Explorers Club, a longstanding professional society that was involved in the first forays to the North and South poles, the summit of Mount Everest and the surface of the moon. // RISDXYZ

Often traveling through heavy fog, Michael Lye 96 ID (kneeling in the photo on the facing page) and the expedition team conducted experiments with terrestrial laser scanners and other advanced equipment to test how MS1 simulates the experience of space exploration.

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I want MS1 to offer an accurate sense of what it’s like to wear a real space suit and explore another planet.

Michael Lye 96 ID

it feels like to work in extreme conditions while wearing it.

“As designers we collaborate with scientists to create, modify and adapt tools like this,” Lye says, “so that we can develop more realistic experiments that yield higher-quality data.”

I N S PI R I NG D E S IG N B R EAKTH ROUG H S

Led by snowmobiles across fog-drenched waves of ice and snow, the research team traversed Vatnajökull in three SUVs packed tight with gear. Once at Grímsvötn and on the ice cap, they ran a series of tests to see what MS1 can do and what people wearing it can handle. Among the questions they wanted to explore: Are those wearing it able to operate heavy, complex scientific equipment effectively? Is it comfortable for users of different sizes and body types? Can it help people experience the isolating and potentially lonely work of space exploration? And what’s necessary for making a suit designed for tropical heat equally functional in arctic conditions?

“I want MS1 to provide scientists with a platform for doing better science,” says Lye, who is now planning the Design for Extreme Environments ID studio he’ll teach again this spring— this time focused on habitat design. “And, as much as possible, I want the suit to offer an accurate sense of what it’s like to explore another planet from inside protective gear like this.”

In other words, although MS1 wasn’t designed for actual use in space, it is meant to serve as an experience-based tool for planning expeditions to Mars and the moon by simulating what

Excited for future expeditions with Lye and the Explorers Club, Leeb believes that by increasing capacity for research up there, scientists can develop better knowledge down here—including information about using geothermal energy or repurposing frozen water for fuel or hydroponics. Through ISA’s continued efforts, he hopes to help discover “how space science can teach us to make Earth more livable.”

Sustainability on a planet facing alarming climate issues is actually a core tenet of ISA’s mission, with Leeb and his team working to reroute some of Iceland’s tourism industry toward scientific research. He envisions running experiential research missions that both help offset the carbon footprint left by air travelers and instill a sense of possibility and pride worth more than a “no filter” Instagram photo. “As a storyteller,” he says, “I want to help make Iceland a place where people see the world and the future differently than they did before.”

In this respect, the work Leeb is doing now is clearly rooted in the creative impulses he explored at RISD and dovetails well with Lye’s hopes for this project and the greater social impact of design. “As designers,” Leeb says, “we want to inspire people to think differently about where they are and where they want to be.”

photos by Dave Hodge

Iceland’s diverse terrain proved to be perfect for pushing the adaptable MS1 to its design and performance limits, giving Lye the information he needs to make further refinements.

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CONTESTED PLACES

by Bill McKibben

B E FOR E YOU’VE S E E N TH E WE ST, you’ve seen the West— landscape photographs of the region, especially those by Ansel Adams, are so deep in our nation’s collective imagination that you have to work to actually see Half Dome (in California) or Shiprock (in New Mexico) even when you’re standing there with your hiking boots on.

Recent pictures by David Benjamin Sherry 03 PH help us to see again. Sherry is known for his fascination with color, for his analogue techniques, and for what some have called his “queer revision” of the rugged and macho legacy of western landscape photography. His images of several national monuments—photographed in 2018—carry the same level of detail as Adams’ iconic pictures, the sublime clarity of the haze-free western summer afternoon.

But drenched in unexpected and unreal color, they get you to take a second look. And in this case, a second look is helpful for any number of reasons.

For one, looking backward, the great protected areas of the nation are not simply blank slates, empty wastes.

They were often the homelands of this continent’s original inhabitants, and so they tell, among other things, the stories of our nation’s original shame. Their very emptiness is a reminder of what we did—all the more telling when the petroglyphs left behind at places like Bears Ears (the national monument in Utah) make clear what a bustling place it once was. These lands are as sacred to Indigenous cultures as they ever were, but there’s a tragic quality to that reverence now.

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preceding spread: Methuselah Tree, Inyo County, California and Muley Point I, Bears Ears National Monument, Utah below: Grand Plateau, Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument, Utah

the understanding that we needed something more than we had.

But we don’t think that anymore. Or at least, at the moment, those in charge don’t think that. President Donald Trump, among his endless provocations, has begun trying to roll back the protections of an earlier era, beginning with the national monuments pictured in Sherry’s images. For no reason other than to undo the work of the bigger souls who came before him, the petulant boy king has begun to take apart the network of protected areas that is one of the country’s great legacies.

Actually, of course, there is another reason: the fossil fuel industry covets these lands, just as it covets the Arctic, and the offshore lease holdings along the North American coasts, and pretty much every other piece of real estate on the continent.

Not content with merely destroying the planet’s climate, it must also do what it can to wreck the loveliness that has been set aside.

images courtesy of the artist and Morán Morán and Salon 94, New York

right: Devils Garden, Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument, Utah

For another, looking forward, these same lands are no longer as sacred to the colonizing tradition as they once were. One of the great boasts of its legacy was the protected landscape: in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th, we felt ourselves rich enough to methodically put aside large tracts of land for the benefit of the rest of creation—or the future, or our idea that there was something lovely about wildernesses, even ones we might not see.

Congress never got more poetic than with the Wilderness Act of 1964, with its commitment to protecting places “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Aside from the questions already raised about who was there originally, and aside from the obnoxious use of “man” that belies the text’s birthdate, the statute still marks something powerful—even in the middle of America’s great postwar boom:

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Somehow the saturated and unsettling colors of Sherry’s photographs... help us see that something has gone wrong and is now going wronger….

Somehow the saturated and unsettling colors of Sherry’s photographs of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (in Utah) and the Río Grande del Norte National Monument (in New Mexico), among other western vistas, help us see all that splendor, all that history and all those politics more clearly, or at least glimpse that something has gone wrong and is now going wronger in these places that have long been a comforting part of the landscape of the mind.

No longer retreats or redoubts from the overwhelming bleat

salon94.com + moranmorangallery.com

of our wired world, they are contested places. We must fight to make sense of them, and we must fight to preserve them, and we must fight to make sure that in their preservation they connect us back to the people who wandered them originally.

Iconic images have their place— but iconoclasm has its place too.

Environmentalist, author and activist Bill McKibben is a 2014 RISD honorary degree recipient best known for such influential books as Falter, Eaarth, The End of Nature and many more. This essay originally appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Aperture and is reprinted with permission. Sherry’s American Monuments series was on view earlier this fall in a solo show at Salon 94 in NYC, with a percentage of proceeds going to support the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

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campus news

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//  re: faculty, studios, initiatives

EXPANDING THE QUAD —– S USTAINABLY As new and returning students arrived on campus in September, 148 first-year arrivals had the good fortune to move into North Hall, the first totally new residential facility built at RISD in 34 years. Principals Nader Tehrani BArch 86, Katherine Faulkner and Arthur Chang of the Boston-based firm NADAAA designed the new student housing— a contemporary six-story building at 60 Waterman Street that offers a stunning visual counterpoint to the surrounding colonial houses and cluster of residence halls it joins.

Tehrani, who also serves as dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, is perhaps best known at RISD for the inspired design of the Fleet Library at RISD, an adaptive reuse of a beaux arts banking hall that he and his former firm Office dA completed in 2006.

After winning multiple architectural awards when it first opened, the library has continued to serve the RISD community well and provide a beautiful and welcoming space for study, research and gathering.

In approaching his latest project for RISD, Tehrani and his team spoke at length with students and other members of the campus community about their needs—for social interaction, messy making, health, wellness

and sustainable living. “It is a distinct honor to design a building for an institution I hold so dear,” the Architecture graduate says, “but even more so since I have lived on the same campus myself.”

With issues of sustainability and wellness at the forefront, Tehrani and his firm designed North Hall to limit the environmental impact of the 40,790-sf building while supporting the needs of students for flexible workspaces, good lighting and informal gathering spots, among others.

For its core structure, NADAAA replaced energy-inefficient concrete with a hybrid of steel frame and cross-laminated timber (CLT) slabs— making North Hall the first residential facility in New England to use this approach. It’s designed to save more than 3,200 gallons of water per day compared to other buildings housing similar numbers of residents and is expected to consume approximately 27% less energy than a typical code-compliant building of its size.

“It is a distinct honor to design a building for an institution I hold so dear, but even more so since I have lived on the same campus myself.”

Nader Tehrani BArch 86

left: photo by John Horner | right: photo by Matthew Watson 09 FAV

Members of the RISD community celebrated the official opening of North Hall by tossing biodegradable confetti in the air at the ribbon-cutting ceremony during RISD Weekend.

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Designed by NADAAA, this new 40,790-sf dorm at 60 Waterman Street houses 148 first-year students.

GREEN DESIGN FEATURES ▶ cross-laminated timber (CLT) wood decks replace energy-intensive concrete and reduce CO2 emissions by up to 20% ▶ energy-conserving cool roof membrane In developing the design, NADAAA unpacked the history of RISD’s core Quad, the cluster of housing and dining facilities just up College Hill from the RISD Beach (between Angell and Waterman streets). The original three buildings (Nickerson Hall, Homer Hall and the refectory, now known as The Met dining hall) were built on the slope in the 1950s, centered around a series of terraces with expansive views of downtown Providence. As on-campus housing needs grew in the 1970s, RISD added two more dorms: East Hall and South Hall on the southern side of the same block.

Now, with the addition of North Hall, a multiyear Quad enhancement project has begun, with renovations to Nickerson continuing through

May 2020 and Homer improvements slated for summer 2020 through 2021.

“The students who will occupy these buildings are some of the most talented and intellectually adept artists and designers out there,” Tehrani points out. “For them, I hope that North Hall will not only be a place of residence, but also a didactic edifice that can be read, interpreted, interrogated and even overturned. In other words, I hope it becomes both a place of comfort and respite, and one that challenges and provokes.”

▶ exposed ceilings reduce embodied energy ▶ energy recovery ventilators for high-efficiency heating and cooling ▶ low-flow showers and faucets use 53% less hot water and save 3,200+ gallons of water per day ▶ dorm uses 27% less energy than average for its size

architect Nader Tehrani BArch 86 of NADAAA

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photos by John Horner

“For students, I hope it becomes both a place of comfort and respite, and one that challenges and provokes.”

Test Scores Now Optional RISD has joined the groundswell of colleges and universities across the US that are no longer requiring applicants to submit SAT and ACT scores. “The ability of a standardized test to measure students’ academic capabilities is increasingly questioned,” notes President Rosanne Somerson, “with new research demonstrating that these tests may privilege applicants in particular demographic groups.”

With the new strategic plan reiterating RISD’s commitment to equity and access, “a test-optional admissions policy is in line with our priorities,” the president points out. RISD’s Admissions team is totally on board, having determined that portfolios of recent work, visual responses to specific application assignments and high school GPAs are the best indicators for predicting whether prospective students are well-suited to the unique type of education RISD offers.

DESIGNED FOR DURABILITY

above: photo by Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH

Intent on highlighting the diverse talents in our community, RISD tapped the expertise of two alumni faculty members to furnish North Hall, the new six-story student housing facility designed by fellow alum Nader Tehrani BArch 86 and his team at NADAAA. Furniture Design professors John Dunnigan MFA 80 ID and Lothar Windels BID 96 worked together to respond to NADAAA’s contemporary architecture and model RISD’s commitment to sustainable design by creating a durable and cost-effective collection of furniture using just two environmentally friendly materials: beech and bamboo.

In 2005 Dunnigan partnered with two other Furniture Design faculty members—Rosanne Somerson (now RISD’s president) and Peter Walker (now teaching back home in Australia)—to design the DEZCO collection of furnishings for 15 West when that 500-bed residence hall first opened.

So in July 2018 when he and Windels were asked to consider this new commission, they drew from the experience at 15 West to inform their work.

Called Rhye (a wry play on its rye color and its Rhode Island roots), the bed frames, desks, chairs, chests and tables are built with the same materials as the earlier collection: a combination of solid European beech, which is PEFC certified (the European equivalent to FSC/Forest Stewardship Council certification), and bamboo plywood, made from a fast-growing natural and carbon-neutral resource.

“We use bamboo ply without any edge-banding,” Dunnigan explains, which “eliminates that part of the manufacturing process along with the toxicity often associated with producing sheet goods for furniture. It’s also really durable,” he adds, noting that the materials in the original DEZCO pieces have withstood “15 years of use and abuse.”

The key to creating high-quality pieces that cost no more than standard dorm furniture is to “work with simple geometry to allow for streamlined manufacturing without losing elements of visual interest as well as physical comfort,” Windels adds. // RISDXYZ

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LANDSCAPES OF THE MIND l–r: All Ears was part of the 2019 thesis project by Adam Bowen MID 19 proposing a new

civilian corps for monitoring our shared resources.

Heightened Senses

by Diya Wang MFA 21 JM foregrounds the beauty of the natural world.

Co-curator Lilla Szekely MFA 20 PR

with Non-Sunset by Kara Cox MFA 20 PT.

Printmaking grad students Heather McMordie MFA 20 PR and Lilla Szekely MFA 20 PR collaborated to co-curate Land // Fill // Land, a multidisciplinary exhibition on view in late fall at the Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery.

The multidisciplinary show presented a range of perspectives on people’s relationships with the land, incorporating stunning textiles by Polly Spenner 10 TX (a technical assistant in Textiles), sterling silver jewelry

by Diya Wang MFA 21 JM, a huge, crystal-laden hammock by Anya Drozd BArch 20 and prints, paintings, glass and sculpture.

A video installation by Boston-based alumna Deborah Cornell 69 PT drew curious viewers to the adjacent Dryfoos Gallery for new media. Her abstract looping view of an exploding sun “acknowledges the nuclear fusion that is the essential precondition of material existence and suggests cataclysmic phases of transformation,” the artist notes.

Szekely met Cornell several years ago and says, “Deborah has been working with these themes for years, so it was very exciting to include her work.”

A series of pieces by recent grad Adam Bowen MID 19—including a giant, cartoonish headset called All Ears—originated as part of his thesis project The Civilian Corps of Landscape Reassessment, which proposes a new branch of government that charges citizens with actively monitoring our shared resources.

“What I love about Adam’s project,” says McMordie, “is that he has created these really practical tools that anyone could use to learn more about the landscape.”

A NATURAL ON ABSTRACT Joe McKendry 94 IL, a longtime faculty member in Illustration, created the artwork used to promote the second season of the Netflix series Abstract.

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“Good toys make good people,” says Associate Professor Cas Holman in explaining why she focuses on designing for kids. “These are the people that are going to make the world suck or not suck.”

In Cas Holman: Design for Play—the fourth episode of the Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design— Holman talks about teaching at RISD, the role of play in her life and what makes toys successful. Ultimately, her message about learning through play is one of hope.

“If we can play together we can live together,” she says.

DESIGNING TO SURVIVE + THRIVE In the fall 14 undergrad and grad students worked in the Nature Lab’s biodesign makerspace on projects involving green chemistry, biomimicry and regenerative design.

Students in the Industrial Design special topics studio designed innovative objects that work in harmony with living systems, including a plant- and bacteria-based “living machine” for treating wastewater and a carbon-sequestering algae cultivator.

The biodesign studio provided “an opportunity [for students] to work with concepts that are necessary if we are going to create a future that is supportive of life on this planet,” says Biological Programs Designer Jennifer Bissonnette, who co-taught the course with Industrial Design Department Head Peter Yeadon.

“Students are not just designing with biology, but also for biology, striving to build into their work what other creatures need to survive and thrive.”

Jennifer Bissonnette, Biological Programs Designer

And for one group of students, work will continue into the spring as they refine their project for the 2020 Biodesign Challenge, a competition in June at MoMA and Parsons School of Design in NYC. “Students are not just designing with biology,” Bissonnette adds, “but also for biology, striving to build into their work what other creatures need to survive and thrive.”

RISD ARCHITECTS THINK SMALL

Five affordable, net-zero homes designed in a RISD studio are being built in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood thanks to a partnership with the nonprofits ONE Neighborhood Builders and Building Futures. The designs grew out of an advanced Architecture studio led by Professor Jonathan Knowles BArch 84, who completed them with input from students.

Named for the street where the condo cluster is being built, the Sheridan Small Homes project challenged students to address issues of affordable housing, climate change and cost-effective design.

Working together they responded with two For more stories about students and studios, go to risd.edu/news.

small house prototypes for low-income families, each offering approximately 750 square feet of bright living space—including 2 bedrooms and 1.5 baths. The homes rely on solar energy and rainwater harvesting, and include small gardens.

“Ultimately, each house will be a net producer of energy and utility costs will be eliminated—providing energy security for the future homeowners,” Knowles explains.

Architecture students dig in at the October groundbreaking for the Sheridan Small Homes being built in Olneyville, a low-income neighborhood in Providence.

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RAID THE ICEBOX RETURNS In 1970 Andy Warhol put the RISD Museum at the center of attention in the art world when he came to campus with the invitation to “raid the icebox” by pulling from storage any combination of eclectic objects he wanted to show together. Raid the Icebox I with Andy Warhol presented entire sections of objects as they appeared in storage, with little regard for their condition, authenticity or art historical status.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of that subversive show, the museum invited contemporary practitioners Pablo Bronstein, Nicole Eisenman 87 PT (see also pages 48-49), Pablo Helguera, Beth Katleman, Simone Leigh, Sebastian Ruth, Paul Scott and Triple Canopy to create new bodies of work or unique curatorial projects for Raid the Icebox Now. Throughout this academic year, individual projects by these artists are echoing Warhol’s groundbreaking approach, infiltrating various galleries with the strengths and idiosyncrasies of the museum’s collection of more than 100,000 works from ancient times to the present.

Raid the Icebox Now installations by (clockwise from top) Beth Katleman, Simone Leigh and Pablo Bronstein.

PARSING COMPLEXITY Students, faculty and staff are sharing and generating fresh ideas in RISD’s Center for Complexity (CfC), a hub for project-based collaboration and innovation on the third floor of 20 Washington Place.

Cofounded in 2018 in partnership with global digital services and consulting company Infosys, the CfC was created to support RISD’s community, which is uniquely positioned to solve the world’s most critical and intractable problems.

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Director Justin Cook welcomed visiting artist/ educators Susan Jahoda and Caroline Woolard to the space on November 19 for a hands-on workshop exploring the role of objects in enabling groups to collaborate more equitably across disciplines. Other current CfC initiatives include improving emergency medicine, building citizen participation in Providence, tackling the opioid crisis and reorienting K-12 educational curricula to focus on climate change.

GAME-CHANGING DESIGNS In late September Murray Moss, who first challenged public perception of contemporary design in the 1990s through his upscale NYC design shop MOSS, hosted an “interactive runway exhibition” at RISD along with his longtime partner Franklin Getchell.

As RISD’s first-ever senior presidential advisors, the two presented a selection of groundbreaking pieces from their collection with the intention of “challenging the familiar, reconceptualizing the ordinary and inspiring future game changers”—designers with the ability to take a singular aspect of the world and permanently, dramatically transform cultural perspectives.

Consider the late graphicdesigner-turned-magazine-editor Tibor Kalman, perhaps best known for imagining the queen of England as a black woman.

“Tibor saw graphic design as a means, not an end,” Moss recalls, “and he was always searching for inspiration.” The game-changing perspective he offered is: good designers make trouble.

“MOSS changed people’s perspectives and began an incredible conversation about the future of design,” notes President Rosanne Somerson, “launching many careers along the way.”

LET THERE BE COLOR An overflow crowd packed into RISD’s new Color Lab on October 11 to celebrate its official opening as part of RISD Weekend activities.

Housed on the first floor of the Design Center at 30 North Main Street, the new space ties in with the renewed emphasis on research outlined in RISD’s strategic plan. In developing the plan, members of the campus community envisioned a growing ecosystem of shared, interdisciplinary labs that invite faculty and students in all majors to coalesce around common areas of interest and inquiry.

Assistant Professor of Graphic Design James Goggin got the opening festivities going with a lecture/ performance project called Pop Culture Colour Theory, a continuously evolving body of research on color as cultural code and commodity.

Brought to life with a custom soundtrack and multiscreen projection, the talk “draws connections among a broad spectrum of serious and humorous thinking on color—from research in the hard sciences to images drawn from pop culture and music,” as he describes it.

Find the latest campus news at risd.edu/news.

As a center for research and creative experimentation, the Color Lab demonstrates “RISD’s commitment to the study of color—its history, material dimensions, scientific properties and cultural significance,” notes Dean of Fine Arts Robert Brinkerhoff, who worked closely with color expert Bill Miller 91 PT, a longtime tech and faculty member in Painting, to bring the lab to life.

Dean of Fine Arts Robert Brinkerhoff and faculty member Bill Miller 91 PT explained the goals of the new Color Lab at the opening celebration.

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In October new RISD trustee Shepard Fairey 92 IL spoke to a packed house in the RISD Auditorium when his traveling retrospective Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent opened in Providence—after stops in Paris, Vancouver, NYC and elsewhere. He also painted this mural—his 100th—in Providence in tribute to the local arts nonprofit AS220.

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NEW TRUSTEES HAVE STRONG TIES TO RISD Five of the six new members elected to RISD’s Board of Trustees in May are alumni: Gabrielle Bullock BArch 84, Norman Chan BArch 85, Shepard Fairey 92 IL, Michael Rock MFA 94 GD and Shahzia Sikander MFA 95 PT/PR will serve three-year terms, along with RISD parent William Schweizer III. A principal at Perkins&Will in Los Angeles, Bullock has been a key player in the success of the global architecture firm for nearly three decades and combines her passion for architecture and social justice by directing its Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement program.

Chan creates timeless and compelling work through BTR Workshop Limited, the architectural and interior design firm he founded in Hong Kong.

Based in LA, Fairey is best known as an artist and activist who rose to prominence through the OBEY GIANT street art campaign in the 1990s and has continued to uphold his progressive values through his practice.

Rock founded the global design consultancy 2x4 in 1993 with fellow alumni Susan Sellers 89 GD and Georgianna Stout 89 GD. Headquartered in NYC (with a satellite studio in Beijing), the firm focuses on brand strategy for cultural and commercial clients who value the power of design. In 2016 Rock helped establish the 2x4 Endowed Scholarship at RISD. The father of a 2019 RISD grad, Schweizer served on the Parents’ Council from 2016–19 and is vice chairman of Clinical Affairs at NYU Langone Health in NYC, where he’s also a clinical associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, director of the Generalist Division and Obstetrics service chief.

A MacArthur Award-winner who was born and raised in Pakistan, Sikander brings feminist and Muslim perspectives to a pioneering practice that builds on classical Indo-Persian miniature painting as its point of departure.

“Our newest Board members embody RISD’s values and have each made indelible marks on society,” says Board Chair Michael Spalter. “We… thank them for taking on this important commitment in service to RISD.”

above: photo by Jesse Costa/WBUR

Fairey Still Advocating for Justice

CREATIVE MARRIAGE The exhibition Art Direction and Illustration: The Creative Marriage of Words and Images at the ISB Gallery showcased the collaborative output of Chris Buzelli 95 IL and SooJin (Chun) Buzelli 96 IL, a wonderfully creative couple of Illustration alums who met at RISD. In conjunction with the show, the NYC-based artists spoke about their work during RISD Weekend.

In the past two decades, Chris has developed a freelance practice as an award-winning conceptual illustrator (who also commutes from NYC to teach at RISD), while SooJin has honed a career as a successful art director, commissioning hundreds of editorial illustrations every year.

“Chris and I have been collaborating for 23 years— pretty much nonstop since we graduated,” says SooJin. “We’ve been in many shows together, but this was the first one featuring our collaboration.”

“Chris and I have been collaborating for 23 years— pretty much nonstop since we graduated.”

SooJin Buzelli 96 IL

REDEFINING LABELS

Keep in touch with what’s going on at RISD at risd.edu/news.

Abled Differently, the latest iteration of the RISDiversity community narratives project, highlights the work and personal stories of 20 members of the RISD community living with physical, psychological, cognitive, learning or chronic health disabilities.

Sponsored by RISD’s Human Resources department and curated by a team that included Social Equity and Inclusion Fellow Rene Payne 83 GD, the project culminated in an exhibition that was on view in the fall at RISD and a digital component that delves deeper into the experiences of the alumni and students profiled.

For instance, to cope with a form of color blindness called deuteranomaly, painter Francisco Moreno 12 PT works with a limited palette, while Nancy Meagher 78 PT is drawn to creating abstract paintings of the swimming pools where finds solace from a painful nerve disorder.

Recent grad Rebecca Erde MID 19 is developing products like a Light Therapy Pillow (left) that help people cope with the day-to-day symptoms of a variety of psychological illnesses. “I came to RISD to create a conversation—to highlight and normalize discussions about the stigmatized topic of mental illness,” she says.

See more at diversity.risd.edu. // RISDXYZ

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NEW PROFESSORS BRING NEW PERSPECTIVES

clockwise from far left: Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Jess Brown MID 09, Cheeny Celebrado-Royer, Spencer Evans and Anastasiia Raina are among the 10 new assistant professors who began teaching at RISD this fall.

In the fall RISD welcomed 10 new full-time faculty members whose global perspectives and diverse practices have already begun to enrich the curriculum.

In Experimental and Foundation Studies, Assistant Professor of Drawing Cheeny Celebrado-Royer brings her Filipino cultural background and immigrant experience to the studio, while Assistant Professor Spencer Evans draws on his Nigerian and Cameroonian heritage and his own experiences of racism here in the US to create powerful drawings and paintings. Each aims to help first-year students mine personally meaningful issues and broader social debates to create experimental work outside the conventional bounds of visual language.

Students are also benefitting from the experience of two new faculty members in Liberal Arts: Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies Xiangli Ding and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Lauren Richter.

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“For these outstanding artists, designers and scholars, this fall has offered an initial immersion in RISD’s... inspiring milieu.”

Kent Kleinman, RISD’s provost

Joining the Fine Arts division are Assistant Professor of Glass Sean Salstrom MFA 06 GL, who brings extraordinarily in-depth knowledge of glass-working techniques to his experimental practice, and Assistant Professor of Photography Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, who addresses questions of patriarchy, race, history and identity through his work.

The four new appointments in Architecture + Design—Anastasiia Raina and Ramon Tejada in Graphic Design, Jessica Brown MID 09 in Industrial Design and Tiago Torres-Campos in Landscape Architecture—share in common a passion for social justice and sustainably created work.

“For these outstanding artists, designers and scholars,” says Provost Kent Kleinman, “this fall has offered an initial immersion in RISD’s singularly intense, deeply caring, oftentimes eccentric and always inspiring milieu.”

Trio Teams Up for Traces of Time In July Traces of Time, a three-person exhibition at Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA, featured paintings by Professor Todd Moore MFA 84 PT, along with sculpture by Richard Fishman 63 SC and photographs by Jonathan Sharlin. Todd has been teaching in Experimental and Foundation Studies since he graduated from RISD in 1984.

MICHAEL EVERETT

1936–2019

Professor Emeritus Michael Everett, an integral member of the RISD community who taught here for 31 years, died on August 8, 2019 in Kent, CT after an almost year-long battle with cancer. He was 83.

After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Architecture studying with Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania, Michael later pursued a master’s in Landscape Architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

He came to RISD in 1969 and taught in the Architecture and Landscape Architecture departments, serving as department head of the latter for many years and as dean of the Architecture + Design division from 1995–2000.

Throughout his tenure Michael also practiced through his firm Everett Associates. He founded the not-for-profit Regional Land Program and promoted land conservation and historic preservation throughout New England.

A lifelong painter and sculptor, Michael also took great joy in his large and loving family, which includes the six sons he raised with Anne, his wife of 61 years, and seven grandchildren.

LARRY BUSH | 1951–2019

Potter, raconteur and well-loved teacher and mentor Larry Bush passed away unexpectedly on May 23, 2019—at his home in Providence, just a day after wrapping up crits.

Originally from Seattle, Larry earned a BFA from the University of Washington and an MFA from Alfred University’s College of Ceramics in New York state. After arriving at RISD in 1984—fresh out of graduate school—he became a widely respected professor of Ceramics who led the department for 20 years.

Perpetually in motion in the studio, Larry was always ready to

experiment and explore cross-disciplinary collaboration with colleagues in areas as diverse as interior architecture and printmaking.

“A classic optimist who was at ease with people,” as his friends put it, he especially loved

“Larry’s generous spirit and sly wit were infectious.” reading, sailing, hiking, biking, cooking and dogs, along with his two children, Erik and Maya (a RISD Printmaking alum).

“Larry’s generous spirit and sly wit were infectious,” notes Provost Kent Kleinman.

“He was a global ambassador for his discipline and his advocacy for ceramics extended deep into the local community.” // RISDXYZ

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PROCESSING HISTORY À LA EISENMAN

IT’S ALMOST A CLICHÉ to say that studio process is not only a material grammar of making, but also a mental gymnastics of processing, drawing to the surface an idea that might lie deep in the belly—or on the tip of the tongue. We know that grinding and sawing, staining and sewing are a means to process the world around us—to think through and with matter.

But if process is as conceptual as it is physical, how then might we process the debacle of recent American history? Is it idle wordplay to wonder if a procession might be one way to do so?

Procession, the standout work by Nicole Eisenman 87 PT in the latest Whitney Biennial, did just that: it quoted the gesture of the triumphal march, only to deflate it, puff by puff, into a motley parade that slumped and crawled across the rooftop of the Whitney Museum. A male bronze helmed the group,

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“RISD’s new Global Modernisms course starts not in the misty ‘beginning,’ but in the precarity of the present, and unrolls precipitously backwards.”

ringing a bell, lugging a rod with dangling tuna cans and dragging a platform bearing a genuflecting figure who farts out a stream of gas every three minutes.

Partly an ode to Whitney trustee Warren Kanders’ tear gas fortune, that steamy emission landed somewhere between two garbage can lid cymbals, momentously paused, mid-air, in the sausagey fingers of a seated figure with an acid-pocked face. He, in turn, is borne aloft by a crawling, yellow-bellied, peg-armed figure: it’s as if the grand equestrian monument has been hijacked by the antiheroes of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, briefly liberated from their trash cans for some “horseplay.”

A second male bronze sporting a worker’s cap mined the iconography of the heroic diagonal soldier, but far from planting anything flag-like, he dragged a soggy and very long horizontal bar, which was bracketed on both ends by pools of mustard, vomity spew. A trio of smaller plaster and wood figures marched determinedly against their concrete bases, while a pair of “museum pieces”—a Koonsian-Picassoesque bronze head and an “expressive” bust, both mounted on packing crates—brought up the rear.

left: photo by Jaime Marland | above: courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art

by Leora Maltz-Leca

OR IG I N STORY

Processions have long been used to visually convey ideas about knowledge and history, often to normalize regimes of tyranny through allegories—or al-ugh-ories (as Eisenman titled her 2017 retrospective at NYC’s New Museum). The founding narrative of Western epistemology, Plato’s Allegory of the Forms, revolves around a procession of shadow figures cast on the wall of a hypothetical cave. Their wobbly silhouettes, paraded before an audience of seated prisoners in this proto-cinema, emblematized the supposed poverty of the “mere” image as a source of truth: we are told that a shadow is a naughty and duplicitous double, a shoddy substitute for the thing itself.

Fast forward 2,000 years. Picture another procession, this one carved into Rome’s Arch of Titus in 86 CE. It celebrates Titus’ siege and defeat of Judea, which depicts soldiers carrying booty—or what cultural critic Walter Benjamin drily calls “cultural treasures”—from the recently destroyed temple in Jerusalem.

If the procession has functioned for millennia first as Western culture’s origin story of truth, then as its iconic image of (barbarous) historical change, it may be because it materializes the basic narrative form of succession. It is through such images that we both project ourselves into history (via lineages and ancestry) and sift the present, corralling our chaotic flow of sensations, thoughts, experiences and emotions into the single-file jostle that William James called the “stream of consciousness.”

economic and political project of colonialism, which both mandated the need for primitivism and other mythologies of cultural superiority, and structurally enabled the global scatter of artists and objects across the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All the while, it created the trauma that would provide the shaky logic for (design and other) projects of imperial “development” well into the present.

Eisenman’s cymbal-banging, ragtag crew is an especially potent vision of history because even as it marches valiantly against the authority (and lingering appeal) of a singular Grand Narrative, it eloquently models the possibilities of rethinking the past as a palimpsest of multiple, overlapping histories (with small h’s).

Just as Eisenman remakes the triumphal march as an absurd parade— the mercenaries blighted, the processional form chaotic—so too she quotes Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti, only to displace the male masters for a tribute to Lynda Benglis and her liquefication of the vertical plane of heroic maleness, and with it, the entire tradition of monumental sculpture.

Three details from Procession, the politically charged parade of sculpture

by Nicole Eisenman 87 PT that attracted a lot of attention at the 2019 Whitney Biennial.

right: courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art

H I STORY STARTS NOW

In September, on the first day of the newly revised H101 course at RISD—the introductory lectures in Theory and History of Art and Design (THAD) that all 530 foundation and transfer students take—we marshalled Eisenman’s Procession to help undo from the outset expectations that in this course history would emerge as a forward march, as the avant-garde’s militaristic image of advance would have it. Instead, RISD’s new Global Modernisms course starts not in the misty “beginning,” but in the precarity of the present, and unrolls precipitously backwards.

THAD faculty present history less as a succession of Euro-American male geniuses, heroically overcoming bourgeois taste through a series of “breakthroughs” that culminate in art’s triumphal development from naturalism to abstraction, than as a productive response—usually preceded by an anxious confrontation—with the visual imagination of the rich worlds beyond Europe. In this story, it was largely West African artists who led their northern counterparts out of the “darkness” of illusionism and towards the “light” of abstraction and the liberties of expressionism.

All this sets the stage for reckoning with contemporary art like Eisenman’s. Modernism emerges as coterminous with—and inextricably tangled in—the Find stories about faculty, students and alumni at risd.edu/news.

“We marshalled Eisenman’s Procession to help undo… expectations that in this course history would emerge as a forward march….”

The words “STEP UP” are stenciled on Procession’s slightly raised platform: a gridded sidewalk spotted with memories of abandoned chewing gum. As we do, we draw close to the fierce materiality of Eisenman’s hairy, furry disfigures. Walking among them, sidestepping the continual blasts of smoke, we are prompted to consider our own entanglement in the madness of this parade.

These figures still move ahead—or do they? They are, after all, stuck in cement. The avant-garde dream of a glorious march forward has turned from an aimless stroll to a sideways lurch, a stagger, a sway and now—in the era of Trump—a slow roll down a very steep mountain.

Endless freefall…. how to process that? // RISDXYZ

Leora Maltz-Leca heads the department now called Theory and History of Art and Design (nee History of Art + Visual Culture) and writes about contemporary culture for Artforum, Frieze, African Arts and other publications.

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// who’s giving to risd + why

NEW FELLOWSHIPS FOR GRAD STUDENTS Thanks to two generous gifts, exceptional graduate students selected as Society of Presidential Fellows (SPF) will attend RISD tuition-free starting this fall.

Once Hillary Blumberg 92 FAV learned about an anonymous gift of $10 million to support financial aid, the alumna wanted to build on that record-breaking amount with another breakthrough investment: the largest contribution ever from a RISD graduate in support of students in need.

The SPF opportunity represents a significant step in addressing two priorities articulated in NEXT, RISD’s new strategic plan: enhancing advanced inquiry

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through graduate study and increasing access to these programs. In addition to receiving full fellowships for the duration of their studies, students selected for the new program in 2020 connect with thought leaders in art and design through special events and with alumni through dedicated mentors.

Now the goal is to build on the SPF endowment so that increasingly more graduate students are able to choose RISD regardless of their financial means.

Your contribution can help more graduate students access a RISD education. Make a gift at risd.edu/giving.

Support for High-need Students To give all students access to the full breadth of a RISD education, for the first time ever all 77 first-year students with demonstrated high need are receiving $1,000 in support for materials, $3,000 for an internship experience and $5,000 to participate in global travel experiences. RISD hopes to expand the number of students who are able to benefit from this essential assistance as more gifts for the Social Equity Fund are made.

Please support current students by making a gift at risd.edu/giving.

WELCOMING RISD’S LARGEST GIFT EVER Thinking beyond uses in fashion, Little developed a parachute out of Rayon during World War II and was so confident in its strength and utility that he volunteered to test it himself. He trained at Fort Bragg for four days before jumping from a plane wearing the first Rayon parachute—an innovation that helped give rise to the company Textron is today.

Textron’s strong ties with RISD have endured over many decades as the company has grown in prominence. Throughout that time, the company has generously supported many scholarships, fellowships, studios and RISD

Museum exhibitions. The Rayon Foundation gift also contributed to RISD’s most successful fundraising year ever, with a total of $30.6 million raised during the 2018/19 fiscal year that closed on June 30.

“My father saw boundless possibilities in the uses of Rayon,” says Arthur D. Little, “and I am excited to see the college continue to innovate with textiles by challenging the boundaries…. I know he would be enormously pleased to see his philanthropic legacy extended in this way.”

“My father... would be enormously pleased to see his philanthropic legacy extended in this way.”

Arthur D. Little, son of Textron founder Royal Little

In 1944, with an initial gift of $100, a shrewd Rhode Island-based entrepreneur and investor named Royal Little established the Rayon Foundation Trust to support the study of textiles at RISD. Since that time, more than $7.3 million in quarterly distributions has benefitted RISD’s Textiles department.

When the trust matured, its value had grown to $19.9 million and now stands as the single largest gift in RISD’s history. This cumulative investment of $28 million represents one of the most generous gifts ever by an individual to an art and design school.

Little, who founded Textron Inc. in 1923, engineered the company’s transition from a small textiles firm called Special Yarns Company into what today has become a $14.2 billion multi-industry conglomerate with employees in 25 countries. The company’s stupendous growth blossomed from its founder’s expansive vision for Rayon, a material first introduced as synthetic silk. // RISDXYZ

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six degrees

RISD WEEKEND

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// connecting through the alumni association

Almost 1,300 alumni, parents and friends joined students, faculty and staff on campus to celebrate RISD’s latest milestones, tour studios and reconnect with friends at RISD Weekend 19 (October 11–13).

Among the highlights, visitors enjoyed the RISD Craft sales exhibition and took in family-oriented workshops, reunion luncheons and dinners, special RISD

Museum tours, talks, screenings and exhibitions.

President Rosanne Somerson welcomed guests to diverse events and they also had fun at WaterFire festivities and interacting with the ever entertaining antics of the Big Nazo puppet troupe founded by faculty member Erminio Pinque 83 IL.

photos by David O’Connor + Matthew Watson 09 FAV

SOCIAL ACTIVISTS COMMITTED TO PROGRESS

As part of the weekend, RISD trustee and Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia 05 ID/GD (above left) moderated a discussion on social entrepreneurship. Panelists Jon Key 13 GD (middle), Lina Sergei Attar MArch 01 (right) and Scott Lapham 90 PH spoke about the work they’re doing to address pressing issues in their respective communities.

Find ongoing Alumni Association activities and opportunities at alumni.risd.edu.

In addition to his work at Morcos Key, the Brooklyn-based design partnership he runs with Wael Morcos 13 GD, Key cofounded Codify Art to support QTPOC artists. Born and raised in Syria, Attar is building community on the borders of her war-torn country, where the nonprofit Karam Foundation she founded in 2007 provides displaced youth the ability to imagine a promising future.

As an arts educator in Providence, Lapham founded his nonprofit One Gun Gone after losing four of his teenage students to gun violence. He says that art gives him and them a much-needed space for deep thinking, meditation and healing. // RISDXYZ

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New Programs/ New Site The Alumni Association is developing new learning, mentoring, leadership and networking opportunities and offers many ways you can get involved. Please visit our new site to see what’s available, how to take part and discover what other alumni are sharing about their creative practices.

You can also now post news about your own exhibitions, projects, book signings and more on the site. Go to alumni.risd.edu to share what’s happening in your personal and professional life.

RISD, THE REASON I STILL DREAM On July 1 Donald Choi BArch 82/P 07, an architect and developer in Hong Kong with a long history of service to RISD, began a two-year term as president of the Alumni Association. As the first president from outside the US, he is especially well suited to represent RISD’s 30,000 alumni living in 93 countries around the world. Here he responds to a few questions.

What does the RISD Alumni Association offer alumni?

We connect alumni together no matter where they live and help support them in their personal and professional development. I urge alumni to get involved in our career and social networks, programs supporting alumni and their creative practices, and opportunities to give back to RISD. 54

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What’s next for the Alumni Association?

We are building a caring and engaged community by encouraging alumni participation. We offer a mentoring program for students and alumni, social experiences with fellow alumni, career support and opportunities to share ideas through affinity groups.

We also are developing programs for students.

How can alumni help?

I encourage alumni to build their networks locally and help shape the RISD leaders of tomorrow. For example, the Hong Kong club endowed a student scholarship and organizes welcome receptions for new students.

These efforts show students that RISD alumni care and will help them thrive.

Clubs are a great way for alumni to reminisce about RISD and renew their connection with the school

and its future. It is a joy to meet with alumni and students and learn about their aspirations.

Supporting RISD’s work—to advance critical innovative making, to use art and design to build a better community and to educate the public about the power of creative thinking—is more important than ever.

You often say: “RISD stands for the Reason I Still Dream.” What are your dreams?

I believe that RISD will continue to be the most important art and design college in the world because it improves people’s lives around the globe.

Artists and designers view reality from a new perspective that others miss, envision what has never existed and inspire when others have lost hope. This is RISD’s power.

CELEBRATING OUTSTANDING ALUMNI

“I’m so very grateful to have had my eyes and mind opened [at RISD].”

Todd Bartel 85 PT, winner of the Alumni Association’s Art and Design Educator Award

group photo by Matthew Watson 09 FAV

Artwork by art educator Todd Bartel 85 PT, a design by Open Style Lab director Grace Jun 09 GD and the Cummins Indy Distribution Headquarters in Indianapolis, IN by architect and educator Deborah Berke BArch 77 (center in the group photo below left, with Todd and Grace to either side). All three earned 2019 awards from the Alumni Association.

“I am a very proud RISD alumna and so grateful to have been surrounded by artists when I studied Architecture here,” says Deborah Berke BArch 77, dean of the Yale School of Architecture and principal of her own widely respected firm. “That proximity to other disciplines clearly influences architects’ creative capacity.”

As the first winner of the Alumni Association’s Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf Award—named after one

of RISD’s founding mothers—Berke accepted her award from Alumni Association President Donald Choi BArch 82/P 07 at a RISD Weekend reception in the RISD Museum.

Deeply committed to advancing women in architecture, Berke founded her NYC-based firm Deborah Berke Partners more than 30 years ago, building a strong reputation for unexpected architectural expression in work for colleges and universities, cultural institutions, private residences, boutique hotels, offices and multifamily development.

Grace Jun 09 GD earned the Emerging Leader Award and Todd Bartel 85 PT accepted the Art and Design Educator Award. An assistant professor at Parsons, Jun is also executive director of Open Style Lab (OSL), a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to making fashion accessible to people

Find ongoing Alumni Association activities and opportunities at alumni.risd.edu.

of all abilities. “This work has profoundly influenced my life,” she says.

Bartel, who teaches drawing, painting, collage and conceptual art at the Cambridge School of Weston in Massachusetts, earned recognition for his exceptional skill as an educator and his clear commitment to helping students thrive creatively.

“RISD trains the eye and mind to critique anything and everything,” Bartel said in accepting his award. “I’m so very grateful to have had my eyes and mind opened here.” // RISDXYZ

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looking back

// changes over time

“Students electing Mural Decoration receive training in the theory and techniques of tempera painting, fresco painting [and] mural composition.”

Discovering Hidden Bits of History Last summer when contractors were fixing the air-conditioning in the Waterman Building (RISD’s oldest, dating from 1893), they found a sweet surprise when removing a couple of homasote panels: four frescoes of indeterminate origin.

As it turns out, the Painting department offered mural courses in the mid 1930s that grew into a concentration by the mid 1940s. Before the program was phased out in 1947, Painting majors chose one of three concentrations: Illustration, Portraiture or Mural Decoration.

“Students electing Mural Decoration receive training in the theory and techniques of tempera painting, fresco painting [and] mural composition,” notes RISD’s course catalogue from the era.

A final mural project was a prerequisite of graduation.

photos courtesy of RISD Archives

If you know more about RISD’s former mural program or what’s depicted in these photos, please contact archives@risd.edu or risdxyz@risd.edu.

Follow photos emanating from RISD today @risd1877.

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moving forward

Randy (Halsey) Frost 59 GD After being treated for breast cancer, Randy temporarily lost her creative drive but eventually bounced back with Renewal, a series of quilts in which she experimented with shape and scale. Renewal X is included in the Quilt National 2019, a juried exhibition on view last spring at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens, OH and due to travel in the US and abroad throughout 2020. Randy lives in Westchester County, NY.

1945 The iconic textile designs of Ruth Adler Schnee IA were featured in Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America, a summer 2019 exhibition at the Denver [CO] Art Museum.

Ruth now lives in Colorado Springs and at 96 isn’t working as much but is still doing interviews and speaking out about the value of design,

noting in a recent story in Denver’s Gazette that “Design is all around us. You just have to go outside and look.”

1958 Printed Matter has selected Here I Am, a new book of photo collages by Ruth Gilbert AE, for publication. Working Small; Thinking Big—Public Art, another as-yet-unpublished

// undergraduate class notes

artist’s book, presents selections from her body of drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptural work created over the past 30 years at her home base at Yoho Studios in Yonkers, NY.

1960 Last summer artist and art therapist Jean Winslow IL* showed work in Together Again for the First Time, a twoartist exhibition at the Arts League of Lowell [MA], the city where she lives. She also continues to run Soul Mapping collage workshops that introduce participants to the language of symbols, dreams and archetypes.

Karen Moss 66 PT Works like Toys in Color (2019, acrylic on paper, 40 x 26") and others included in Abandoned, Karen’s spring/summer solo show at Howard Yezerski in Boston, explore an unsettling analogy between abandoned stuffed animals and marginalized people.

The toys resemble “countless refugees… around the world and the multitude of homeless we see in our cities,” says the artist, who lives in Brookline, MA.

1963 The MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA recently acquired Wireheader, an early digital print by NYC-based artist Deena des Rioux IL, for its permanent collection.

David Estey 64 PT Picasso Meets Satchmo (2018, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40") was among the 25 recent paintings in a summer solo exhibit at Studio 53 Fine Art Gallery (owned and operated

by Terry Seaman 64 PT and Heidi Seidelhuber 70 PT) in Boothbay Harbor, ME. In August and September, David also exhibited 43 pieces in A 69-Year Retrospective at the Bangor [ME] Public Library, near where he lives in Belfast, ME. 58

// undergraduate class notes

1964 Nancy Crasco AE took Massachusetts by storm last spring and summer, showing fiber, prints and quilts in group shows at Gallery Twist in Lexington, Belmont [MA] Gallery, New England Quilt Museum in Lowell and Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown. The artist lives and works in Boston.

Last summer multimedia artist Elizabeth Ginsberg TX (West Orange, NJ) contributed new work to the 30th Annual International Exhibition at Viridian Artists in NYC.

1967 A mixed-media piece called In Circles by CB Forsythe PT was

Ann Higgins 50 TX Bear Hole Brook Falls is one of eight watercolors Ann contributed to Water on Water, a spring/summer group exhibition at the Time and the Valleys Museum in Grahamsville, NY, where she lives. The 70-plus paintings in the show all depict the reservoirs, creeks and waterfalls in the NYC Watershed around the museum.

Bunny Harvey 67 PT/ MFA 72 right: Bunny traveled to France this fall for her solo show Survival Tactics, which was on view from mid November to early December at the American University of Paris Fine Arts Gallery in Paris.

on view last summer in the group exhibition 21st Century Women at the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii. The artist splits her time between studios in Honolulu and Plum Island, MA.

Drop Zone—are all from her recent series exploring nature, reflection and abstraction in a circular format. In addition, an individual artist grant from Berkeley’s Civic Arts Program allows her to place her work in emergency shelters, hospitals, rehabilitation facilities and other civic spaces.

Mary Curtis Ratcliff AE (healingcircleartworks.net) showed three pieces at the new Cedar Street Gallery in Berkeley, CA, where the month-long show coincided with the city’s summer Sunday Street Festival. The works— Maui in My Dreams, Bridge and

Prolific fiber artist Deidre Scherer AE continues to show compelling new work in exhibitions across the US, including most recently in Basketry Now at the WKU Kentucky Museum in Bowling Green, Relative Relations at the Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College in

NYC and Moving Up at Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts in Brattleboro, VT, near where she lives in Williamsville.

over the past 49 years, will run from February 6–March 1 at

1969

Created with the French matte acrylic paint flashe —Todd’s medium of choice —I knew You’d Understand (2019, flashe on canvas, 24 x 30") was one of the works on view in Pardon Me for Painting, a solo exhibition that ran in May at Gallery NAGA in Boston. The artist lives and works in Cambridge, MA.

Sea Journeys, a retrospective exhibition of work by painter/ poet Ed Baranosky PT made

LucSculpture Gallery in his home city of Toronto.

Todd McKie 66 PT

Jane Caminos 69 IL Jane’s paintings are on view through February 12 in On Women Bound, a solo exhibition at Fogue Gallery in Seattle, where she lives. Seeking “to expose violence against women and girls across all cultures [and] social classes around the world” through her practice, the artist/activist says that the works on view in the show aim to “transform victims into the victorious.”

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Rhode Island-based artist Meris Barreto AE showed work in The Abstract, a fall group exhibition at the Bristol [RI] Art Museum.

1971 Photographs and videos by RISD Professor Henry Horenstein PH/MFA 73 were included in Capturing the Moment, an “all-stars” exhibition at the San Antonio [TX] Museum of Art. On view from February–May, the show highlighted the technological advancements, sociopolitical upheavals and cultural influences that motivated artistic innovation in 20th-century photography. Henry also lectured and showed selected works, including his awardwinning documentary Partners, in a fall solo exhibition at Swarthmore [PA] College.

Apologies to Lawrence Philp PT for misspelling his last name

Ken Druse 72 FAV/MFA 74 Featuring lush photography

by Ellen Hoverkamp, The Scentual Garden (Abrams, October 2019) is Ken’s 20th book celebrating the allure of gardening. This one focuses on botanical fragrances and offers tips for cultivating garden scents. Ken lives in Newton, NJ and his collection of garden photographs is housed at the Smithsonian.

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1969 continued Last summer Garrow Throop GD showed a new series of ethereal “photowatercolors” at Truro Fine Art Studio on Cape Cod. The artist is based in Newtonville, MA.

1970 50th Reunion October 9–11

Viviane de Kosinsky 71 IL Viviane’s 2 x 2-inch etching Crumb earned a Juror Award and the Gamblin Artists Colors Award at the 12th Biennial International Miniature Print Exhibition 2019 at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT. Earlier in the year she also earned First Prize in Graphics from the Florida Miniature Art Society.

in the last issue (page 63). We added an extra ‘i’ and a second syllable to what is actually a simple single syllable surname.

Retired Rhode Island art teacher Ann Friedman Coombs Xavier AE is now leading beginning landscape painting classes at the League of NH Craftsmen in Meredith.

Edward Grazda 69 PH Inspired by the 1956 Lionel Rogosin documentary by the same name, Ed photographed On the Bowery (PowerHouse Books, September 2019) in 1971 when the neighborhood was still one of Manhattan’s grittiest. The publisher describes the NYC-based photographer’s work as “an important reminder that… New York never stops evolving.”

1972 James Carpenter Design Associates—the architectural glass firm Jamie Carpenter IL leads in NYC—spearheaded the interior design of Nordstrom’s NYC flagship store, which

opened in late October and occupies seven floors at the base of the Central Park Tower.

With soaring 19-foot ceilings and open floor plans, the space is stunning.

Susan Mallory Sherman 74 CR

Rosalyn Richards 69 PR/PT Beacon (2017, etching, 17 ¾ x 11 ⅝") and other paintings and prints inspired by visualization technologies and scientific phenomena were on view in Dynamic Introspection, an early summer solo show at Gallery 72 in Omaha, NE. Rosalyn lives in Lewisburg, PA.

Prolific painter and landscape architect/photographer Richard Kattman LA/BLA 73

showed work in progress at an early November open studios event at Holliston Mill, a former

above: Last spring Susan showed Into the Woods (oil on canvas, 11 x 14") and other recent paintings in a solo exhibition by the same name at Maud Morgan Arts in Cambridge, MA, where she lives. In 2019 she also exhibited work in two group shows in New York state: at the Adirondack Artist Guild Gallery in Saranac Lake and at Corscaden Barn Gallery in Keene Valley.

shoe factory in Holliston, MA that houses studios like his.

“My paintings are about captur-

David Macaulay BArch 69 Crossing on Time (Roaring Brook Press, 2019), David’s latest book, tells the story of the SS United States, the ship he and his family took to move from England to the US in 1957 when he was 10.

Based in Vermont, the renowned author/illustrator is currently working on a project spun off from his 1988 bestseller The Way Things Work and considering another about how taking a dog for a walk changes the way one engages with the world.

Andrew Stevovich 70 PT above: In June Adelson Cavalier Galleries in Palm Beach, FL hosted a career retrospective of Andrew’s work that featured recent pieces like Two Women Feeding a Monkey (2018, oil on linen, 18 x 20") along with other figurative paintings dating back to the late 1980s. Andrew is based in Northborough, MA.

ing the landscape, the workings of my conscious and subconscious mind and my physical body on canvas,” he says.

1973 Last August painter Henry Isaacs PT celebrated his 10th solo exhibition at Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor, ME, near where he lives in Portland.

Moving Pictures featured his stunning new collection of landscapes painted in Maine, Europe and Nepal.

Email story ideas to risdxyz@risd.edu and post your own news at alumni.risd.edu.

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by George Lange 78 PH

Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation continues through April 5 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in Colorado.

Drawn from George’s long-private collection of photos and ephemera related to his famous friend, the show is accompanied by a beautifully conceived book published by Rizzoli/Rizzoli Electa that includes many references to RISD and photographs by both artists.

Excerpts follow from George’s introduction about Francesca, who took her own life two years after graduating in 1979.

WH E N I FI R ST VI S ITE D R I S D , I didn’t know anyone who had gone to art school or was a real artist. [But once I] got my first view of the photography building, I knew right away that is where I belonged. [When] I got to Providence in the summer of 1976 [there were] lots of people working really hard. But real artists?

That was a much more rarified breed.

Each week we were expected to produce a series of prints, tack them up for our crits, and talk about them… We were taught how to talk about pictures in a way that made them seem important. We were taught how to make archival images that would last forever—implying that our work deserved to last forever.

All the work was terribly serious. I was told in no uncertain terms that if someone was smiling in my pictures they were not art.

I created lots of work but really didn’t know what I was doing. // undergraduate class notes

I met Francesca Woodman 79 PH [that first year]. She was the real deal. She lived her art. She looked like her art.

She had the vocabulary of art. Almost best of all, her images each week—which are some of the most famous images of her brief career— BLEW me away.

Francesca was the fragile friend you could not refuse to help, and she… could also be a handful. Her loft on Main Street had no kitchen, no bath or shower; it was the living set you see in her pictures. I lived two blocks up the hill from her loft—and was roommates with her close friend, Sloan Rankin 79 IL .

We took care of Francesca—not by being charitable, but just by inviting her to use the shower, by feeding her and by being her friend.

Francesca would slip into the bathroom and run the hot water until it ran out, with steam pouring under the crack of the door.

She would then emerge in one of her slips, hair wrapped in a big towel, ready for a tuna fish feast.

My memories of Francesca are light and fun. I picture her floating over the ground (or maybe just touching it with Chinese slippers) rather than clomping around like the rest of us. Her voice was very high and kind of quiet, but sweet. I can still hear it.

Francesca’s intensity was palpable. It scared me. I had never met anyone who could so clearly reveal a refined vision.

She could also be a mess. Her place was a mess, her photo technique stained.

That mess is the texture of her work. She couldn’t control everything, but somehow with her touch that mess became poetry.

George Lange Collection / courtesy of the artist

THE REAL DEAL

left: George Lange, Untitled photograph, ca. 1975-1978. Film negative. Collection of George Lange | above: courtesy of George Lange © Estate of Francesca Woodman / Charles Woodman / Aritsts Rights Society (ARS), NY

She was the real deal. She lived her art.

She looked like her art. She had the vocabulary of art.

When she was at RISD, Francesca Woodman’s loft space was as messy as her photo technique. But somehow this brought texture and poetry to her work, which often focused on self-portraits like the gelatin silver prints above. facing page: One of George Lange’s many evocative photos of his “fun” and very intense friend. mcadenver.org/exhibitions/francesca-woodman + georgelange.com

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1975 45th Reunion October 9–11

1976 President Rosanne Somerson ID is one of five RISD makers showing work through January

18 in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking at Philadelphia’s Center for Art in Wood (see also page 74).

“I’m honored to be included in this exhibition with so many groundbreaking women designers and artists,” says the

Gus Van Sant 75 FAV In the fall Vito Schnabel Projects hosted Recent Paintings, Hollywood Boulevard, the first NYC solo show of the filmmaker’s impressionistic paintings. The works on view are inspired by the people, places and events Gus has encountered since moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s. He’s best known for films such as My Own Private Idaho, Goodwill Hunting and Milk, among many others.

president, a former professor who cofounded RISD’s Furniture Design department in 1995 and taught several of the women in the show.

Cambridge, MA textiles designer Suzanne Watzman GD taught a workshop on shibori and indigo dyeing techniques last October at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA, where she’ll be an artist in residence this spring.

1977 Deborah Berke BArch (see page 55) In October NYC-based painter Younghee Choi Martin PT showed work in a group exhibition at Kings Oaks in Newtown, PA. Everything in Its Season: Lyme, New Hampshire 1970–1985, a book of essays, poems and photographs by Ricker Winsor PH/MFA 78, reflects on the “idealistic, utopian subculture”

Eva Kwong 75 CR right: Supported by a 2019 Lighton International Artists Exchange Program grant, Eva enjoyed an artist residency at the Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark.

Work like Love Between the Atoms was on view from late August–late September in a solo exhibition at Utah State University’s Tippetts & Eccles Galleries. Eva teaches at Kent State University in Ohio.

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Paul Housberg 75 PT/MFA 79 GL above: Molecule, a permanent site-specific installation at the University of Minnesota/Duluth’s new Heikkila Chemistry and Advanced Materials Science Building, references scientific phenomena and research via the interplay of light, color and geometric patterns. “I’m interested in how color interacts with light to transform the experience of a space,” says Paul, who lives in Jamestown, RI.

Sally Sturman 76 PR Sally lived in France for much of the past year, immersing herself in local art and culture while taking French classes at L’Alliance Française Bordeaux.

While there, the New Yorker created a comic book in the bande dessinée tradition and exhibited her work in C’est la fin des Haricots (What a Catastrophe!), a summer solo show at L’Alliance.

Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery in Keene, NH.

1979 Rhode Island-based painter and naturalist Kathy Hodge PT* continues to find inspiration in wild habitats.

The Shore, an oil-on-linen piece she showed at the Bert Gallery in Providence last summer, presented the view from her kayak as she paddled through Tongass National Forest in Alaska. of the era. The American artist continues to paint, write, draw and make photos from his home in Surabaya, Indonesia.

1978 Don’t Ask Alice, an autobiographical project by Valerie Hird PT, charts a course from

Ron Meick 78 SC 1849 Rome and other chine collé monotypes exploring various dimensions of temporality were on view in Movements of Time, an October solo exhibition at the Washington [DC] Printmakers Gallery. Ron lives in Arden, DE.

the 1960s to the present through the unreliable lens of memory. The work was on view in the fall at Furchgott Sourdiffe Gallery in Shelburne, VT and is slated for exhibition in 2020 at Nohra Haime Gallery (which represents her) in NYC. Work by painter/printmaker Susan Osgood PT was on view earlier this fall in Moving Up, a group exhibition at Mitchell-Giddings Fine Arts in Brattleboro, VT (where she lives). She also contributed work to the 2019 Biennial Regional Juror’s Choice Exhibition, which ran from June 21–September 29 at

1980 40th Reunion October 9–11 Work by Mandy Morrison PT was included in Unruly Bodies, a show inspired by Roxane Gay’s concept of body types that don’t conform to societal norms. The exhibition was on view recently at Stevenson [MD] University’s Greenspring Art Gallery. Based on Staten Island, NY, Mandy traveled to Brazil in the fall as a fellow at the Sacatar Institute in Bahia.

1981 Sculptor Anna Boothe SC of Zieglerville, PA was a featured

Email story ideas to risdxyz@risd.edu and post your own news at alumni.risd.edu.

artist at the 2019 Smithsonian Craft Show, on view in April at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Artist Trine Bumiller PR recently contributed paintings and drawings to group exhibitions in Denver, Boulder and Telluride, CO as well as further from home (in Denver) as part of the Glacier Project in Venice, Italy and with the Artnauts Collective in Entusi, Uganda. Close Encounters, her solo summer show at Art Gym Denver, explored the obsessive pull of Devil’s Tower, the national monument that inspired the classic Steven Spielberg film Close Encouters of the Third Kind.

Vermont-based painter Patrick Dunfey PT welcomed

Laurie Harden 76 IL Waiting for the Sun to Set and other oil paintings were on view last spring in On the Verge, a solo exhibition at Skylands Medical Group in Franklin, NJ, near her home.

Laurie focuses on the diversity of moods people experience and express in everyday life.

the community into his White River Junction studio for a First Friday arts event in early September.

Last August Fred Lisaius IL exhibited Stinger—a 3D piece responding to our relationship to the natural world and incorporating resin, a hypodermic needle, fast-food packaging and other found objects—at the Seattle Art Fair.

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Lily Prince 84 PT Last summer Lily (Stone Ridge, NY) presented recent paintings and works on paper in a solo show at 11 Jane Street Art Center in Saugerties, NY. There There featured vibrant pieces exploring “the pulsating patterns and rhythmic harmony in nature.”

1985 35th Reunion October 9–11

Rolf Brönnimann 83 IL Rolf’s animated short Bolero Station—which took him 11 years to make on his own— has been accepted to 20 film festivals so far. It won the Audience Choice Award at Animation Nights New York (ANNY) in May and was included in the ANNY showcase at Cannes. In August it took the grand prize for children’s animation at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Rolf is cofounder of BBDESIGN in Zurich, Switzerland.

1983 Judith Schaechter GL (see page 9)

1984 The US Mint has selected Steven Kenny IL to participate in the Artistic Infusion Program, which invites graphic designers, sculptors, illustrators, painters and other visual artists to create new designs for official coins and medals.

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The painter is based in St. Petersburg, FL. Victoria Rospond BArch presented a lecture on waste as a design flaw in architecture at the recent New York conference on Education, Design and Practice: Understanding Skills in a Complex World sponsored

by Architecture_Media_ Politics_Society (AMPS). Her presentation—“I’ve Not Done All I Can Do With a Carrot: Making Do Into Practice”— is based on material from a forthcoming book called Verify in Field: CDR Studio, co-authored with fellow CDR

Fotini Vurgaropulou 84 SC Fotini exhibited a series of colorful kiln-formed glass panels depicting the colors, translucency and light of the seasons in a group exhibition that ran from August through mid October at Halstead Real Estate in Brooklyn (where she lives).

principals Lea Cloud BArch and Jon Dreyfous, with Elizabeth Azen.

Multidisciplinary artist/ educator Todd Bartel PT (see also page 55) curated Unfoldingobject, N, a group collage exhibition held last summer at the Concord [MA] Center for the Visual Arts.

Last fall his work was on view in Working PAPER, a two-

artist exhibition with RISD Professor Emeritus Jack Massey at Hera Gallery in Wakefield, RI. RISD Illustration faculty member Mary Jane Begin IL deconstructed the creative process behind two recent children’s books in Mapping the Imagination, a solo exhibition on view last summer at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA.

LIFEBLOOD FOR TEACHERS AS A LONGTI M E TEACH E R ,

Rob Alexander 86 ID always keeps he also discovered useful insights all over campus—from visiting his eyes open for opportunities to bring exciting new knowledge other high-end facilities to noting the value of the notebooks to his industrial technology students at Canyon Middle School engineers fill with data, sketches and observations. in Castro Valley, CA. Last summer he was thrilled to participate In addition to his inspiring experience at BDML , Alexander in one such opportunity: an immersive fellowship at Stanford’s has completed three other summer fellowships in recent years: Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory ( BDML). at Fujifilm and twice with Lockheed Martin. “These professional Working through the Bay Area nonprofit Ignited Education, development externships have been by far the most transformaAlexander was invited into Stanford’s advanced technology lab tive experiences of my 30-year career,” he notes. for two months of intensive hands-on learning. There he observed As the Stanford summer program came to a close, Alexander and worked with researchers on one of the lab’s key projects: was raring to get back to the classroom. “This program,” he says, a robotic grip custom made for Astrobee, NASA’s new system of “is an injection of lifeblood for teachers.” free-flying robot “assistants” at the International Space Station.

above: photo by L.A. Cicero

“These professional development externships have been by far the most transformative experiences of my 30-year career.”

“Rob is very eager to learn and is excited about our work,” says Tony Chen, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering who mentored Alexander throughout the eight-week Stanford Summer Research Program for Teachers.

In partnering with Chen, Alexander focused on the lab’s work in the field of biomimetics, including learning how to manufacture a powerful gecko-inspired adhesive invented by BDML researchers. While primarily immersed in lab research,

top: Middle school teacher Rob Alexander 86 ID (left) and Stanford doctoral student Tony Chen examine a robotic gripper under development for the International Space Station. | above: People working in the lab take a break to pose and spell out its acronym: BDML.

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“I hope that the 2020 Biennale will be responsibly and contagiously optimistic.”

CELEBRATING CONTRASTS AND CONTRADICTIONS

by Simone Solondz

In curating the exhibition, Sarkis and his team considered cultural and material diversity in evaluating existing and hypothetical work. “The exposition will celebrate contrasts and contradictions,” he says. “By necessity architects are optimists, and I hope that the 2020 Biennale will be responsibly and contagiously optimistic.”

Sarkis’ own work also celebrates contrasts while consistently focusing on human needs. “I try to bring the inhabitants into the center of every building,” he says, “providing them with possibilities for defining and redefining the way they use the space.”

Through projects in the US, Canada, China, Lebanon, Turkey and the UAE, Sarkis emphasizes the integration of architecture with urban and landscape settings. “Most of my buildings are organized around one courtyard or more,” he says. “Simple, slightly distorted geometries respond to their context without ever losing their gestalt.”

above: photo by Poyraz Tütüncü (IKSV)

and where I came to understand the commitment that architecture requires,” says Hashim Sarkis BArch 87. As the principal of Hashim Sarkis Studios and dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, the Lebanese-born architect fully understands that commitment.

His global vision—which has earned him numerous awards and the invitation to create the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design—has now been tapped for the Biennale Architettura 2020, which opens this spring in Venice.

Centered on the theme How Will We Live Together?, the exhibition “straddles our growing political and social divides by using architecture as a means of bringing people together,” Sarkis explains. “Participants are proposing new, collaborative forms of architecture, cohabitation and even organizational structure.”

“R I S D I S WH E R E MY EYE S LEAR N E D TO S E E

Responding to an anonymous open competition, Sarkis won the commission for this new Town Hall in Lebanon’s historic city of Byblos.

For the Courtowers project in Lebanon, he designed four singlefamily homes on the coast in Aamchit while also rehabilitating the existing landscape and existing houses. // undergraduate class notes

hashimsarkis.com

Stephanie Roberts-Camello 85 PT Family Tree (encaustic on silk over wood panel, 15 x 15 x 4") was included in several group shows in 2019, including one at the Concord [MA] Center for the Visual Arts curated by Todd Bartell 85 PT (see page 55). Stephanie also won first prize in the spring Small Works Salon at Maud Morgan Arts in Cambridge, MA—where she was awarded a solo show—for Never Shed a Tear, a painting made atop a family letter written in the 1920s.

1985 continued Interaction Design and Children (IDC), an international community focused on using new forms of technology to facilitate learning among children, named educator Allison Druin GD the 2019 ACM Edith Ackermann Eminent Scholar. An associate provost for Research and Strategic Partnerships at Pratt in NYC, she was recognized for two decades of research and leadership and for creating new

participatory design methods now used across industry and academia.

1986 Hope Bindery, the Providence studio owned by Jim DiMarcantonio IL, recently completed an edition of 51 drum leaf bindings for renowned painter Alex Katz.

Fellow print professional and RISD faculty member Dan Wood 94 PR did the exquisite letterpress work on the book.

Earlier this fall sculptor Grints Grinbergs BArch (Dedham, MA) showed large metal pieces in The Fat of the Land, a two-month solo exhibition at the Groton [CT] School.

Painter William Hudders PT showed his interpretive stilllifes in Parallel Lines, a twoartist exhibition with Jan Crooker that ran from August 26–October 25 at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, PA, where he teaches.

He also showed line drawings in a group exhibition at Brick & Mortar Gallery in Easton, PA earlier in the summer.

Drawings by Fred Lynch IL, who teaches as an associate professor at RISD, are on view through March 7 in Paul

Hanna von Goeler 86 IL Earlier this fall Hanna’s work was featured in Reverse / Alchemy, the first-ever site-specific installation exhibited by High Noon Gallery in NYC, which represents her. Presented as a series of painted “rags” strung up on clotheslines, the exhibition spoke to issues of gender, labor, race, class and value.

Revere’s Ride Revisited at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library in Lexington, MA. In focusing on Revere’s famous route, the show highlights what has been preserved and what would now be unrecognizable to 18th-century colonists.

artist books, installations and works on canvas in fall shows at New Jersey City University and St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, Five Points Gallery (Torrington, CT) and Mikhail Zakin Gallery (Demarest, NJ).

Colorado-based artist Margaret Pettee Olsen PT was one of six artists selected to participate in Women in Abstraction, a summer show at William Havu Gallery in Denver. A review in the local arts publication Westword described Margaret’s largescale paintings as “striking and beautifully conceived.”

Earlier this fall Trine Giaever IL (Piermont, NY) showed paintings in Fear at Bell-ans Center of Creative Arts in Orangeburg, NY and We’re Not in Kansas Anymore at the Village Hall in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

1987 Nicole Eisenman PT (see page 48) Multidisciplinary artist Eileen Ferara IL exhibited

1988

Karen Harris 86 IL Ice Reveal (20 x 30") is among the recent paintings on view in a summer solo show at the Bank RI Pitman Street Gallery in Providence. Karen is a longtime member of the RISD Careers team, where she works as an internship manager.

Email story ideas to risdxyz@risd.edu and post your own news at alumni.risd.edu.

The Newark Museum in New Jersey recently acquired Joseph—(Smile), a new 90 x 70-inch oil on canvas painting

by Farsad Labbauf BID, for its permanent collection.

The artist is based in nearby Jersey City.

Artist Charles Rosenberg SC (Los Angeles) showed twodimensional works as part of the Every Woman Biennial in Los Angeles, a salon-style exhibition featuring painting, photography, installation, sculpture, video art, textiles and multimedia works by a diverse group of artists.

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MAJORS AC R O N Y M S Apparel Design

AP

BArch Architecture CR Ceramics Digital + Media

DM

FAV Film/Animation/ Video FD

Furniture Design

GD

Graphic Design

GL Glass IA

Interior Architecture

ID

Industrial Design

IL Illustration JM Jewelry + Metalsmithing PH Photography PT Painting PR Printmaking SC Sculpture TX Textiles MASTER’S DEGREES Adaptive Reuse Art Education

MA

MArch Architecture MAT Teaching MDes Design in Interior Studies MFA

Fine Arts

MID

Industrial Design

MLA Landscape Architecture FORMER MAJORS AD

Advertising Design

AE

Art Education

MD

Machine Design

MIA

Interior Architecture

TC

Textile Chemistry

TE

Textile Engineering

F O R M E R 5 T H -Y E A R DEGREES BGD

Graphic Design

BID

Industrial Design

BIA Interior Architecture BLA Landscape Architecture OTHER BRDD Brown/RISD

Dual Degree CEC

Continuing Education Certificate

* attended RISD, but no degree awarded RISD reserves the right to edit submissions to class notes, which is a forum for alumni to share personal and professional news.

This relies on an environment of trust and mutual respect. Views expressed by alumni are theirs alone and are neither endorsed by nor able to be ascribed to RISD. No information presented here may be used to defame, harass or threaten individuals or entities.

All images submitted for publication must be copyright clear.

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Franklin Einspruch 90 IL As the 2019 Fulbright-Q21/MuseumsQuartier Artist-in-Residence in Vienna, Franklin created a digital comics poetry project called Regarding Th.at exploring themes of travel, desire and the weight of history. “This extraordinary residency allowed me to move into new creative territory,” he says. The Boston-based artist is also active as an art critic, contributing regularly to The New Criterion and producing the online journal Delicious Line.

1988 continued Eight Tide Jars, a site-specific installation by ceramist Adam Silverman BArch, was on view in September at the Cooper Union in NYC. As the artist explains, jar refers specifically to the iconic Korean moon jar made from the mid 17th to mid 18th centuries to store rice, soy sauce and alcohol.

1989 Matthew Bird ID curated a delightful poster exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL. Coming Soon, which ran from July-October, presented the largest ever museum exhibition of classic movie posters. Last spring Matthew curated an exhibition about maritime

history called Streamlined: From Hull to Home at the Mystic [CT] Seaport Museum.

Artist Molly Dickinson IL (Middletown, RI) showed work in the 2019 National Open Juried Exhibition at the Providence Art Club last summer and in the Pawtucket [RI] Foundation Prize Exhibition last spring.

Maine-based artist Karen Gelardi PT showed new paintings in Helicase, a fall solo exhibition on view at Interloc (formerly Steelhouse Projects) in Rockland, ME. The exhibition title refers to her artistic process: “to unzip, reproduce, transform and grow imagery into something that has a palpable life force.”

1990 30th Reunion October 9–11 In late September NYC-based painter SoHyun Bae PT collaborated with dancers in the Martha Graham troupe, sketching their movements in charcoal for a live audience during a powerful performance piece called Graham Deconstructed: Steps in the Street. She also exhibited work in Summer Selections, a group show on view at Hollis Taggart gallery just off the High Line in Manhattan.

Last summer graphic designer and art teacher Melanie Barash Levitt GD (Jackson, NH) showed work in a group exhibition at the Tin Mountain Conservation Center in Albany, NH celebrating the area’s unique landscape, color and light.

David Weeks PT, best known for his contemporary, high-end furniture and light fixtures, co-curated, contributed to and hosted The Utility Banquet, a show about the tools artists

Find more news about exhibitions, projects and professional developments on the new Alumni Association site. And you can now post your own updates there, too.

alumni.risd.edu

use to make their art, on view at David Weeks Studio last July.

In the fall, his gallery space hosted Four Monsters, a solo exhibition featuring bold, large-scale paintings by local artist Les Rogers 89 PT.

1991 In early November painter Rebecca Chamberlain AP and her partner Yasaman Esmaili of the nomadic architecture firm Studio Chahar presented community-based work in Salon Number Four at Salon Mlle.Mars in Brooklyn.

Rebecca’s work focuses on the essential human need for physical safety and spiritual refuge. She cofounded Chahar based on the idea that communities need to create their own architecture in order to make it equitable and sustainable. The work on view was a community-built project in Niger completed with Atelier Masomi that rehabilitated an important mosque as a new library joined to a newly constructed mosque.

Liz Collins TX/MFA 99 (see page 15) Last spring mixed-media artist Greg Foley AP and Donald Hearn BArch 94 (who both teach at Parsons) teamed up to present LUX NOVA at Planthouse in NYC. The exhibition celebrated light and color, and included Greg’s photos, risographs and embroideries revisiting mementos he has collected throughout his life.

Center in Toronto and in The Abstract Image at Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis.

San Francisco-based artist/ educator/curator Mel Prest PT teamed up with Lucas Blok to show paintings in Color Theory, an exhibition last spring at the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA.

1992 Last summer Brooklyn-based artist Bo Joseph PT moved into a larger studio space in Bushwick. But the move didn’t prevent him from creating new sculptures and works on paper, which were on view at Cristina Grajales Gallery in NYC from April–June, at Concord Art outside of Boston from June–August and at Expo Chicago in September.

Christopher Beane 92 PH Earlier this fall Jim Kempner Fine Art in NYC presented Baroquecoco, a site-specific installation and collection of recent botanical photographs by Christopher, whose compositions “dance, seductively luring the viewer into a perishable yet immortalized world.”

Transitory Space, an ongoing photography project by Leah Oates IL documenting the growing impact of humans on the environment, was featured in Junto Magazine and Peripheral ARTeries’ Biennial

Edition. The work was also on view last spring in The Light/ Weight Exhibition at Arta Gallery in Toronto, where Leah lives. In the summer she showed work in Impact 2019 at the Neilson Park Creative

In October Sonya Sklaroff PT exhibited new paintings in a solo show at Galerie Anagama in Versailles, France. The NYC-based artist is teaching a painting workshop at a boutique hotel and eco retreat in Costa Rica from January 11–16 (see also pages 96–97).

David Opie 90 IL above: Illustrating There was an Old Gator who Swallowed a Moth (Pelican Publishing, 2019), an inventive take on the classic children’s song There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly, “was a lot of fun,” says David, who lives in South Norwalk, CT with his wife and two dogs.

Dan Springer 91 IL right: Dan created illustrations like this one of music legend Patti Smith for Who Said That? (Workman Press, 2019), a quiz book of quotations by writer Owen Frank. He is based in Brooklyn.

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NATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR TYPOGRAPHY AFTER THREE DECADES OF DESIGNING

many of the world’s most iconic typefaces, Tobias Frere-Jones 92 GD earned the Cooper Hewitt’s 2019 National Design Award ( NDA ) for Communication Design. “This carries a special honor for me as it is only the second time a National Design Award has been conferred for typeface design,” he notes, underscoring the esoteric nature of the craft.

Frere-Jones actually got started designing letterforms in high school, finding it to be an “unlikely intersection” of the love of writing he got from his family and his nascent passion for abstract painting. At that point he “didn’t understand just how obscure” his new interest was, but through professors at RISD he eventually made his first contacts in the field.

In the 30 years of professional practice since, Frere-Jones has worked to combine “technical expertise with historical perspective” in designing original typefaces for organizations

Zoetrope (above) and Mallory (below left) are just two of the typefaces that set Tobias Frere-Jones 92 GD apart as one of America’s leading type designers.

from the ACLU to Nike, The New York Times and the Whitney Museum, among others. Recognizing that “type exists to solve problems,” he also believes that “beauty” should always be part of the solution.

In designing Gotham (2000–09), for instance, Frere-Jones scoured the streets of New York block by block, examining the lettering that appears in public spaces—largely made by engineers. “Racing against the wrecking ball, I made a photographic archive of a craft that was quickly vanishing with gentrification,” he explains. “These images became the central reference in preserving the flavor and expanding the range of these ‘outsider’ forms.”

While Interstate (1993–99) “began as a personal challenge to build a typeface from the unlikely source of highway signs,” Retina (2000–16) grew from a Wall Street Journal commission to design tiny type for stock listings. And inspired by the marriage of his English mother and American father, Mallory (2014–15)— which is also his own middle name—began as an experiment in blending British and American typographic traditions.

Regardless of what he’s designing, Frere-Jones believes that good design needs to be “decisive, self-aware and informed”— a belief he also brings to his teaching at Yale School of Art. “Before anything else, good design starts with clear intentions,” he says. It needs to reflect “a sense of humor, or a sense of responsibility—a kind of humility.” And it needs to “know what it’s made of and who it’s made for.”

Now that Frere-Jones has won the National Design Award— adding to previous recognition in the form of the Gerrit Noordzij Prijs and the AIGA Medal—he’s especially interested in the educational aspects of the NDA , which included appearances during National Design Week and subsequent touring events.

“I’ve been showing what type design—mine or anyone else’s— provides to our wider culture,” Frere-Jones says. “And that is the part that is most humbling and exciting.” // undergraduate class notes

frerejones.com

Misha Jenkins 93 SC above: This mural of Misha and his dog Milos popped up in several places in 2019 as part of a national Facebook campaign: in San Francisco and Venice, CA and in Brooklyn, where he works as a photographer and location scout/manager. (Meanwhile Milos has starred in ad campaigns for Kate Spade, PBS, Sprint and others.)

1993 John Cournoyer BArch/MArch 94 has been named executive vice president of construction, design and development for the retail real estate company

Brookfield Properties. Based in Brookfield’s Chicago office, he has more than 25 years of experience in development, construction, finance, design and acquisitions.

R. Anthony Fieldman BArch has been elected to the board of directors at the global design, architecture and engineering firm HOK. As a senior principal and national director of design, he’s based in Toronto, where he co-leads the four offices in HOK’s Canadian practice.

Current projects include upgrades to Pearson Airport in Toronto, a mixed-use tower in downtown Toronto and a boutique hotel in Brooklyn.

Jeff Bye 94 IL Tag (oil on canvas, 24 x 30") was among the paintings that sold from American Roots, an October solo exhibition at Greenhut Galleries in Portland, ME. Jeff lives in Hershey, PA.

at Artpoetica Project Space in Brooklyn.

25th Reunion October 9–11

Artist/educator Dan Borelli PR , director of exhibitions at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, recently launched a new website (danborelli.com) promoting his personal practice, which “confronts problematic structural forms of power and how they shape our identities.” His work was also included in Local Ecologies, a traveling group exhibition on view earlier this fall at UMass Boston.

Artist/educator Barry Beach SC (Marin County, CA) showed work on both coasts last spring and summer: in Matter of Form at Shoh Gallery in Berkeley; Made in California in Brea, CA; the 14th National Juried Exhibition at Axis Gallery in Sacramento; and Said I Meant

Paul Olson IL presented a solo exhibition at Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum last summer called Drawn to Paint. The colorful show celebrated the Arnold’s trees, which have been captivating Paul since 2011. Paul is an Illustration faculty member at RISD.

1995

Nicole Havekost 94 PR Bloat (2019, mixed media, 20 x 16") is among the new fiber work Nicole will exhibit in a March solo show at Ro2Art in Dallas. In November she taught a dollmaking workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN and last summer was one of 12 artists invited to exhibit in Biennial 30 at South Bend [IN] Museum of Art. Nicole is based in Rochester, MN. Email story ideas to risdxyz@risd.edu and post your own news at alumni.risd.edu.

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Tim Hunter 98 ID left: Tim and his team at the Los Angeles-based firm WET designed the luminescent Rain Vortex at Jewel Changi Airport, a nature-themed entertainment and retail complex next to the airport in Singapore. Dropping from 130 feet, it’s the world’s tallest indoor waterfall and emerged last spring after a multiyear, multidisciplinary effort that included contributions from WET choreographer Lachlan Turczan 15 FAV.

1996

Artist and educator Kevin Hamilton PT, dean of the College of Fine and Applied

Arts at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, recently completed Lookout America: The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War (University of Chicago Press).

Researched, written and designed with his colleague Ned O’Gorman, the book tells the story of the photographers responsible for the now infamous images of mushroom clouds captured during US nuclear weapons tests.

As Disney enthusiasts look forward to the March release of a live-action version of the film Mulan, prize-winning children’s book author/ illustrator Grace Lin IL is working on an original novel inspired by the film to be published by the Disney Book Group in early 2020.

Last April Lindsay Packer TX collaborated with choreogra-

Annie Evelyn 99 FD/MFA 09 Annie steam-bent the ash spindles that hold real blossoms in this Windsor Flower Chair, which is included in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking. The exhibition at the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia opened in October and continues through January 18. A related book will follow and like the show, includes work by Vivian Chiu 11 FD, Fo Wilson MFA 05 FD and RISD President Rosanne Somerson.

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Alexandra Grant 00 AP Alexandra’s Intricate paintings incorporating text were on view in Born to Love, a summer solo exhibition at Lowell Ryan Projects in Los Angeles, where she lives. Having grown up in Mexico, France and Spain, she probes ideas of identity, translation and social responsibility in her work. The title of the show was inspired by Antigone, the classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles.

pher Melanie Maar to create Call and Response: Depth of Field, an improvisational performance featuring color, light, movement and sound at ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, where Lindsay was a 2019 artist in residence. The Brooklyn-based artist’s 2018 film Motion at a Distance was named an official selection of the New Orleans Film Festival, and a photographic print, Backward Glance, was on view from April–June in CENTURY. idee Bauhaus, a group exhibition at drj in Berlin.

Dragonfly, a mixed-media collage by Los Angeles-based artist Ronda Rhoads TX, was on view last summer in Along the Water’s Edge, a group show at Thousand Islands Art Center in Clayton, NY. Phillip K. Smith III BArch expanded on past site-specific installations to create 10 Columns, an immersive solo exhibition at Bridge Projects

left: photo by L. Gnadinger

Paradise City, a new series of illuminated sculptural pieces

by Lindsey Adelman ID, plays with the ephemerality of time and light and features slender rods and clusters of handblown glass. The collection is on view in Adelman Studio’s new Manhattan showroom in NoHo.

Jacqueline Sava 96 ID Handmade Getaway, a guide to “creating the perfect sewing adventure filled with fabric, friends and food,” is the first book Jacqueline and co-author Karyn Valino were able to publish thanks to a $75,000-plus Kickstarter campaign. She also recently received a $100,000 grant from the Canadian government’s Women Entrepreneur Fund to support Soak Wash, her line of eco-friendly laundry care products produced in Mississauga, Ontario.

in Los Angeles that continues through February 16. Based in southern California, he also contributed a piece to The Edge of Light, a fall group exhibition at the Huntington Beach [CA] Art Center.

1998 In July Masthead.online, an experimental online platform shaped by Editor-in-Chief Melissa Jones GD, launched On: Aliens!, a playful group project led by photographer William Wegman in collaboration with such other high-profile contributors as Cher, David Byrne and Kesha.

1999 Experimental filmmakers Sandra Gibson FAV and Luis Recoder are featured in Reset the Apparatus: A Survey of the Photographic and the Filmic in Contemporary Art (Edition Angewandte), a new book that illustrates the relevance and critical potential of supposedly outmoded, analogue practices in contemporary photographic and cinematic art. Known collectively as Gibson +

Recoder, the partners live and work in NYC.

2000 20th Reunion October 9–11

directed season two of the DirectTV dramedy You Me Her.

2001 Photographer Jaime Alvarez PH showed work in the Rust Belt Biennial on view from August–October at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA. Last summer he completed an artist residency at Glen Foerd on the Delaware in Philadelphia (where he lives). In addition, several of his photographs were included in AINT-BAD, issue 14,

an annual catalogue of new photographic art produced in Savannah, GA. Painter Emma Copley PT showed a new piece called Cousins in the Cambridge Summer Open at the University of Cambridge in England (where she lives).

Glen Baldridge 99 PR above: No Way (2019, acrylic on panel, 48 x 36") was among the psychedelic paintings on view last summer in a show by the same name. It was Glen’s second solo exhibition at Halsey McKay in East Hampton, NY, the gallery that represents him.

Brooklyn-based collage artist Cheryl Molnar GD contributed fictional landscapes to Rock, Paper, Scissors, a group exhibition on view at C24 Gallery in NYC from May 9– June 29.

Filmmaker Sara St. Onge PH (Toronto) directed and served as co-executive producer on four episodes of Trinkets, a new Netflix series about teenagers who meet through Shoplifters Anonymous. She also recently

Liz Eddins 00 GD In August Liz completed her first 24-hour ultramarathon— in Bristol, RI. Husband Oskar Kjörneberg 00 ID and their son Björn played the vital role of support crew throughout the night and next day. Nick Scappaticci 00 ID —fresh off his second 192-mile cycling PanMass Challenge—paced Liz the last four hours to a finish of 80.85 miles in 23:20:17.

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Caroline Adams 01 PR Just weeks after moving to Bogota, Colombia in September, Caroline was back in the US for the opening of Sea, Land and Sky, her seventh solo exhibition at Calloway Fine Art in Washington, DC. This painting is called Gaze (2019, oil on canvas, 51 x 31").

2001 continued Last spring David Kennedy Cutler PT showed work in Vanishing Act, a group exhibition at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY that included works hinting at

corporeal presence without fully depicting the body.

Visitors to the gallery encountered floating limbs, handand footprints, uninhabited clothing and veiled bodies made with a variety of media.

Exegesis Eisegesis Encaustic— a collaborative series of encaustic diptychs depicting signs in and around Los Angeles—is now available from Rebel Hands Press. Painter Katie Herzog PT created representations of the original signs and poet Andrew Choate provided the text. The paintings were first exhibited at Klowden Mann in Los Angeles, CA in summer 2016.

Bosco Hernández 02 GD + Tim Belonax 04 GD Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bosco (art director) and Tim (design director) are among the cofounders of Double Issue, a new independent print magazine that examines topics like immigration, conservation and social equity through a broad historical lens. Author Dave Eggers describes the magazine as “bursting with hope and outrage and a blinding sort of optimism.”

PGAV Destinations in St. Louis recently named former toy designer Melissa Rivera Torres Moir ID/MA 05 one of three newly hired exhibit

Chandler O’Leary 03 IL Ellsworth Gale Sidman arrived like a strong wind on Kansas Day, January 29, 2019 at 1:15 am, and a force of nature at 8 pounds, 5 ounces and 21 inches long. Forecast ahead: joy and laughter.

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designers. The expanding firm creates travel experiences that promote a deep understanding of how people move through the world.

2002 Last fall Wisconsin-based artist Helen Hawley PR showed books, sculpture and paintings in The Blues of the Rain, a solo exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison that examined “the

Susie Ghahremani 02 IL Susie’s new picture book Little Muir’s Song (Yosemite Conservancy, 2019) is Inspired by the words of the legendary conservationist John Muir, with proceeds from book sales supporting Yosemite. Based in San Diego, she also exhibited work in Wild Thing, a summer group show curated by Stephanie Chambers 03 IL (see below) at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney in Australia.

flow of water, the ground we walk on and our sense of the fleeting moment.” She also has work in the Wisconsin Triennial, which continues through February 16 at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Julia Rothman IL (see page 5) The Chicago-based design and development firm One Design earned an Award of Excellence from Communication Arts magazine for its integrated branding work with Saint Kate, an arts hotel in downtown Milwaukee. David Sieren GD is the firm’s design director.

Lighting designer Kate Sweater FD caught the eye of darc magazine’s editors during last spring’s NYC x DESIGN events. She was named an “emerging talent in the world of lighting” in darc’s annual decorative design directory and in September was tapped to participate in a panel discussion exploring acoustic lighting design at [d]arc room in London.

2003 Native New Yorker and self-professed bird lover Stephanie Chambers IL now lives in Australia, where she serves as exhibitions project manager at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. Last August she curated Wild Thing, an exhibition highlighting local animals, and invited fellow alum Susie Ghahremani 02 IL to contribute paintings to the show.

projects she creates through Ink Dwell, the studio she runs with writer Thayer Walker in El Granada, CA. She is now collaborating with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and also contributed to Optimism,

a group show that ran from July 27–September 7 at Andra Norris Gallery in nearby Burlingame, CA. As a 2019/20 Getty Research Institute artist in residence, Tavares Strachan GL is

focusing on issues of art and ecology during his September– June residency in Los Angeles.

In his practice, the NYCbased artist—who serves as a RISD trustee—examines the intersection of art, science and the environment.

Environmental artist Jane Kim PR continues to draw attention to the plight of butterflies and other species threatened by extinction through the murals, illustrations, fine art and other

Catherine McMahon BArch 03 + Jenny Chou BArch 04

right: image by ATLAS studio

right + below: The Incense Room was among the engaging installations in A Day in an Open City, a huge summer exhibition exploring facets of urban and material culture at the Asian World Expo in Hong Kong. The cofounders of the Beijing-based studio Atlas (with Ahti Westphal BArch 04 ) illuminated the notion of scent from several angles, especially within the context of the Song Dynasty (960–1279 BCE).

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bring to life The Gift Inside the Box (Dial Books), a lovely new children’s book about generosity.

2005 15th Reunion October 9–11

Emilie Lee 04 IL above: As curator of Escape, a summer exhibition at Eleventh Street Arts in NYC, Emilie (Carpinteria, CA) highlighted plein air works by more than 20 artists, including fellow RISD alum Erik Koeppel 02 PT as well as her own oil painting Indian Creek Canyon (2019, 6 x 12").

book—which won the Susan P Bloom Discovery Award in May—Rebekah Lowell IL drew from her own deeply troubling story of abuse. Now living in Biddeford, ME, the author/ illustrator earned an MFA in children’s literature and illustration from Hollins [VA] University last spring.

Karla López Rivera 04 FD Karla launched Isleñas (Islander), a socially responsible footwear company, after returning to Puerto Rico in 2018. Working out of a tiny factory in San Juan, she and a small team of seamstresses produce colorful and comfortable espadrilles that are available at lasislenas.com.

2004 San Francisco-based interior designer Lauren Geremia PT recently launched In Conversation With, a newsletter in which artists and designers 78

// undergraduate class notes

talk about their projects and process. She collaborated with studio director Brion Nuda Rosh of the SF-based Minnesota Street Project on the inaugural edition, which featured innovative artists Gregory Kaplowitz and fellow RISD alum Masako Miyazaki 99 FAV. In 2022 Nancy Paulsen/ Penguin Random House will publish The Road to After, an illustrated middle grade novel in verse about a young girl recovering from years in captivity. In creating the

Interdisciplinary artist Natalia Nakazawa PT, assistant director of studios at NYC’s Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, contributed to Figuring the Floral, a summer show at Wave Hill in the Bronx.

Illustrations by Brooklyn-based artist Diana Schoenbrun IL

Keri King IL continues to find joy through collaboration.

In June she celebrated her connections with theater artists and other local creatives in STAGES: Strange Familiar Worlds, an interactive exhibition at AS220 Project Space in Providence, where she lives. She also teamed up with the city’s department of Art, Culture + Tourism to create a temporary mural celebrating the Woonasquatucket River Greenway called What’s in the River?

Noah Breuer 04 PR CB&S Werkstätte, a summer solo show at Spudnik Press Cooperative in Chicago, featured work inspired by the Carl Breuer & Sons textile company that Noah’s Jewish family owned and operated in Bohemia in the late 19th century before being forced to sell to Nazi-approved owners in 1939. An assistant professor at Auburn [AL] University, Noah based the woodcuts and fabric in the show on research he did in the Czech Republic.

GLASSBLOWING MEETS REALITY TV I N TU R N I NG U P TH E H EAT on the naturally dramatic art of glassblowing, the new competition show Blown Away was among the hottest releases on Netflix last summer. And it stars two alumni in leading roles.

Philadelphia-based glass artist Alexander Rosenberg 06 GL was one of 10 well-qualified glassblowers selected to make work under the crazy circumstances of a timed competition and Katherine Gray MFA 91 GL , a glass artist and professor at California State University in San Bernadino, served as the show’s “resident reviewer.”

Before airing on Netflix, Blown Away—the first-ever competition series to focus on the sweaty, collaborative and intrinsically unpredictable art of glassblowing—was the most successful show ever on the Canadian T V station Makeful.

In each of 10 episodes, the competitors design, create and present finished work in response to a specific prompt—in a matter of hours. But “most of the things that were challenging on the show are extensions of inherent qualities of glassblowing,” says Rosenberg. He points out that the spectacle, the team

approach, the audience and the time limitations are all part of glass studio culture, even if being judged by an ever-changing mix of guests with “cryptic criteria” isn’t.

Still, Rosenberg says, “I’m pleased with most of what I made on the series and was proud that I never really compromised my vision (though technically I could have made some of the objects better).” Clearly, he held himself to the highest standards despite the extra pressure of a filmed competition.

At the end of the first episode, Rosenberg was visibly moved when he accepted the Best in Blow accolade—for creating what the reviewers called “an exceptional piece of glass art work” that’s technically “exquisite” and “shows personality” along with “an enormous amount of creative bravery.”

“Shockingly, this might have been the single ‘professional’ activity that I have been the most qualified for in my career,” Rosenberg says. “I was surprised to find that my technical skillset, teaching experience and research-based studio practice seemed to add up perfectly to prepare me to be on a show like this.”

Like the other contestants on Blown Away, Alexander Rosenberg 06 GL worked under images courtesy of Marblemedia

intense pressure to conceive of and execute original blown glass pieces that would determine his status on the competition show from week to week. His first piece (far left)— a tribute to his late dog Cleo—won the first challenge, while Equilibrium—made in collaboration with his top rival on the show, Janusz Poźniak—convinced the two glass artists to work together again in the future. netflix.com/blownaway + alexanderrosenberg.net

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Kyle Marshall 08 Arch above: Kyle’s new book Americana: Farmhouses and Manors of Long Island (Schiffer, 2019) reveals “the best of maverick Americana” through outstanding photos and stories about 17th- and 18th-century country houses. In addition to researching and writing about the beauty of old houses, he serves as the creative director for Bunny Williams Home.

Mary Katrantzou 05 TX Kaleidoscope Katrantzou, a retrospective celebrating the 10th anniversary of the London-based designer’s eponymous fashion label, was on view from April–September at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film at Savannah [GA] College of Art and Design.

2005 continued Educator and children’s book illustrator Alison Paul IL has been appointed an associate professor of art at the University of Connecticut, where she runs the illustration/ animation program. Fellow alum Jen Corace 96 IL also teaches in the same program.

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Chris Glaister has won the NYC BetterBin competition.

In December they learned that after public testing of prototypes, their trash can design will replace the 23,000 green mesh bins now in use.

2006 Caity Kennedy PT (see page 14)

2007 Sean Di Ianni SC (see page 14) Group Project, the design studio founded by Colin P. Kelly ID, Brit Kleinman ID, Brandon Massey BArch 08 and

Jamie Shelman 06 PT How to Land on Your Feet (The Experiment, 2019), Jamie’s latest illustrated book of feline wisdom, builds on the advice of Life Lessons I Learned from my Cat. The author/illustrator is also founder of The Dancing Cat, a stationery and print shop in Baltimore.

Matt Corrado 05 IL Drawing inspiration from pop art, comic books and skateboard culture, Matt created the first artist edition series of basketballs for the LA-based athletics startup CHANCE. Called We Rise by Lifting Others, the series reflects the organization’s upbeat, community-oriented mission.

Boston-based architect Sae Kim BArch is making bold moves as part of CBT’s Urban Design practice. Last summer he curated Balancing Act: Urbanism & Emerging Technologies, an exhibition at the Boston Society of Architects that explored the future of the urban environment in light of rapidly changing technologies.

Last spring designers James Minola ID and Chelsea Green Minola MID 07, founders of Grain in Bainbridge Island, WA, showed collaborative work in Pas de Deux, a group exhibition at Colony in NYC held as part of NYC x DESIGN. Earlier this fall Chicago-based painter Celeste Rapone IL exhibited paintings in Future Amateur, a solo show at

Roberts Projects in Los Angeles.

The pieces on view were “developed intuitively through formal questions and decisions, each depicting a figure engaging in a newfound amateur endeavor, sport or chore,” she explains.

Open Space and highlights the erosion of the postindustrial American landscape.

Interior designer Alessandra Santopietro AP is creating stunning residences as part of her family’s NYC-based firm. A dramatic apartment renovation she headed up on Fifth Avenue was featured in early spring in the magazine Interiors, which described her work as “a glamorous balance of hard and soft, traditional flourishes and adventurous design.”

2008

2009

Edgy work by designers Simon Haas PT and Katie Stout 12 FD was included in Chairs Beyond Right & Wrong, a fall exhibition at R & Company in NYC.

Grace Jun GD (see page 55)

Last spring Charlie Leese SC—cofounder of the San Francisco-based Hunt Projects shared studios and Cloaca Projects exhibition space— created coiling the power lines of supine stagnation, a sitespecific piece on the edge of San Francisco Bay. The piece was commissioned by SFMOMA

Hi Twin! short for Giphy’s first-ever film festival and Extremophiles, a collaboration with environmental health

scientist Tracy Fanara that won first prize at the Imagine Science Symbiosis Competition in NYC.

Brooklyn-based filmmaker Leah Shore FAV is “getting weird again,” completing the

Richard Pellegrino 06 IL Rich celebrated the completion of the MFA program at New Hampshire Institute of Art by exhibiting his new body of work in the MFA Summer Thesis Exhibition at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH. He’s now teaching at his new alma mater.

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JooHee Yoon 11 IL In Up Down Inside Out (Enchanted Lion Books, 2019) JooHee brings her witty, award-winning style to a series of familiar aphorisms (like “you are what you eat”). A solo show of her books, prints and editorial illustrations is on view through February at Albus Gallery in Seoul. The exhibition coincides with the release of the Korean translation of Supoe, a book she made with author Alastair Reed.

by renowned street artist Gaia, which celebrates Rhode Island’s indigenous people, and The Revolution Starts in the Earth, with the Self by Jess X. Snow 13 FAV and Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn.

2012 2009 continued From July–October NYC-based designer Chris Wolston GL showed freeform furniture pieces in Forbidden Fruit, a solo

Allie Runnion 09 IL Allie’s first book—her illustrated Christmas in a Book (Abrams, 2019)—draws from the classic lyrics of The Twelve Days of Christmas and can be transformed into a decorative holiday tree for easy display.

exhibition at The Future Perfect in Los Angeles.

Emmett Moore FD (see page 10)

2010

2011

10th Reunion October 9–11

AFTEREARTH, a documentary short about rising sea levels

by Peter Pa FAV and Jess X. Snow 13 FAV, screened in Providence last August as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

Metalsmith Isaac Juodvalkis ID and his wife Maria hosted an open house last summer at Whetstone Workshop, the architectural and sculptural design and fabrication shop they launched a decade ago in East Providence.

An unconventional jewelry exhibition on view through last July at the Museum of Arts and

Design (MAD) in NYC explored futurism through the lens of internet culture. Curated by Kellie Riggs JM, Non-Stick Nostalgia featured work by 29 international artists.

Arts activist Yarrow Thorne ID is changing the face of Providence through The Avenue Concept (TAC), a nonprofit arts organization he launched in 2012. Among the many striking murals TAC has realized recently are Still Here

Chris Sherron 09 GD In November New York-based producer and DJ Galcher Lustwerk released information, his third record on Ghostly International. In addition to making “deep, smooth, psychedelic” music, Chris is a a cofounder of Are.na and the trend forecasting group K-HOLE.

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As a fall artist in residence at The Steel Yard in Providence, furniture designer and metalworker Topher Gent FD focused on combining traditional ceramics techniques with modern technology and processes. Last summer he co-taught an intensive, two-week design workshop at RISD with Apparel Design Professor Catherine Andreozzi 87 AP for students visiting from China.

After completing his degree at RISD, architect Jonathan Ma BArch studied at the China Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou, where he worked under Pritzker Prize winner Wang Shu before starting his own practice in China in 2018.

Michaela Olsen 09 FAV After premiering at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival last winter, Michaela’s stop-motion short Under Covers earned the Prix DeVarti for Funniest Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, an Indiewire shout-out as a must-see film and a Vimeo Staff Pick designation. She’s the creative director at the NYC-based animation studio Mighty Oak and taught at RISD this fall.

2014 When filmmaker Jordan Wong FAV showed Mom’s Clothes, his autobiographical reflection on being out of the closet, at the 2019 Ann Arbor [MI] Film Festival, he won the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker.

Jordan is based in San Francisco.

Vivian Chiu 11 FD Acacia Johnson 14 PH below: Sea Ice Stories, Acacia’s most recent photo essay about the Inuit of Baffin Island, Canada striving to keep their culture alive, appeared in the September issue of National Geographic magazine and on the cover of selected editions.

She’s now pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

right: Vivian’s work is included in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking, a group show that includes several RISD people and runs through January 18 at the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. Having earned an MFA in Sculpture from Columbia last spring, she recently relocated to Richmond to teach at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT Olivia Stephens 17 IL is living and working in Tulsa, OK , where she’s the youngest person ever to earn a Tulsa Literary Artist Fellowship. Here she responds to a few questions about working on her forthcoming graphic novel for young adults.

How did you end up in Oklahoma?

After RISD I moved back to my parents’ house outside of Seattle for a year and a half and did freelance comics stuff. I found out that Lerner Books was interested in publishing my graphic novel right around when my application for the Tulsa fellowship was accepted, so it all came together at once.

The fellowship covers housing, studio space and a $20,000 annual stipend, so I’m now living and working with a mix of writers, curators and painters from all over.

And what’s your novel about?

It’s about Artie, an independent girl living with her mother in rural Oregon who likes to go out and photograph nature. Her mom is a widow and her dad died before she was born. One night she sneaks out to photograph the full moon and discovers that her mom is a werewolf.

I love writing about people of color living in the Pacific Northwest because that’s my life. When people think about [that region], they’re not thinking about the 6% of us who are black.

I like writing about the minority.

How did you end up at RISD? I applied to a bunch of liberal arts colleges and decided to apply to RISD at the last minute. It was RISD or bust in terms of art schools. I figured if I got in there, it was something I should do. // undergraduate class notes

Did you know what you wanted to focus on artistically?

I had already decided to major in Illustration before I came to RISD, but I was waffling on whether or not to focus on making comics. That all changed when I took a Wintersession class with Kikuo Johnson 03 IL . He broke down the language for me so that I could understand why certain things were working in my comics and others weren’t. And once I saw that I could finish something, I was all in.

So how do you translate an idea into an actual comic?

I always start with the story. And then I do character designs and sample pages before I start writing the script.

I’m kind of odd because I draw digitally on my tablet, print the sketches out in light blue, ink them traditionally with a brush and then scan those drawings into the computer and color them digitally.

There’s no control-Z option when you’re working in India ink, and I like that sense of permanence when I’m finishing the pages.

It’s like placing trust in my own hand. olivia-stephens.com

Anna Weyant 17 PT Some Dolls are Bigger than Others (2019, oil on panel, 24 x 18") is among the work included in Welcome to the Dollhouse, an early fall solo exhibition at 56 Henry in NYC, where Anna lives.

Chemistry department. In November her senior film Via—a stunning compilation of satellite images reminiscent of natural systems such as blood flow—was screened every night as part of the Midnight Moment series in NYC’s Times Square.

2018 Lizzie Wright ID (see page 12) Last spring and early summer emerging artist Emma Soucek PT exhibited experimental pieces created in collaboration with Maddy Parrasch 19 PT, who was killed in a car accident in 2018. Simply titled Maddy Parrasch & Emma Soucek, the

2017 Interdisciplinary artist Maria Constanza Ferreira GD/FAV is bridging visual art and chemical crystallography as an artist in residence and research assistant at NYU’s

Oge Mora 16 IL Saturday (Little, Brown, 2019) follows Oge’s Caldecott Honorwinning debut Thank You, Omu! The Providence-based artist again uses cut paper to illustrate her story — about a young girl and her mother who make the most of their favorite day of the week when things don’t go exactly as planned.

beautiful but heartbreaking exhibition at Safe Gallery in Brooklyn highlighted their intense and productive friendship.

2019 Recent grad Amara Merritt BArch (Bradenton, FL) traveled to Lisbon, Portugal in June to present a talk called Art as

Deaths Caroline (Fischel) Greene 48 AD of Chestnut Hill, MA on

6.26.19 Jean (Sherman) King 48 AE of North Providence, RI on 7.28.19 Robert Nason 49 PT of Portland, ME on 4.6.19 Mary (Welburn) Collins 50 GD of Glastonbury, CT on 5.12.19 Barbara (Greene) Sterne 50 TX of Littleton, CO on 8.15.19 Norma (Eastwood) Pilkington 51 GD of Wolfeboro Falls, NH on 9.28.19 Anna (Madden) Tillinghast 51 LA of Deerfield Beach, FL on 7.30.19 Paul Harvey 52 GD of Westport, CT on 10.1.19

Frank Bell 61 IA of Southwick, MA on 4.30.19 Brenda Bonick-Davis 65 PT of Brookline, MA on 7.9.19 Alice (Neel) Hagan 65 TX of Durham, NC on 9.4.19 Peter Kemble 65 Arch of Greenfield, MA on 6.15.19 Robin Nuse 73 PH of Hanover, NH on 5.3.19 Jeffery Held 76 GD of Chicago, IL on 9.27.19 William (Bill) Crozier 79 ID of Cranston, RI on 10.22.19 Abby (Herring) Aisenberg 80 GD of Jupiter, FL on 9.30.19 Gail Armstrong MAE 80 of Warwick, RI on 10.1.19 Seth Chilton 83 ID of Brooklyn, NY on 10.8.19 Gregory Conyngham BArch 84 of Cambridge, MA on 6.11.19

Carl Rieger 52 MD of Huntsville, AL on 9.20.19 William Wightman 53 TX of Old Saybrook, CT on 8.15.19 Marie (Weinmayr) Howell 54 TX of Caldwell, NJ on 3.26.19 Diane (Morrison) Scherer 55 TX of Columbia and Hilton Head, SC on 9.6.19 Robert Ricker 56 Arch of Wallingford, CT on 9.13.19 Donald Allen 58 ID of Pine City, NY on 4.20.19 Nancy (Willenbecher) Dickinson 58 SC of Leeds, MA on 8.12.19 Dorothea “Teddi” (Behr) Hildebrand 60 IA of Brewster, MA on 9.1.19 Mary (Cox) Ladd 60 GD of West Chester, PA on 10.12.19 Email story ideas to risdxyz@risd.edu and post your own news at alumni.risd.edu.

Expressive Therapy for Vulnerable Populations at the International Conference on the Arts in Society. In addition to sharing real-world data on the positive impact of art therapy on people suffering from anxiety and depression, she was inspired by speakers from around the world doing similar work.

Grant “Fraser” Maciver 89 PT of Los Angeles, CA on 8.11.19 John Charles “Carlos” Celdran 96 PT of Manila, the Philippines on 10.8.19 Trevor Moynihan 97 ID of Vero Beach, FL on 8.12.19 Matthew Thompson 00 PH of Louisville, KY on 9.26.19 Erika Zak 02 TX of Portland, OR on 8.23.19 Michael “Murph” Tymon 08 IL of Lancaster, PA on 7.14.19 Kelly Scruggs 14 FAV of Annapolis, MD on 7.6.19 Daniel Kim BArch 15 of Flower Mound, TX on 7.16.19 Devra Freelander MFA 16 SC of New York, NY on 7.1.19

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moving forward

// graduate class notes

Martin Mull 65 PT/MFA 67 Angels (2016, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x 20") was among the work on view in Harvest, a solo show inaugurating Samuel Freeman Gallery’s new Iris Project exhibition space in Venice, CA. The gallery describes the artist/actor’s work as “visual dramas [that] portray the human condition in a nonjudgmental yet emotionally fertile tableau.”

American Print Biennial, which ran from August 26–September 29 at the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley [MA] College.

1982 Last August artist/activist Brad Buckley MFA SC chaired a conference at the National

Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia called Gatekeeping and Ethics in a Globalised Artworld. A professorial fellow at the Victorian College of the Arts, Brad also co-edited A Companion to Curation (Wiley Blackwell, 2019). Both projects question the “classist, colonialist, racist and phallocentric assumptions” that have plagued museological traditions.

Esther Solondz MFA 80 PH In Floating Between Two Worlds, a solo exhibition on view from June 1–November 3 at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA, the Providence-based artist focused on core themes of fragility and change through a series of ephemeral floating sculptures made of milkweed.

Arno Rafael Minkkinen MFA 74 PH Solo exhibitions celebrating the release of Minkkinen (Kehrer Verlag, 2019), a monograph spanning a half century of Arno’s work, were on view this fall at Galerie Camera Obscura in Paris and Gallery Taik Persons in Berlin, with another opening in January at Edwynn Houk Gallery in NYC.

1972 As a member of the Abstract Group of New England, Muriel Angelil MAE showed paintings at the Newburyport 86

[MA] Art Association from July 9–21. She lives in nearby Amesbury, MA.

1973 Rhode Island-based photographer and nature lover Ed Porter MFA PH helped celebrate the 350th anniversary of Westerly, RI by contributing evocative landscapes and seascapes to Westerly 50 Years, on view in August at the town’s Artists’ Cooperative Gallery.

1976 Rhode Islander Stephan Brigidi MFA PH revisited his

turbulent years in Italy in ROME 1970s, a solo exhibition of photography on view last spring at Gallery Z in Providence.

1981 Last summer MJ Viano Crowe MFA PH joined other local artists in helping to brighten up her hometown of Belfast, ME with a series of temporary murals crafted in paper. She also participated in a group exhibition at the Maine Farmland Trust in Belfast and in the Boston Printmakers 2019 North

Stephen March MFA 68 PT In the fall Stephen showed Tribes XXV (Unfinished Conflict) (2019, steel hardware, lock, chains, acrylic on canvas board, 70 x 60") in Dark Times/Escape from Reality, a solo exhibition at Amos Eno Gallery in NYC. The artist lives in Spring Grove, PA.

1983 Life, Death and In Between—a solo exhibition at the Mystic [CT] Museum of Art that ran from August-October last year—featured “unexpected, mysterious and spiritual” mixed media and photography

by New England artist Linda DiFrenna MAE.

1984 Last October Cambridge, MA artist Jim Kociuba MAE

showed his Komorebi Series in a solo exhibition at the Newton Free Library in Newton, MA. The paintings were inspired by the Japanese word komorebi, which describes the way sunlight filters through the leaves of trees.

A piece by Providence-based painter Madolin Maxey MAE was included in a group exhibition highlighting female artists on view last fall at One Art Space in NYC.

Dale Chihuly MFA 68 CR Celebrating Nature, a nine-month exhibition of work by the pioneering glass artist, continues through March 29 at the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Columbus, OH. Reflections on Nature—another biodiversity-themed exhibition of Dale’s glass sculptures—was on view from April through October at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London.

Todd Moore MFA PT (see page 47)

1985 Last spring Carmela Venti MFA PR traveled to China from her hometown of Waterford, CT to represent the Printmaking Network of Southern New England in Guangzhou. There her “map portraits” were on view from April 10–29 in Crossings and Transpositions, an exhibition at the Fine Art Academy’s University City Museum.

Janine Antoni MFA 89 SC Rich with religious iconography to celebrate the wisdom of the human body, Janine’s installation I am fertile ground was on view this fall in the catacombs of the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. A series of public events accompanied this first ever site-specific work commissioned by the cemetery.

flowers from her own garden in constructing the images.

1991 Natalia Ilyin MFA GD offers clear, concise and humorous writing tips in Writing for the

Design Mind (Bloomsbury, 2019), her third book. She also teaches design at Cornish College of the Arts (where she has twice earned the college’s Award for Teaching Excellence) in Seattle.

1987 Photographs from the series Ice Gardens by Mary Kocol MFA PH were featured in Avant Gardens, a group exhibition that ran from April–September at the Newport [RI] Art Museum.

The Boston-based artist uses

Alfred De Angelo MFA 76 PT right: Likening the works in his Moment of Peace series to “surrealist visual poems,” Alfred invites viewers to draw connections between separate images by physically linking them together in hinged triptychs. He recently exhibited this work in two solo shows near where he lives in Wellesley, MA: at the Belmont Hill School’s Landau Gallery and at the Newton [MA] Public Library.

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TOWARDS A GEOGRAPHY OF HOPE

by David T. Hanson MFA 83 PH

ANYON E WHO I S FAM I LIAR with my photographs of the late 20th-century American landscape will immediately recognize how very different the new pictures in The Cloud of Unknowing are from my previous work. In the early 1990s, Wendell Berry wrote of my Waste Land series that he saw my photographs of toxic waste sites as “representations of bad art—if by art we mean the ways and products of human work….

[These sites] are the inevitable consequences of our habit of working without imagination and without affection.”

In my own essay on Waste Land, I observed that “the most enduring monuments the West will leave for future generations will not be Stonehenge, the Pyramids of Giza or the cathedral at Chartres, but rather the hazardous remains of our industry and technology.”

These sites are toxic monuments to our carelessness, greed and deceit.

After 20 years of investigating the contemporary American wasteland, I felt that it might be a worthy challenge for me to make representations of good art: products of human work done with both imagination and affection. I also felt, after many years immersed in damaged and poisoned // graduate class notes

landscapes, that I needed to try to find what Wallace Stegner called a “geography of hope.”

The shrines I photographed for this book will not last nearly as long as the ravaged landscapes that we have created, but they represent some of the best works of human creativity. They are monuments to the human spirit and all that it holds most sacred.

In this work, I have also been concerned with preserving an interpretive record of these extraordinary shrines, many of which are being threatened, lost or destroyed. I have focused almost exclusively on interiors—the “heart” of these sacred places, the inner sanctum created for what is most revered.

Resting places for the spirit, these spaces become beautiful, carefully crafted metaphors for many aspects of human experience.

l–r from above: detail from Hogan of a Native American shaman, Navajo Indian Reservation, New Mexico Swayambhunath Temple, Kathmandu, Nepal Mahashivaratri Puja, Kalyaneswar Shiva Temple, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

This text is excerpted from David’s introduction to his new monograph The Cloud of Unknowing (Taverner Press, 2019). davidthanson.net

Daphne Minkoff MFA 91 PT Keepsake #1 (2019, collage, oil on canvas over board, 36 x 36") was among the paintings on view in Elegy, Daphne’s fall solo show at Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle, where she lives.

The work focuses on the city’s changing landscape.

1999

Kara Walker MFA 94 PT/PR left: Since it opened earlier this fall, Fons Americanus, the 40-foot-tall fountain/ sculpture Kara created for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London, has been making a huge impact on both sides of the Atlantic for its deep and incisive commentary on race, power, inequality and all that ails us. “I think the conversation around race and slavery and history and culpability gets harder and harder to discuss as we get older...,” she told Time magazine. “But children get it… They’re my best audience.”

1997

The SOS Stool by Josh Owen MFA FD, a professor at RIT, was recently added to the permanent collection of the ADAM Brussels Design Museum in Belgium. Blurring the boundaries between a portable seat and a tray, the adaptable piece can also be seen at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Musee des beaux-arts de Montreal and the RISD Museum.

In the work in Rock, Paper, a summer solo show at Milton [PA] Art Bank, Kim Beck MFA PT/PR connected with the ground beneath her feet to create rubbings, photographs and prints of rocks, dirt and rain. Responding in part to her mother’s recent death, the Philadelphia-based artist says that “these works are all different ways of reaffirming: I am here, I exist.”

A stunning glass installation

by SF Bay Area artist Kana Tanaka MFA GL is bringing light and beauty to visitors of Kaiser Permanente in Roseville, CA. Waterfall is 56 feet long and made up of 1,800 handmade glass droplets.

Judy Gelles MFA 91 PH The Fourth Grade Project—Judy’s moving portraits of young people from around the world—continues to resonate a decade after it began. In 2019 the series was featured in two solo exhibitions: in Los Angeles at the Annenberg Space for Photography and in Philadelphia at Pentimenti, the gallery that represents her.

Massachusetts-based mixedmedia artist Gayle Wells Mandle MFA PR/PT showed abstract work in Palimpsest, a late spring exhibition with painter Meighan Morrison at Atelier Newport in Newport, RI. Made with layers of manuscripts, letters, photographs, fabric and recycled materials, Gayle’s work offers glimpses of the past.

Emi Ozawa MFA 92 FD left: For the past few years Emi has been developing new work focused on color and surface. Last fall her work was included in Alcoves 20/20, a rotating exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Art featuring artists living in the state.

Her 3D cut paper piece Big Orange Bite is on view through January 19 in Unfolding Tradition at the Albuquerque [NM] Museum, where it’s now part of the permanent collection.

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Stephanie Williams MFA 07 SC Last spring Stephanie’s solo exhibition Things That Don’t Have Names opened at the Greater Reston [VA] Art Center just days after the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts named her one of 10 finalists for the Sondheim Artscape Prize. In addition to winning $2,500, she showed work in the related summer exhibition at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where she teaches at MICA.

Yuko Oda MFA 02 SC below: In Personal Ecologies, a two-person exhibition (with Allison Maria Rodriguez) that ran from late April–August at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Yuko drew from her own experiences with nature to create enlivened portraits of organic systems and processes.

She lives in Roslindale, MA.

2003 In August Jessalyn Jarest MLA participated in Women in Landscape Architecture, a panel discussion at the Nichols House Museum in Boston.

It was the final event in a series related to the museum and its founder, Rose Standish Nichols (1890–1930).

A self-described “quiltmaker first,” Richard Killeaney MFA TX says that he also appreciates “how paper that is intended to be thrown away… acts like a diary of daily life.” Last summer his found paper collages were on view in Domestic Buildup, a solo show at the New Haven [CT] Art Museum. The founder of the Ocheltree Design studio, he is based in Bridgeport, CT.

2004 Last spring custom cowboy boot maker Chase DeForest MFA FD showed work in leather— her medium of choice—in HIDE, a solo exhibition on view at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, MD.

Nancy Vayo MIA 02 As the interior design leader for IKEA’s greater New York market, Nancy worked on the design of the IKEA Planning Studio in Manhattan—the first urban showroom of its kind for the home furnishing giant and a model for the 30-plus IKEA locations to follow in cities around the world in the next three years.

2005 Traveling from her home in Austin, Melissa Borrell MFA JM enjoyed a summer residency in Portugal, where she looked to the colors of indigenous flowers and the shapes of local houses to paint a public mural for the town of Messejana. She also riffed on cherry blossoms in designing and creating The Fractal Nature of Things, an installation for the Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC.

In early summer, designer/ artist/curator Susie Nielsen MFA GD explored meaning and context in unmeasured, a solo exhibition on view at Off Main Gallery in her hometown of Wellfleet, MA on Cape Cod. Taketombo, established in 2018 by creative entrepreneur Mikki Tam MIA , earned a 2019 Good Design Award from the Japan Institute of Design Promotion. Based in Tokyo,

Last fall Northern Illinois University presented In Search of the Sublime, a solo exhibition of paintings by Mark Pack MFA PT. “I define my artistic process as one of cultivation rather than manufacture,” he says.

Last summer Saba Qizilbash MAE, an adjunct professor at American University in Dubai, showed recent work exploring international borders in Intricacies: Fragment and Meaning, a four-artist show at Aicon Gallery in NYC.

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top right: photo by Roy Beeson

Michael Radyk MFA 08 TX right: Jacquard-woven pieces like Rush were on view in two 2019 shows: Focus: Fiber 2019 at the Kent [OH] State University Museum (March 1–July 28) and the biennial Fiber Art Fair in Seoul (May 24–31). Currently working on independent art and curatorial projects, Michael lives in Philadelphia.

the socially minded startup engages overseas creatives to reenergize declining towns in rural Japan through travel and design incubation initiatives.

Wassaic, NY. His work can be seen through March 21 in Weather Report at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT.

Fo Wilson MFA FD, a Chicago-based artist, designer, educator and writer, is among the RISD-related makers with work included in Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking. The group show opened in October and runs through January 18 at the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia.

2008

2006 Designer Angela Guzman MFA GD continues to earn accolades for designing some of Apple’s first emojis during her internship there a decade ago, including the popular party popper and red heart. She discussed the experience last June in a How I Made It segment of NPR’s Latino USA program.

Gunnar Norquist MFA SC showed work last fall in Small and Smaller, a group show at Site: Brooklyn Gallery in NYC. He works at RISD as Campus Exhibitions Coordinator.

Sean Salstrom MFA GL, a newly appointed assistant professor of Glass at RISD, contributed work to Ad Astra Per Aspera, a summer group exhibition at the Wassaic Project in

Last June Austin-based artist Jonas Criscoe MFA PT contributed work to the Next 2019 Print Biennial at PrintMatters in Houston, a celebration of printmakers who are pushing the boundaries of the medium.

Last year creative consultant/ designer/photographer Julianne Gauron MID directed Dear Senator, a series of documentary shorts about Planned Parenthood made with the Boston-based studio Windy Films. Although the series did not influence Senator Susan Collins’ vote in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing as hoped, it did win an AdWeek ARC award for branded content and led to another short for Planned Parenthood focused on then-President Leana Wen. Yuka Otani MFA GL contributed work to the Nakanojo Biennale 2019, which ran from last August– September in central Japan. In the fall she was a resident artist at Taitung Art Museum in Taiwan, where she made work incorporating Taitung’s unique landscape and culture.

As visiting artists at the University of Connecticut last spring, Breanne Trammell MFA PR and Mary Banas MFA 09 GD presented a lecture and graphic design workshop, completed a residency at Counterproof Press and produced Then & Now, a suite of prints based on research conducted at UConn’s Archives & Special Collections library. In 2018 they collaborated under the moniker BMTMB and presented Life is a Highway, a solo exhibition at Colpa Books & Video in San Francisco, and contributed to For Freedoms: Art as Political Resistance, at the University of Cincinnati’s Reed Gallery.

Jo Sittenfeld MFA 08 PH Growing Up Ethan, Jo’s 15-minute coming-of-age documentary about a young man living with autism, premiered on The New York Times site (nytimes.com/opdocs) last July. Adapted from her longer documentary Ethan, it captures his everyday struggles and triumphs over the course of 12 years—from childhood to being a young adult. “It’s been such a privilege to watch Ethan and his family grow,” writes the Providence-based filmmaker/photographer in an accompanying essay. Jon Gourlay 15 FAV served as the film’s cinematographer and Sarah Mohammadi MFA 16 GD designed the titles.

on view through March 8. The Brooklyn-based artist teamed up with Fia Backstrom on September 25 for Because

it’s 68 Degrees in December, a conversation about climate change at the Cooper Union in NYC.

2009 A piece by Gabriela Salazar MFA PT called Access Grove, Soft Stand winds through the trees of the Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, NY as part of The Socrates Annual exhibition

Ted Gahl MFA 10 PT Painter’s Block (2018, acrylic on canvas, 10 x 8") was among the works on view last August in Lamu, Ted’s sixth solo exhibition at Halsey McKay in East Hampton, NY, the gallery that represents him. The title derives from the Lamu archipelago in Kenya, where he made the small paintings included in the show during a recent artist residency. Ted lives and works in Litchfield, CT.

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DESIGNING SHARED EXPERIENCES

by Robert Albanese

After earning a master’s in Landscape Architecture, Kelly Knapp —shown to the left installing a window at Bergdorf Goodman—is now working as an experience designer, most recently for the off-Broadway production of the interactive family show Pip’s Island (right).

BY TH E TI M E S H E CAM E TO R I S D I N 2008, Kelly C. Knapp MLA 10 had lived in ten countries, studied international affairs and sculpture, and taught with the experiential learning organization Outward Bound. As a Landscape Architecture student, she made time for multiple printmaking studios before completing a master’s thesis that touched on quantum physics, phenomenology and metaphysics. And since graduating just after the most recent economic meltdown, she has struggled a lot while working in a variety of design fields.

“Someday,” Knapp says, “I would love to live like James Turrell and further explore light, space and consciousness.”

But that’s for later. Right now she is laser-focused on building a career in // graduate class notes

experience design, drawing from her eclectic skillset to create immersive environments for a variety of clients.

“I go to the gym, I go to work and then I lie in bed with my laptop before going to sleep,” admits the (now mostly) NYC -based designer. “But I absolutely love what I do. The energy I get from experience design powers me through no matter how tired I am.”

In the past few years Knapp has completed projects for Bergdorf Goodman, Chanel, CNBC and Affordable Art Fair NYC, among others. And although she’s not blind to its commercial motives, she finds sparks of joy in experience design.

“I want my work to help create a sense of community through shared experience,” she says.

Knapp also worked intensively on Pip’s Island, an off-Broadway production for kids that opened in May and has since gotten favorable reviews in The New York Times, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal. As the production designer and art director, she worked with the creative team and consultants to create nine immersive spaces in a 15,000-sf performance space in midtown Manhattan, where kids problem-solve together to come to the rescue in an interactive fantasy tale.

Among the hurdles of building a production from the ground up, Knapp says the most formidable was also the most fundamental. “When there are millions of dollars involved, the hardest thing is to convey an idea to people who don’t share your expertise and give them a solid rationale for why it’s the right decision.”

Despite some of the other challenges— from 95-degree days working in a small Brooklyn studio to a lot of travel between NYC and Providence, where she also lives—Knapp is pleased with the outcome.

“It was an enormous project and I’m proud of the work I did,” she says. “And after we opened, the directors called me to explore new opportunities.”

In establishing expertise as an experience designer, Knapp draws on what she learned at RISD to articulate big ideas to a wide range of clients while also employing the nuts-and-bolts of building physical spaces—the things she admits eventually turned her off architecture. “[Drafting] construction documents and all that detailing was torturous for me,” she says. “But what I love about experience design is that I can take my knowledge of that and express it in a way that really excites me.”

Looking back Knapp values the rigorous and intellectually rewarding academic experience at RISD, where she really connected with both the concep-

above: photo by Evan Zimmerman

“What I love about experience design is that I can take my knowledge of [architecture] and express it in a way that really excites me.” tual focus and the entrepreneurial ethos of the architecture programs. “RISD instilled a sense in me that if I don’t immediately know how to solve a problem, I do have a method for figuring it out,” she says.

But Knapp is less happy about the challenges she faced after earning her degree—especially the financial and emotional cost of living with serious student debt. “I started my program [in 2008] right as the economy started to melt down,” she explains. “My loans were sold 12 times while I was in school”— which led to a disturbing doubling of her debt in the decade since.

“It’s crazy that I’m working with companies like Chanel but can’t even begin to pay down my loans,” Knapp says, clearly still frustrated by feeling unprepared for the realities of professional practice after kellycknapp.com + studiokck.com

graduation. “So besides loving what I do, my biggest motivation is clearing out that debt.”

Despite these very real challenges, Knapp appreciates the mentors and allies she found at RISD. “Susan Andersen is my angel!” she says, referring to the associate director of RISD Careers. And from Landscape Architecture, she singles out Professor Lili Hermann as “to this day one of my biggest cheerleaders. She saw things in me that I didn’t see in myself”— qualities that have helped her find a path away from food insecurity and fear about not making rent, and toward a career she loves.

“Now I want to help current students however I can,” says Knapp, who occa-

sionally serves as a guest critic in Landscape Architecture and helps lead an Apparel Design workshop in RISD’s Pre-College program. “You don’t have to be a struggling artist,” she advises others. “You can make props and build sets with film crews or design immersive retail displays. There’s a whole other world of opportunities out there to create and make connections.” // RISDXYZ

fall/winter 2019/20

Xin (Sandy) Wen MDes 16 right: Apartment Therapy recently featured The Sparrow Apartment in a story applauding Xin’s reinvention of a small midtown Manhattan studio. What “could have been a too-small space for the couple who shares it,” the post reads, “is now a cozy, modern, sleek and serene home for two.”

Diana Wagner MID 14 Soft Robotic Grip Glove, developed by Diana and other designers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, is among 62 projects on view through January 20 in Nature, the Cooper Hewitt design triennial in NYC.

2011 Small but inviting, Hong Kong’s Mean Noodles has earned husband-and-wife team Kevin Lim and Caroline Chou MArch kudos for both its cuisine and design, earning a Will Ching Award from the International Interior Design Association (IIDA). As design director of the small, interdisciplinary design studio OPENUU Ltd, Caroline is excited that the restaurant was also included in the 40 Under 40 list at Guangzhou Design Week 2018 and featured in Interior Design magazine.

Work by mixed-media artist Rose B. Simpson MFA CR (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM) was

included in Radical Love, a group exhibition at the Ford Foundation for Social Justice in NYC. On view last summer, it presented art grounded in ideas of devotion, abundance, beauty and otherness.

2012 Odette England MFA PH (who teaches at RISD) highlighted the infidelity of memory in Do Things to Images, a solo photography exhibition on view earlier this fall at the Eli Marsh Gallery at UMass Amherst.

Work by 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and Texas A&M University faculty member Jennifer Garza-Cuen MFA PH was included in Confluence, a multidisciplinary group exhibition on view last summer at the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.

Architect Samantha Rose MArch has been promoted to

Justin Sorensen MFA 13 PR Amazon’s Light, this installation of works on paper, was among the pieces Justin showed in Looking at Things Directly, a two-person exhibition (with Elsa Muñoz) last summer at North Park University’s Carlson Tower Gallery and Brandel Library in Chicago. The artist lives in central Ohio.

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// graduate class notes

the position of associate at TEF Design in San Francisco, where she began working in 2017.

2013 Chupacabra, a screenprint by multimedia artist and Mendocino College faculty member Jonathan Palmer MFA PR , was included in the Boston Printmakers 2019 North American Print Biennial, which ran from August 26– September 29 at the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley [MA] College. He lives in Fort Bragg, CA and teaches in the art department at nearby Mendocino College.

2014 Mo Costello MFA PH exhibited a series of gelatin silver prints portraying an intimate exchange between her and her one-time partner—all captured on a single roll of film from inside an apartment in Providence—in a summer solo exhibition at Howard’s in Athens, GA, where she now lives. Work from the series was shown alongside installations, videos and other photos.

Last summer Andrew Woolbright MFA PT—director of the NYC gallery Super Dutchess—showed his

grotesque, entangled “shrinebeasts” in Expresso Your Depresso, a solo exhibition on view at ADA Gallery in Richmond, VA.

2015 Videographer/printmaker/ performance artist Michael Menchaca MFA PR exhibited work in multiple shows in 2019,

Sameer Farooq MFA 14 GD In 2019 Sameer showed work in two solo exhibitions in Ontario, Canada: Boop Museum at the Visual Arts Center of Clarington and Sameer Farooq at Zalucky Contemporary in Toronto, where he lives. The latter exhibition included sculptural works and prints like 24 Affections (2019), a series of monoprints of abstract landscape forms produced through daily visualization exercises.

work in denying the calendar, a group exhibition that ran last summer at Grice Bench gallery in Los Angeles.

2017 A Kindle edition of All That I Love/DrawingPoems, first published in paperback soon after Yu Cao MArch graduated, was available for free download earlier last year and has also been included in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited library. The New York-based artist says that the collected works help her connect to “a world… as fresh and exciting as birth, as true and ancient as the sun.”

Arghavan Khosravi MFA 18 PT

right: photo by Daniel Terna

Fragility of Peace (2019, mixed media, 40 x 57") is among the recent work in Tightrope Walking the Red Lines, Arghavan’s first solo exhibition in NYC—at Lyles & King Gallery. She lives in New Jersey and is a member of the NYC-based Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.

including Unicorns, Aliens and Futuristic Cities at MACLA in San Jose, CA; City of Service at the Culture Commons Gallery in his hometown of San Antonio, TX; Ruffles, Repair & Ritual at the Dirt Palace in Providence; Forward Press at the American University Museum in Washington, DC; The Codex Silex Vallis (The Silicon Valley Codex) at Lawndale in Houston; and Mitología Danza de Cristal at the Chrysler Museum Glass Studio in Norfolk, VA, where he imagined a mythological afterlife for his late chihuahua Winnie.

2016 Dwell magazine has selected SinCa Design, founded by Maria Camarena MFA FD and her husband and partner Dave Sinaguglia, as one of the 24 World Rising Talents in 2019.

Based in Tolland, CT, SinCa offers a collection of high-end wood furniture characterized by humble aesthetics and traditional craftsmanship.

“Wood for us is less a material and more a practice—the way yoga is,” Maria says.

Multidisciplinary artist Jagdeep Raina MFA PT (Provincetown, MA) showed

Julie Gautier-Downes MFA 14 PH On August 17, 2019 Julie married Garrett Jackson, a technical sergeant in the US Air Force, in a small ceremony in Sandpoint, ID. The executive director of the nonprofit Richmond Art Collective in Spokane, WA, she also showed work in Dioramas of Disaster, a late summer solo show at Jan Brandt Gallery in Bloomington, IL.

in last year’s LA + ICONOCLAST competition, which drew 382 entries from 30 countries. In response to a brief asking competitors to redesign New York’s Central Park after a fictional eco-terrorist attack, they proposed a smaller park ceding land to affordable housing with a redefined operational strategy. Among other things, this required

that 25,000 trees be planted in deforested areas of the world for each tree planted in the park.

In November high school art teacher Callie Mulcahy MA was pleased to accept an Exceptional New Art Educator Award from the Massachusetts Art Education Association.

She teaches in Worcester, MA.

Passionate surfer Odile Schlossberg MArch works with the nonprofit SurfAid Santa Cruz in California to raise funds to help people living in remote parts of Indonesia with sustainable clean water facilities, education and sanitation needs.

2018 Boston-area landscape designer Mingjie Cai MLA and her partner Gandong Cai earned an honorable mention

Anna Plesset MFA 11 PT Invited to explore the invisibility of everyday domestic labor, Anna showed the still life painting No Object, No Story (2019, oil and pencil on linen, 18 x 29") in Home/Work, a small group exhibition at JDJ | The Ice House in Garrison, NY. She’s based in Brooklyn.

Email story ideas to risdxyz@risd.edu and post your own news at alumni.risd.edu.

// RISDXYZ

fall/winter 2019/20

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sketchbook

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// sketches, doodles, ideas in progress

BIG CHANGES

by Sonya Sklaroff 92 PT

When my father became critically ill last year, I spent hours commuting on the train from NYC to Philadelphia each week to visit him. I would sketch nonstop during my commutes, observing fellow passengers, looking out the window. Some of these sketches were made with a stream-of-consciousness drawing/meditative technique that I use to try to calm my nerves.

During that time, I was also making a transition in my studio work and professional life, ending my relationship with my long-term art agents and moving away from painting representational New York cityscapes. As I began experimenting with different materials and techniques, the work became more personal, more immediate, layered, spontaneous and direct.

I’m now happy to be free of the constraints of my former style and am excited to see where this more abstract work (like the painting above) will take me. Working in my sketchbook helped me realize that I needed to be true to myself to be the authentic artist that my dad knew I could be.

See Sonya’s signature cityscapes and other boldly colored abstract paintings online @sonyasklaroff.

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