Rhode Island School of Design’s alumni magazine FALL 2010
CONTRIBUTORS PUBLISHING DIRECTOR
Becky Bermont EDITOR
Liisa Silander lsilande@risd.edu 401 454 6349 C R E AT I V E D I R E C T I O N
WellNow Design wellnowdesign.com
Ryan Dunn 03 GD and Wyeth Hansen 03 GD were roommates their Foundation year and have been friends ever since. After graduation they couldn’t imagine why they should stop collaborating, so they founded LABOUR (labour -ny.com), a small Brooklyn studio where they design everything from information systems to typefaces and also build crazy things, direct music videos and write and record music.
When we invited Labour to create our cover, they proposed several intriguing options, including Dimensional Doorway, a surreal model world built with an iconic object from each of the feature articles. To play with the picture plane, Ryan and Wyeth created a doorway to frame the space—and give them an opportunity to painstakingly cut the RISD XYZ logo so that the background would show through when they photographed it.
Criswell Lappin MFA 97 GD Nancy Nowacek Dungjai Pungauthaikan MFA 04 GD D E S I G N/ P R O D U C T I O N
Kate Blackwell Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD Sarah Rainwater Karen Vanderbilt MFA 12 GD CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Anna Cousins Francie Latour Liisa Silander D I R E C T O R O F A LU M N I R E L AT I O N S
Christina Hartley 74 IL C L A S S N O T E S C O O R D I NAT O R
Morgan Blair 08 IL says she “grew
Patrick J. Hamilton 86 GD
Dave Calver 76 IL, a professional
up on Legos, Tetris, tape-dubbing and Magic Eye”—which is, of course, obvious if you look at her incredible work (morganblair.com). She gave us so many options to choose from for our Conversations illustration (page 2) that we felt like kids in a candy store.
is an interior designer, writer, humorist and accidental activist living in Manhattan. He contributed the Listen piece (page 5) and suggested we invite his friend Dave—someone he has wanted to work with for many years— to illustrate his commentary.
illustrator in Palm Springs, CA, has produced zillions of images for ads, murder mysteries and the NYC subway system, among others (illoz.com/decal/). He generated lots of sketches for Patrick’s article before finalizing the colored pencil illustration on page 5.
Duke Graham PRINTING
Lane Press Burlington, VT printed on 70# Sterling Matte, a recycled stock
R I S DX Y Z
Two College Street Providence, Rhode Island 02903-2784 USA Published three times a year by RISD’s Media + Partners group, in conjunction with Alumni Relations.
Paula Martiesian 76 PT is always eager to find refuge in her studio, admitting that she’s “seduced by color and addicted to paint” (paulamartiesian.com). Yet the RI-based artist also does PR for Gallery Night Providence and mounts regular shows for three local galleries. She interviewed a fellow RISD painter for this issue (page 21).
Liz Eddins 00 GD may be petite, but she’s a design and production powerhouse whose aim for perfection keeps our images in check. She helps wrestle each issue of XYZ into submission, often working into the wee hours of the morning to juggle her freelance business, eddinsdesign, with the challenges and joy of being a new mother.
Franklin Einspruch 90 IL is a painter, comics-maker, art critic, blogger and generally very busy guy. “My art celebrates the ordinary,” he explains on einspruch.com. “I take it on faith that everything merits attention.” In this issue, he contributed to Drawing Board (page 64) and also shares news about his current show (page 50).
Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Advancement Services RISD, Two College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA
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Conversations about RISD, the new magazine, art, life, the world
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Listen to reflections, opinions, what’s on our readers' minds
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Look
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at good gifts, smart stuff, architectural interventions
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21
Playing to Learn
Starkly Sensual
Since kids already know how to play, Katie Salen MFA 92 GD is experimenting to see if playing and designing games can actually help them learn.
David Stark 91 PT thinks of every party, fundraiser and special event he’s commissioned to imagine as if it were a giant art installation.
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Six Degrees
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updates from clubs, the Alumni Association, Alumni Relations
No Place Like Home In creating an evocative piece for this fall’s Venice Biennale, Do Ho Suh 94 PT, Eulho Suh BArch 91 and KyungEn Kim MFA 97 discovered the challenges and joy of collaboration.
Two College Street Maeda’s message, faculty news, a glimpse of studios/student life now
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Impact news about scholarships, donors, the RISD Annual Fund
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Where We Are class notes and profiles, undergraduate first, graduate second
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Drawing Board
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a visual commentary on the world as we know it
Fall 2010
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Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage
Rhode Island School of Design Two College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA
The RISD Alumni Association connects you to people, places, art, new ideas, old friends and just plain fun.
design by: Juana Medina Rosas 10 GD
With 42 Alumni clubs + contacts located across the country and around the world, you’ll find it easy to stay close to RISD no matter where your talents take you.
To locate an alumni club near you, visit us online at risd.cc/clubs_xyz
PAID Burlington, VT 05401 Permit No. 19
Editor’s letter, letters to the editor, excerpts from online exchanges.
THE BEST PART OF WORK So m e t i mes it feels like people in the arts
are the only adults in the US unwilling to let go of our natural need to play. Kids don’t own the patent on play, but in our society they’re the ones who get recess, play dates, toys and plenty of encouragement to entertain themselves—by playing in the backyard, building with Legos, drawing, coloring, using their imagination and resourcefulness. What I have always loved about working with and writing about RISD alumni, students and faculty is that I get to play vicariously through your amazing creative endeavors. With this issue of RISD XYZ we didn’t consciously set out to focus on the notion of play. We simply rediscovered along the way that a propensity for play is so intrinsic to the creative process and to what artists and designers do naturally that it almost inadvertently emerged as the primary leitmotiv—and will no doubt reappear as a regular undercurrent in future issues, especially given its long legacy at RISD (see page 58). While you’ll find references to play sprinkled throughout this issue, the feature section coalesces around artists and designers who clearly enjoy the playful aspect of creativity and of creating surreal environments that allow for a better understanding of ‘reality.’ Katie Salen MFA 02 GD, the focus of our first feature article, became so smitten with electronic gaming—as an adult—that she began thinking about how the entire phenomenon of Playstation, Xbox, Wii, WOW and other MMRPGs could have real potential for re-engaging today’s kids in the serious pursuit of learning. She is now conducting real-life experiments on how to integrate gaming and game design into 02
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the classroom, as a potentially very effective means of educating K-12 students to become smart, engaged, compassionate citizens and problem-solvers. David Stark 91 PT creates amazing fantasy worlds for the fortunate guests attending a wide range of special events, using his playful approach and enormous capacity for inventiveness to run a successful business. He also manages to convey powerful messages for his nonprofit clients, who are looking to raise funds for the needy, support art and cultural and improve public education. The third feature article in this issue presents the creatively playful work of Do Ho Suh 94 PT, his brother Eulho Suh BArch 91 and Eulho’s wife KyungEn Kim MFA 97 SC. Their installation for this year’s Venice Biennale is a serious meditation on the meaning of home and place in a world where growing numbers of people like them maintain footholds on multiple continents. Yet it is also refreshingly fanciful—a dreamlike space that a child can totally relate to and adults who take the time to experience find strangely evocative and irresistibly alluring. With this issue, I’ve been thinking a lot about why people respond so well to visually playful objects, images, ads, public art. My guess is that the more we’re burdened with the trappings of “maturity”— bills, mortgages, careers, kids, aging parents, politics, environmental degradation, illness, war, death—the more we actually long for the best aspects of childhood: curiosity, wonder, imagination, invincibility. In other words, we still love to play, whether or not we give ourselves the latitude to do so.
Let us know what you think about this issue: risdxyz@risd.edu.
editor’s message by
Liisa Silander
illustration by
Morgan Blair 08 IL
HOTHOTHOT Perhaps the last thing Criswell Lappin MFA 97 GD and his team want to hear is praise from some old geezer, but the new design is really splendid. So splendid, indeed, that I was nearly run over while crossing the street leaving the post office while leafing through the magazine. It’s a real pleasure to see it enter the 21st century at last. Everything seems just right—even to the design of the contents and masthead—and especially the new fonts.
top left: photo by Sean Hammerle | top right: photo by Criswell Lappin, MFA 97 GD | below right: photo by Nancy Nowacek
DEAR JOHN Just got the new XYZ in the mail. Why have you chosen to replace a poorly-designed propaganda brochure with a real magazine? I thought you were planning to keep that school firmly planted in the Stone Age. This new publication is giving the impression that RISD is now a “forwardthinking creative force” instead of an “aging prep-school-fed dinosaur.” There were articles showing successful work by alums rather than talking non-specifically about the value of a RISD education. You might be giving current students hope and inspiration that a RISD education can lead to bigger things—maybe even be daring them to do better. You certainly have my attention. Keep it up :) Angus T.S. MacLane 97 FAV Emeryville, CA
We have been watching with interest what has been happening at RISD in these unsettling times and are very pleased to see that our alma mater seems to be going in a positive direction. We must admit that there have been times over the past 50 years when we felt the school really didn’t value their alumni unless they were well-known stars in their various fields and could give big bucks. In recent years there seems to have been a change, with more opportunities for alumni to interact with each other and the school in ways that are beneficial for both. We are particularly impressed with the new look and approach the alumni magazine has taken. It is very handsome—a true reflection of a design school—and a delight to read. Nancy 60 PT and Bob Marculewicz 59 MD Essex, MA
Is that Paola Antonelli with RISD XYZ?
Rich Hendel 62 GD Chapel Hill, NC
I absolutely love the new RISD XYZ magazine. For a fellow on the west coast, it’s difficult to keep one foot in the RISD culture. XYZ does a great job of making me feel connected. It really captures the RISD culture well. Smart, creative, vibrant, relevant, contemporary, visually dynamic and well written. Michael Riley 91 GD
A reader on a NYC subway.
Los Angeles, CA
The new alumni magazine looks great and has real content. Congratulations for putting some excitement and life into it. Represents RISD at its best. Duff Schweninger MFA 69 PT New York, NY
I wanted to say congrats on XYZ. My copy arrived today and I’m not even through it yet but had to write you. It’s AWESOME! Great job. Joe Gebbia 05 ID/GD San Francisco, CA
Just finished feasting on XYZ. A compelling diet: Easy to digest, a delight to the eye. Ed Howell 53 IL Indian Rocks Beach, FL
Love the RISD magazine, and am so glad you chose alumni to do the creative design! However, one suggestion: Even with strong lenses and good light, it is really tough to read the “AND THERE’S MORE” entries on pages 06-11. PLEASE try to up-size these blurbs! Ellen (Riley) Schneider 64 AE Cape Coral, FL Note: We agree. And did.
NOT SO HOT I regret to say I do not like the new RISD XYZ. I find it too busy and distracting—hard to focus on the articles because of all the clutter of design going on. I am probably in the minority on this, but thought I would share my opinion. Robin Roraback 88 IL Salisbury, CT Note: We’ve addressed some of Robin’s concerns about clutter, but she’s right about being in the minority: Less than 5% of responses received were thumbs down.
Please remove my name and address from your mailing list. I am raising a family and would not like to have my mailbox polluted with porn under the guise of “art.” While much of the magazine was readable and interesting, I will not tolerate the image and accompanying text on page 55 [of the Spring 2010 issue]. I would rather be entirely without future publications than subject my family to this graphic pornography again. Alessa (Kahn) Keenan 90 CR Edgartown, MA
Follow RISD at twitter.com/risd and facebook.com/risd1877.
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KINESTHETICS CONTINUED
Bethany Gleason
WHOLE RESPONSE
Bette Pepper
Hermine Szala
In response to our question in the last issue, Mary Florence (Campbell) Hauck 44 AP (Lancaster, PA) made us smile with her sticky note comment and careful annotation of each of her classmates’ names.
Janet Bentley
Mary Florence (Campbell) Hauck
CORRECTIONS In our mention of Yeasayer in the last issue [page 8], we neglected to credit Benjamin Phelan 05 ID with doing the cover art for Odd Blood. Ben adds, “I have collaborated with Chris Keating 04 FAV on many projects, such as touring a sculptural light device for the current Yeasayer stage show.” Steve Liebman 70 PH took the photograph of
Al DeCredico 66 PT that XYZ ran with the announcement of his death in the last issue [page 36]. The photo was shot in 1969.
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Jennifer Prewitt-Freilino’s article On Being Whole [Spring 2010, page 4] was so vital; I hope it gets a tremendous amount of exposure. Growing up I made the assumption, as I’m sure most women do, that I would eventually be a wife and mother. I married eight years after graduating from RISD. Having a supportive husband helped me feel stable and secure enough to really focus on my art career. It is disturbing to me how many women, at various art events, will gaze longingly at my paintings, then whisper to me that they “used to be an artist” until they had kids. Being an artist was never a choice for me. It is as vital to my life as breathing. The idea that children could somehow rob me of a necessary component to my existence was rankling, but two years after we wed, my husband and I began to try for offspring. Now, after failed infertility treatments and years of trying, it is quite clear that we are never going to be parents. And while the valley of infertility is dark and excruciating, I find comfort in the fact I am, in my own way, a mother. Weekly I create more and more children using raw materials and my own two hands. Then I send them happily off into the world to be adopted by beaming customers as they carry one of my paintings home. Infertility forced me to consider women’s roles on a deeper level. Was I less of a woman because I couldn’t conceive? Could I be whole with what I already had? I began to have thoughtful discussions with women around me, particularly artists. Many of my female friends had opted never to have children. Most had come to this decision because they didn’t want to forfeit their creativity…. These days, I manage a full-time art career, writing career and a home. I also manage a Pilates studio and do weekly volunteer work to support those dealing with infertility. While my life is crazy, it is balanced. I’m grateful for our family of three (we have a dog). My husband, though not an artist himself (he’s a computer guy), supports my career by transporting artwork and art supplies, hanging shows and giving me “free” days to be alone at home and paint. I’m very blessed. Thank you for the article. It obviously resonated with me. I hope it will with other women, too.
at the Alumni Council meeting [10.10.10]
Anna (Wareham) Koon 93 IL
in reference to information overload and
Jamaica Plain, MA Editor’s note: Regrettably, Assistant Professor Prewitt-Freilino’s article went to press without her final endorsement of several late-breaking edits made due to space constraints. To address her concerns, the edited version she had approved has been posted online (risd.edu/xyz) since the print edition reached readers. XYZ remains committed to presenting the work of our contributing writers, illustrators, artists and designers accurately and with their full blessing.
WOrds or less
Nobody but the Nazis ever asked anybody for their papers. Seth MacFarlane 95 FAV commenting on Arizona’s anti-immigration law
Your painting weighs 28% more dry than wet. BIll Miller 91 PT at the RISD by Design Color + Paint workshop [10.9.10]
Wish they had those when I was in school!!! Flora (Despotides) Chioros BLA 89 on Twitter, in response to news that Zipcars have arrived at RISD
Get to the heart of the matter. Edit the fluff. Robyn Ericsson BArch 87
e-communications from RISD
THOUGHT The new interdisciplinarity. Mairéad Byrne Assistant Professor of English from her new book of poetry The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven
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Let us know what you think about this issue: risdxyz@risd.edu.
Readers reflect, write, shout, share what’s on their minds.
THE ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST Alt hough so me of my sm artass friends might
say otherwis e , I consider myself “moderately gay.” I’m more White Square than pink triangle. Far less Jack, way more Will. I’m no militant queer. I’m not always positive what order “LGBT” goes in. Until recently, I was never sure what Proposition 8 was for… or against. All I knew was: it was in California (not in my immediate vicinity) and was about same-sex marriage (not in my immediate future). And I confess: I’ve not been to a Pride parade in years. So call me a Bad Gay, sitting on the sidelines while others raise the ruckus, and the rainbow flag. What created this sleepy-eyed monster of mediocrity? Partly, I credit (blame?) location and luck. I’ve always lived in large cities, with a career where being gay was no real obstacle. Then there’s age: too young for Stonewall, old enough where Anita Bryant’s OJ leaves a bitter taste. I remember when AIDS was stealing our brightest lights with an ugly brutality, but now anti-virals have made it (mostly) an issue of management. This middle ground pulled a security blanket of fog over me, blurring my perspective and filtering out harsh realities. But suddenly, the fog has lifted. I’m planning boycotts, creating flyers, strategizing demands… and it’s all happening so quickly I can’t type fast enough to get the words out. Way out. Rainbow bright, I’m a different kind of gay! But how the hell did that happen? I have become an activist because I was supported when others were not. Mom put her marriage on the line when Dad wanted to yank my RISD tuition, discovering that his only son was homosexual. I have
a sister so supportive that my coming out was a comic non-event. It’s time to lend the strength I got to those who have been shamed, abandoned or pushed out—out of shame, fear and ignorance. I realized I’d be taking a free ride to the altar if others push for my right to marry, so that if I’m lucky enough to drop to one knee and propose to a man I love, it will not be an empty gesture. But if I’m gonna dance at my own wedding, it’s time to pay the DJ. Mostly, I am compelled to act because, as the majority becomes more accepting, the minority becomes more extreme. Gay-bashing creeps back into headlines. Lynch-mob imagery appears at anti-gay protests. An infant is killed for “acting like a girl.” A “Christian” rock band advocates the death of gays— with the backing of elected officials, in our classrooms. And this climate of simmering hatred spurs a sudden epidemic of suicides. So, out of anger and impatience—in debt and gratitude to those before me and to pay in advance for those yet to come out—I have become a reluctant participant, an “accidental activist” of sorts. I may be late to the party, but I’m here to stay. I may even see you at the next Pride parade.
article by
Patrick J. Hamilton 86 GD
illustration by
Dave Calver 76 IL
“ I am compelled to act because as the majority becomes more accepting, the minority becomes more extreme.”
Excerpted from The Accidental Activist: How Target, Facebook and Two Sofa Salesmen Liberated my Inner Harvey Milk. Read the full version at risd.edu/xyz.
To submit your own commentary, email risdxyz@risd.edu (subject line: listen).
Fall 2010
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Great for Giving
Exquisite Pull-Outs
David Wiesner 78 IL
Since they teamed up as Also Design shortly after leaving RISD, Matt Lamothe 02 FAV, Julia Rothman 02 IL and Jenny Volvovski 02 GD have built a track record for producing consistently high-quality work. And in addition to creating seemingly ubiquitous illustrations for giftwrap, bedding, wallpaper and more, Rothman writes the deservedly popular blog bookby-its-cover.com. But why stop there when you’re barely turning 30? For The Exquisite Book: 100 Artists Play a Collaborative Game (Chronicle Books, September 2010) they invited 100 of their favorite artists to play an ingenious version of the surrealist drawing game Exquisite Corpse. Each created artwork for his or her own page in response to the work on the page before, using a set horizon line to connect the two. Not surprisingly, the results are fascinating, as Dave Eggers points out in the foreword. And the format is as unique as the contents, with each of the 10 chapters bundled as a 10-page accordion pull-out. also-online.com
Matt Lamothe 02 FAV
Julia Rothman 02 IL
Jenny Volvovski 02 GD
Ode to Creativity For his new picture book Art & Max (Clarion Books, October 2010), three-time Caldecott Medal-winner David Wiesner 78 IL “began by playing around with different media” and quickly realized that his own exploration would lead to a meditation on the creative process itself. In his inimitable Wiesner way, he had two desert lizards follow the same path of discovery as he had in bringing them to life on the page. The horned lizard Arthur—or Art, as the double-entendre of the title suggests—is an established artist who is about to paint a traditional portrait when his frenetic cohort, a collared lizard named Max, bursts onto the scene wanting to make art, too. The beautifully rendered story unfolds from there, with Kirkus calling it “a wildly trippy, funny and original interpretation of the artistic process” and School Library Journal concluding that Wiesner’s latest is “picture-book making at its best.” houghtonmifflinbooks.com/wiesner
AND THERE’S
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davidweeksstudio.com David Weeks 90 ID Weeks’ product designs “run the gamut from playful to elegant, often within the same piece.” Building on his success with sleek furniture and distinctive lighting fixtures, this year he launched a new line of wooden Cubebots, a totally charming take on the traditional toy robot.
baggubag.com Ellen van der Laan 05 GD Baggu makes it easy to be “positive and progressive” with its great-looking line of easy-to-fold reusable bags designed by Ellen van der Laan. Made of 100% Ripstop nylon, these washable beauties can hold up to 50 lbs. of stuff. The question is: can you?
Liz Goulet Dubois 89 IL
Toys for Living Chances are you’ve noticed the toys Liz Goulet Dubois 89 IL has designed for Club Earth and her super silly products for FRED, the Rhode Island-based maker of stuff meant to make you smile. Among her lighthearted winners is a poofy little silicone pillow to “cradle your ladle” on the stovetop and a pliable plastic ear pierced with a standard metal ring (Ear Ring) to keep your keys handy. Her udderly clever Calf & Half creamer—handcrafted with double-walled glass—is both totally practical and refreshingly ridiculous. In addition to designing toys and other fun stuff, Dubois is an author and illustrator based in Hope, RI. “My art and design is nearly always geared towards children, or towards grown-ups who refuse to grow up,” she points out on her site. “I believe the stories and pictures that stick in our heads when we’re young have a lot to do with what we gravitate towards as adults.” lizgouletdubois.com/shop worldwidefred.com
Art and Sole
Yoka Yields UnAverage Joe
Heed the wise Holzer-ism PROTECT
Active in the custom toy movement, Ukranian-American artist
ME FROM WHAT I WANT—unless
and illustrator Adrianna Bamber 01 IL makes art in a tiny
what you want is a pair of Keds subtly
studio in San Francisco’s Mission District, where she says,
sporting the dictum of Jenny Holzer
“Art is my life. Life is my art.” Bamber has worked as a toy designer for both mainstream and designer companies such
MFA 77 PT herself. When you snap up
Yoka and Where’s Joe? toys in response to invitations to
John Verdery
participate in two recent shows. Though her Yoka (acrylic and
10 IL
as STRANGEco, and created her one-of-a-kind 100 Characters
ink on plastic, 3” h) sold recently on her Etsy store, her Average Joe Schmoe interpretation (acrylic and ink on wood, 6” h) is featured in a November sales exhibition at Lift Designer Toy & Gallery in Detroit, MI.
some sneakers from the limited-edition KedsWhitney Collection, which also includes a funky canvas weave sneaker designed by Laura Owens 92 PT, proceeds support the Whitney Museum of American Art. Also finding the sneaker an inspiring canvas: John Verdery 10 IL, who has taken his talent for customizing
abamber.com
shoes to New York and has just launched
abamber.etsy.com
his first line (including the sneaker shown
liftdetroit.com
here in a surface design by Korakrit Arunanondchai 09 PR). His plan is to work in a “minimalist aesthetic with both art lovers and sneakerphiles in mind.”
Adrianna Bamber
keds.com electrolitesfootwear.com johnverdery.com
01 IL
Chico Bicalho 85 SC kikkerlandshop.com Who can resist Nino, the jumping beetle, Katita, the leggy gizmo, Cranky, Bonga, Awika or any of the other quirky members of Chico Bicalho’s favorite family of critter wind-ups for Kikkerland? They’ve become contemporary classics, well worth giving—and receiving.
chrisbradydesign.com Chris Brady 95 IL For a guy who grew up with beach shells on the family Christmas tree and then topped his own with a chicken, The Lobstar was a natural. Though the 13" red plastic lobster-clutching-a-star isn’t for everyone, if you put one on your tree this holiday season, it’s guaranteed to stand out. Fall 2010
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Caleb Larsen
Smart Stuff
MFA 09 DM
SMARTER THAN SMART Motorcycle (efficiency x romance) + safety/ comfort - combustion engine + gyroscope = C-1, the first-generation vehicle from Lit Motors. Company founder Danny Kim 09 ID explains the two-wheeled, electric-powered microcar in evolutionary terms, noting that the ecology of driving has changed a lot in the 70 years since the last new successful car company emerged. He has a hunch that the 4g-connected, app-ready C-1 has what it takes to outwit the alternative alternatives; we’ll get a glimpse of the new species once the company comes out of stealth mode—which is rumored to be very soon. litmotors.com
Buy It on eBay With A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter Caleb Larsen MFA 09 DM has pinpointed and obliterated the line between art and commerce, while raising squirm-inducing questions about meaning and value. In the piece, he programmed this featureless black acrylic cube connected to the internet to list itself on eBay every 10 minutes—ad nauseam. Each new owner is contractually required to keep it connected and to send it on to the next purchaser. Tool is on view in the Electrohype 2010 biennial at Ystads konstmuseum in Sweden from November 27 through January 30, 2011. caleblarsen.com sherwoodmeister.com
Danny Kim 09 ID
John Ewing MFA 07 DM johnewing.org For three weeks in June John Ewing opened a live video portal between two Boston neighborhoods separated by a socioeconomic divide. Virtual Street Corners encouraged spontaneous conversations between people on the street and also featured discussions with artists, politicians and others. 08
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Tae Ashida 87 AP jun-ashida.co.jp Last spring when the space shuttle Discovery blasted into space, Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki entered zero gravity in style, wearing Tae Ashida’s suitably flattering design of a slim knit cardigan in light blue with navy blue shorts. It was as if the Jetsons had gone 21st century!
Old Cars>New Lives People in many developing countries rely on incubators to keep premature and at-risk newborns alive. But when the incubators fail, there are no trained technicians on hand to repair them. Emily Rothschild MID 08, Huy Vu MFA 09 GD and Tom Weis MID 08 worked with Design That Matters and CIMIT to circumvent this problem by completing the final design of a low-cost, readily repairable incubator that had been in development for several years and is built from used car parts. NeoNurture: the Car-parts Incubator is featured in the National Design Triennial: WHY DESIGN NOW? on view at the Cooper-Hewitt through January 9, 2011. designthatmatters.org exhibitions.cooperhewitt.org
Emily Rothschild MID 08
David Hanson
Huy Vu MFA 09 GD
96 FAV
Tom Weis MID 08
Zien’s Quirky Outlet In June Core 77 predicted that the new Pivot Power “creative outlet” designed by Jake Zien 11 GD may be the “first massmarket hit” for Quirky, the online product development company that relies on crowd-sourcing as a means of testing and moving fledgling products forward. Within days of its initial offering on Quirky, the snakey smiling power strip passed its “pre-sales threshold” of 960 pre-orders. So the $25 unit is now in the production phase and will hit the market before Zien even graduates next May. quirky.com jakezien.com
Making Friends Now that robot innovator David Hanson 96 FAV and his wife have made a new human—a young son—he’s perfecting the next-best thing. Bina48, his first privately commissioned robotic portrait of an actual woman, carries on conversations, learns new words, makes eye contact and muses on the pros and cons of being artificial. Hanson Robotics is also currently working on Zeno—a cuter and less philosophical toy robot for the consumer market. hansonrobotics.com
Jake Zien 11 GD Tavares Strachan 03 GL listart.mit.edu/node/618 The show Orthostatic Tolerance summed up Tavares Strachan’s recent residency at MIT, where he worked with researchers in aeronautics, astronautics and underwater physics. His goal: to establish an Ocean and Aerospace Exploration Agency in Nassau, the Bahamas (where he lives).
Laura Alesci MFA 10 DM phonetalks.org For Phone Talks Alesci teamed up with Dylan Greif MFA GD and Derick Ostrenko MFA 10 DM to install a digitally modified pay phone in downtown Pawtucket, RI. When the phone rang, whoever picked it up heard a recorded interview about different aspects of the city. Fall 2010
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Architectural Interventions
Rumor Has It This fall a 1,200-sf painting on the concrete façade of UMass Amherst’s Fine Arts Center has prompted viewers to interpret it like a giant Rorschach test, thanks to visiting artist and Macarthur Fellow Anna Schuleit 98 PT. When seen reflected in the adjacent pond, the seemingly abstract design crystallizes into a man’s face, creating a low-tech projection that changes in response to natural weather, wind and light conditions. Schuleit created Just a Rumor in response to the idiosyncratic site and in the wake of her research into the “missing faces” of Northampton State Hospital, the former psychiatric hospital where she staged the sound installation Habeas Corpus a decade ago. anna-schuleit.com
Anna Schuleit 98 PT
Entertaining Modernism After making it onto countless critics’ 2009 “best-of” lists, Asterios Polyp (Pantheon, 2009) has earned cartoonist David Mazzucchelli 83 PT even more recognition in 2010. It won the LA Times Book Prize for Graphic Novels, the National Cartoon Society’s Reuben for Best Graphic Novel and three Comic-Con Eisner Awards: Best Graphic Album, Best Writer/ Artist and Best Lettering. In Mazzucchelli’s “huge, knotty marvel” (Publishers Weekly), readers follow the title character— an acclaimed architect of mythological proportions—through his tragic fall from grace and later attempts to rebuild. The
David Mazzucchelli 83 PT
New York Times calls Asterios Polyp “maddening and even suffocating at times,” but ultimately praises it as “a dazzling, expertly constructed entertainment.” Oddly enough, Entertainment Weekly says: “It’s as if John Updike had discovered a bag of art supplies and LSD.” And NPR’s reviewer finds it simply “remarkable for the way it synthesizes word and image to craft a new kind of storytelling.”
jcdainc.com James Carpenter 72 IL In its largest architectural project to date, James Carpenter Design Associates has completed the thoughtful and sweeping renovation and expansion of The Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Both Newsweek and The New York Times took note of Carpenter’s elegant response to the challenge. 10
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Judith Schaechter 83 GL projectsite.unitedstatesartists.org This award-winning glass artist is hoping to earn funding for a provocative 2012 installation at Phildelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, now a historic site. She believes the former prison is the ideal architectural setting for her work since it focuses on human suffering and spiritual aspiration.
top: photos by John Solem
randomhouse.com
Jack Ryan BArch 00
Schools for Haiti Jack Ryan BArch 00, an architectural consultant for the NGO Plan International, lost no time in helping Haiti to rebuild after the devastating earthquake in January. He volunteered to design a prototype for a transitional school that is now being built throughout the country; by the end of this fall, Plan International expects to complete 40 of the 76 schools planned, accommodating more than 4,000 schoolchildren. Ryan—who is also an architect at 3six0 and a faculty member in RISD’s Architecture Department—reports that while the new schools are helping, “we are behind schedule due to severe tropical storms, sites that still need to be cleared, customs delays in importing construction components and administrative issues with land grants.” plan-international.org
Bankable Needs Tom Sieniewicz BArch 83, a principal at Chan Krieger Sieniewicz in Cambridge, MA, kept a compelling fact in mind as he
Hansy Better RISD faculty
designed a new warehousing facility for the Greater Boston Food Bank: every dollar saved would equal two meals. The thought drove his solution for the Yawkey Distribution Center, a 117,000-sf user-friendly facility that also offers aesthetic rewards. While enabling the nonprofit to distribute food to
A Better Big Hammock Last summer Assistant Professor of Architecture Hansy Better could think of no better way to pursue her passion for “bringing people together through the design of public art and objects”
83,000 clients each week, the center maximizes natural light. And through its prominent rooftop signage and clever depiction of the logo on an exterior wall, it reminds drivers whizzing by on I-93 of the obvious: the need remains so great that the Food Bank will never be too big to fail. gbfb.org chankrieger.com
than to build a giant hammock at the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston. Starting with a $1,000 grant from the Awesome Foundation, she
Tom Sieniewicz
raised another $5,462 for the project via KickStarter and in August worked
BArch 83
with volunteers to weave and assemble the 8 x 38-foot “interactive symbol of community” in the park. After getting plenty of use, the hammock has now been packed away for the winter, but it just may be headed to a city park near you in 2011.
middle: photo by John Horner
thebighammock.org
RISD alums+faculty americansforthearts.org Four projects—by Bill Davenport 86 SC, Brad Goldberg BLA 78, Sculpture Professor Ellen Driscoll and Foundation faculty member Alan Michelson—have been recognized by Americans for the Arts as among the top 40 public art works made in the US and Canada in 2010.
Peter Case MArch 97 + Joe Haskett MArch 02 boxoffice460.com The colorful new Box Office building in Providence may look like oversized Lego, but it’s actually the largest commercial building in the US made of recycled shipping containers. Case worked with Haskett to make it as green as possible—at half the price per square foot of a conventional building. Fall 2010
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“ I want extraordinary, and often that translates into trying something I’ve never tried before, inventing something I’ve never seen before.”
David Stark 91 PT
“ I just fell in love with games. I became fascinated with the way that video games construct worlds.” Katie Salen MFA 92 GD
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“ Given our crossed paths, it made perfect sense for us to work on a project that deals with the notion of home and place.” Do Ho Suh 94 PT
“ I was brought “ Mediating up in an between artistic envithe opinions ronment that of the three encouraged of us was me to be playfully the most creative.” difficult part.” Eulho Suh BArch 91 KyungEn Kim MFA 97 SC
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A true game-lover, Katie Salen MFA 92 GD once co-designed a surrealistic “board game” in which residents of MinneapolisSt. Paul strategically moved 25-foot-tall game pieces around the city.
Since learning to play comes naturally to kids, Katie Salen is showing how playing can help them learn.
No one takes playing games more seriously than Katie Salen. While most people might round up some friends and break out a board game on the coffee table, Salen once co-designed a multi-player game for the entire population of Minneapolis-St. Paul, creating Crayola-colored, 25-foot game pieces for teams of thousands of residents to race along city streets. While some people might find fun in a night of karaoke, or in buying a cone from the neighborhood ice-cream truck, Salen helped build an ice cream truck that doubled as a roaming karaoke unit, then invited residents of San Jose to have a popsicle and do a live recording of Outkast’s Hey Ya! But Salen, a 42-year-old designer who earned her master’s in Graphic Design at RISD and now teaches at Parsons, isn’t just a player or designer of games. She’s a theorist of games, and a passionate believer in their transformative power. It’s not just playing for its own sake that fascinates her—it’s the potential that lies in taking the complex systems embedded in games and leveraging them for social change. “I just fell in love with games,” says Salen. She found her way to gaming in the late 1990s after collaborating with a choreographer to create computer-generated dancers and realizing she was doing what game designers do all the time: building moving bodies in a virtual world. “I became fascinated with the way that video games construct worlds—that from nothing they literally . . . start to create a kind of logic and a coherence
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Katie Salen MFA 92
by Francie Latour
The kids at Quest to Learn, a new public school in Manhattan, are being taught through an experimental curriculum based on gaming and game design principles.
to learn
to what you can do in that space, through the design of rules. That’s kind of been the trajectory of my career,” she says. “Games have become a tool to help me figure out how to design things that aren’t games.” So far, Salen has published three major books on game design and gaming and is making a convincing case that paying attention to games is a good idea—even far beyond the gaming and design worlds. Her nonprofit, Institute of Play, stakes its claim on the idea that gamer intelligence—learning how to play, analyze and create games—not only promotes 21st-century digital skills, but also makes us better risk takers, problem solvers, collaborators and engaged citizens. (And who would disagree that Institute of Play just may be the best name ever for a nonprofit?) In 2009, the institute launched its boldest venture yet: Quest to Learn, a New York City public school organized entirely around game design principles and digital culture. The school now enrolls about 150 sixth- and seventh-graders, and will eventually teach kids through grade 12. After its first year, it has already cleared early testing hurdles, with students doing about the same as their peers around the city. But Quest to Learn’s mission isn’t about test scores. It’s about making school a place where kids strive to master their subjects the way they strive to master games. And it’s about challenging them to build games the way designers do— creating complex, dynamic worlds that are rich in narrative and rigorous in structure. “In general people have a lot of assumptions about video games—that they’re frivolous, a waste of time, violent, played only by boys and so on,” Salen points out. “As a result, almost anything we say counter to this impression is a surprise to them. But with the design of games, it’s a little different, because most parents have a pretty positive feeling about their kids authoring work. That feels constructive to them.” CONVERSATION-CHANGER
Now in its second year, Quest’s radical model for what a school can be is already changing the conversation about how a
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Kids at Quest don’t spend the day in front of computer screens nor do they sit passively at their desks. They learn new concepts and ways of problem solving by engaging in “missions” and “quests” similar to those used in gaming.
There is a clear sense…that there is a crisis in education, primarily around the fact that we’re losing young people because they’re simply not engaged.” Katie Salen MFA 92 GD
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Katie Salen MFA 92
nation’s failing public school system can reach a generation of digitally oriented kids. “There is a clear sense here in New York, as in many other places, that there is a crisis in education, primarily around the fact that we’re losing young people because they’re simply not engaged,” Salen says. “And the testing curriculum has nothing to do with kids’ lives. It doesn’t really care about equipping them for the 21st century. It cares about equipping them to take tests.” The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has already put $1.1 million behind Quest to Learn. The grant is part of MacArthur’s $50-million Digital Media and Learning initiative to reimagine education by understanding how technology is shaping the way kids acquire knowledge and form a sense of community. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also banking on Salen’s model; in June, it announced a $2.6-million grant to explore how elements of Quest to Learn can be incorporated into existing schools. And from California to Virginia, from the UK to South Africa, schools are clamoring to adopt Salen’s and her team’s ideas. Already, three new Chicago charter schools modeled on Quest to Learn are slated to open. “We’ve actually been overwhelmed with requests, and we’re not prepared,” she says. “We don’t believe that after only a single year you can say that it’s a working model. . . [But] I think people feel like there’s just something to this idea.” Robert Hughes, president of New Visions for Public Schools in New York, is one of those people. For 20 years New Visions has been a major force for education reform in New York City, credited with turning around the city’s struggling behemoth of a school system. The nonprofit partnered with Salen to get Quest to Learn off the ground, and is on the cusp of launching 18 new charter schools. Almost all of them, Hughes says, will be heavily influenced by Salen’s model. “Katie brings to the table a deep knowledge—probably more knowledge than anyone else in the country—of games and their ramifications for learning,“ says Hughes. He’s a firm believer in
“this idea that you meet kids where they are, you build on their strengths and interests, and you create alternative environments where they can learn individually and collaboratively. And more importantly, you shift the students’ stance from being passive recipients of learning to involving them in the active construction of work.” When Hughes first approached Salen about starting a school, she had been trying to get funding for an innovative storefront space for kids. Running a school was never on her agenda. But Salen says her experience at RISD has been critical in guiding her through spheres far afield from design, and in finding her design voice in all of them. “When I was at RISD, what I was really intrigued by. . . was this notion of: How do you really begin to ask questions about the role of design in the world?” she says. “For me that has allowed me to move as I have moved, because I don’t feel like I was trained to be a graphic designer. I feel like I was trained to be a design thinker.” With her improbable designer’s journey to education reform, Salen has brought something invaluable to the crisis in public school education, says Hughes: getting kids to truly own their learning. ON A MISSION
So, what exactly goes on behind the doors at 18th Street West and 9th Avenue, in the Chelsea neighborhood where Quest to Learn makes its home? To start with, Salen says, here’s what doesn’t go on: students do not play video games all day. Teachers and administrators do not preside over classrooms
overloaded with high-tech gadgets or unstructured days devoid of fundamentals. But on entering a classroom, both kids and adults quickly realize they’re not in a more-of-the-same middle school. Quest to Learn is very much an intentional environment—one designed by teachers working one-on-one with game designers, and one that constantly seeks to create what Salen calls a “need to know.” “What game designers think about all the time is, ‘What situation can I drop my player into that will require them to learn how to do the thing I want them to learn?’” Salen explains. “In a video game, it might be that I need to teach my player how to jump, so that it can collect the magic gems that are floating above its head.” As a general rule, game designers don’t get players to jump by doing tutorials on jumping. “You create a situation where there’s this thing just out of reach, and you have to figure out . . . how to jump to get that thing, because you really want it. That need to know is what we’re trying to create in the kids. So the curriculum drops kids into a complex problem space, which we call a ‘mission.’” At Quest to Learn, language matters—because Salen recognizes that it matters deeply to kids. Final exams become “boss levels,” and subjects like math and science are called “Codeworlds” and “The Way Things Work.” Those courses aren’t taught as units, but as “missions.” Each mission is broken down into a series of “quests.” And within those quests are challenges that, when completed, unlock the next quest.
For one of Salen’s playful projects, an ice cream truck in San José doubled as a roaming karaoke unit, inviting residents to both grab a cone and belt out a tune. Through her avatar (small image) she’s able to learn from making mistakes, which is also part of the beauty of the new school.
“ I don’t feel like I was trained to be a graphic designer. I feel like I was trained to be a design thinker.
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Watching someone play a game is basically an exercise in witnessing ‘productive failure.’ In design, we simply call failure ‘iteration’—designers know that they aren’t going to get it right on the first try.”
Let’s say you’re a Quest to Learn seventh-grader, and your mission is to learn about the human body. You might find yourself sitting in class, following a fairly traditional exploration of the human cell. Then one day the teacher dims the lights, and slowly, everyone turns toward the back of the room, drawn by a locker that is starting to glow. Inside that locker, Salen says, the students find a radio transmitting messages from a doctor. The doctor, it turns out, has been shrunken down and is traveling inside the body of his sick patient. The doctor’s colleagues are expecting him to report back about the patient, but what they don’t realize is that when the doctor shrank, so did his brain, and he lost all his medical knowledge. Enter the students, who help cover for this massive brain loss by helping the doctor figure out where he is and what’s wrong—in the patient’s digestive system, circulatory system, nervous system and so on. “So the kids have this need to know—to figure out: Where might [the doctor] be? How does this digestive system work? How do they give him some coordinates in the body to try to navigate? All along the way they’re collecting data,” Salen explains. “They’re learning how to use scientific equipment. They’re building theories. They’re doing experiments. But it’s
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Katie Salen MFA 92
presented in a game-like way, and it’s a combination of the physical and the digital.” PRODUCTIVE FAILURE
If the curriculum is designed to fire kids’ brains in new ways, it also requires something similar of teachers. For them, entering a world of avatars and boss levels means rewiring their minds and learning to think of themselves as designers. In designing a Quest to Learn mission on ancient Greece, Ross Flatt asked his students to take on roles as citizens in the competing city-states of Athens and Sparta—vying for power, spying on each other, drawing maps and deploying for battle in phalanx formations. The 10-week mission ended with a debate in which each team made a case for why their model for civilization should survive if the two city-states were to go to war. “When I did the phalanx demonstration, I marched them to the middle of an apartment complex across the street. They all marched with their shields across 23rd Street, and had a really good time,” Flatt recalls. “But when it was time to debate, and prove that they had learned something, it was very real to them. No eyes were glazed over, which is the biggest difference at a place like Quest.”
The sixth- and seventhgraders now studying at Quest seem to be more engaged, with teachers noting fewer “eyes glazed over” when they present new concepts.
“ That need to know is what we’re trying to create in the kids.
When a subject like ancient history can be taught without those glazed expressions, it’s a good sign that a school is starting to do what video games do so well—namely, command kids’ attention for hours at a time. But over time, if it’s done right, Salen says, game-like learning won’t be just about keeping kids from spacing out, or even about preparing them for technology-rich careers. It will also be about instilling in them timeless qualities like empathy and tenacity. Playing video games all day could make a kid withdrawn and insular. But designing games forces kids to think about the people who will play them and how those players experience the game. It demands a stepping-outside-of-the-self that Salen contends has profound implications for civic engagement in an increasingly virtual world. At the same time, the complexity of games and game systems almost guarantees that students will fail, at least initially. But they also tend to be highly motivated to work through that failure, precisely because it’s a game. “Students are rarely given the time, space or support to engage in failure as a process of problem-solving,” Salen says. “Watching someone play a game is basically an exercise in witnessing what I sometimes call ‘productive failure.’ Players
For more on Katie’s work, go to risd.edu/xyz.
try things out to see if they work, and when they don’t, they naturally go through a process of problem solving and experimentation until they hit upon a correct approach. In design, we simply call failure ‘iteration’—designers know that they aren’t going to get it right on the first try.” Despite the many games she has played and the energy she has poured into engaging students, Salen says kids still surprise her. For example, she couldn’t possibly have expected what would happen last year when Quest to Learn’s first sixth-graders encountered Arithmix and Wordix, code-breaking twin brothers in a fictional world who would send the students emails during a school-year mission. “We have kids who are still writing to the characters this year,” Salen says. “And this is, I think, the beautiful thing about games. Kids know that they’re not real. They know that a game has been designed. But still, they’re naturally drawn to them. It’s a compelling way for them to engage.”
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When Britain’s Tate museum chose to hold its first US fundraiser in a Manhattan ferry terminal on the Hudson, the ripples and waves of the river inspired Stark to create an undulating curtain made from 15,000 aquatic-colored paint chips.
STARKLY
David Stark creates conceptual events and experiences designed to delight all the senses.
by Paula Martiesian 76 PT
PAINTING
David Stark BFA 91
The story begins innocently enough, with an ugly tablecloth. Aspiring painter David Stark, who holds a BFA from RISD and an MFA from the School of the Visual Arts in New York, is working as a floral designer to supplement his income and support his studio work. He loves the colors, shapes and textures of flowers, and arranges them as deftly as he composes a painting. He also likes the creative outlet. It gets him out of the studio, working with people—and for him, the process is much quicker and somehow more satisfying than painting. As Stark delivers his distinctive centerpieces, however, he is repeatedly disappointed to find endless ugly tablecloths and tasteless décor scattered about unattractive rooms. With his heightened attention to detail, he can’t resist the urge to provide increasingly more diverse design services. With the flick of a tablecloth, David Stark, the secluded painter, transforms himself into David Stark, premier event designer. Of course, that “flick” actually spanned a decade. In the beginning, there was just Stark, painting, waiting tables and making tablescapes with flowers. Waiting tables wasn’t much fun; flowers, on the other hand, were. When a friend needed some ideas for the décor of a fundraiser for the Brooklyn Museum of Art, he and his former business partner Avi Adler stepped in to help. For several years, much of the duo’s design Fall 2010
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“ I ’m really lucky. I wake up every day and jump onto a rollicking roller coaster of art-making. Yet, the art that I make is not what many might recognize as art.” David Stark 91 PT
playful, chalkboard cityscapes of New York to emphasize the foundation’s goal of creating a better city by erasing poverty. An inexpensive, readily available material, the chalk not only reinforced the foundation’s educational mission, it allowed guests to interact with the sets and props by adding their own “graffiti.”
work was rooted in flowers. “Flowers are cool and fun,” Stark says. “Unlike painting, where you feel your work has to have a deep, emotionally charged meaning, you don’t need to draw deep meaning from your work with flowers.” Despite their blossoming business, a gala for the Metropolitan Opera proved problematic. Held in a dark industrial space, it just didn’t call for flowers. “It suddenly occurred to me,” Stark says of his eureka-moment, “that events are a lot like art installations and I could approach these endeavors as if I were making art.” Today Stark is the president and principal designer of David Stark Design and Production, a Brooklyn-based firm with a reputation for producing high-concept, art-infused parties. He employs a creative ensemble of 25 designers, builders, craftspeople, project managers and engineering types to help juggle the complex details and logistics of producing 60–65 extraordinary events a year—in New York, Boston, Minneapolis, Jerusalem, Tokyo and beyond. “It takes a little army of a village to make these things happen,” he says. “It really is a group experience and I’m really proud of the team.” Handmade experience
Together, Stark and his team specialize in personally tailored experiences that make participants feel like they’re taking part in a performance art piece. His A-list clients are impressive— Beyoncé, Tony Bennett, Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox, Arianna Huffington and Jon Stewart are among the high-wattage celebrities who have sought him out. In the corporate realm, he has worked with Benjamin Moore, Chivas Regal, InStyle, Target, Tiffany & Co, Versace and Louis Vuitton. His nonprofit work, which remains central to what he does, has resulted in inspired events for the Metropolitan Opera, the Museum of Modern Art, New Yorkers for Children and the Robin Hood 22
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David Stark BFA 91
A clever and resourceful use of materials is a hallmark of Stark’s events. At a dinner presentation of the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Awards, flowers were arranged as unexpected “edibles” rather than in vases.
photos by Susan Montagna
For a Robin Hood Foundation fundraiser, Stark’s team drew
Foundation, an organization that counters poverty in New York. The team also goes beyond expectation in producing extraordinary weddings, bar mitzvahs and birthday celebrations. “We create experiences about all the senses,” Stark explains. “It’s all-encompassing—the food you eat, the entertainment you watch and hear, the invitations you receive in the mail—all are interconnected.” Each individual element is designed with care, and with the participants in mind. “It’s important to me to see the heartbeat of the hand in what we do—to really see that each event is a handmade experience.” Nancy Novogrod, editor-in-chief of Travel & Leisure magazine, noted in a recent New York Times article that “what distinguishes Mr. Stark’s efforts from those of his competitors is that a Stark party often resembles a kind of installation art. His work is conceptual and it’s a little bit making fun of all the elements that connote luxury and glamour. It’s upending things a bit.” Stark’s background as a painter and visual artist gives him a leg up when it comes to upending. “Early on, my whole creative world came from RISD,” he says. “I was surrounded by such an incredible group of people—people who I still talk with today. I loved painting and learned to solve creative problems, and now I do the same thing with other materials.” At RISD Stark also began to realize that “safe” is not in his playbook. “I want extraordinary, and often that translates into trying something I’ve never tried before, inventing something I’ve never seen before, getting at that tantalizing idea waiting to be unwrapped.”
Surprise and delight
Among the tantalizing ideas Stark and his team have unwrapped recently: a paint-by-numbers picnic event inside a giant paint can for Benjamin Moore, jumbo laptops with live Twitter feeds and blogging for a Huffington Post party, 3,000 lbs. of recycled newspapers to underscore “the printed word” theme of the Israel Museum’s gala and lovely tablescapes of finds from the woods for a rustic wedding in Maine. From the most intimate tableaux to super-sized environments bursting with eye-candy, each is symbolically rich and visually rewarding. Beyond feeling personal and meaningful, these happenings are designed to come alive through the people attending the event. “People want surprise and delight,” Stark says. And in today’s economic climate, “over-the-top lavishness is out; ingenuity is in. Clients want a creative journey, something innovative that they haven’t seen before.” Innovation is among Stark’s strong suits. He likes the challenge of working within the time and budget parameters most designers face, and being resourceful with materials. In fact, in recent years he has made herculean efforts to both reuse everyday materials and recycle them again after each event. For the west elm (Purely Paper) Flower Shoppe, he collected books off the street and fashioned the pages into paper flowers, bird houses, pots and garden accessories. When dismantling a sneaker “tornado” made from Nike’s donation to the Robin Hood Foundation, he made sure that the 5,000 pairs of factory-new shoes made their way to New Yorkers in need.
“ It suddenly occurred to me that events are a lot like art installations.”
Stark made this towering sculpture of old sinks [above] for Cosentino’s launch of its eco line—which featured countertops made from recycled crushed mirrors, bottles and porcelain. As someone “who relies on Post-it Notes to get tasks accomplished,” he chose to make a dramatic statement through the use of thousands of square notepads for the “Make it Happen” theme of a New Yorkers for Children fundraiser.
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For private parties— corporate events, weddings, birthdays— Stark and his team love the challenge of dreaming up unexpected touches, like this beautifully playful reminder of the activity at hand etched in a hedge at a MoMA garden party.
“ I learned to break the rules and do it really, really well.”
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David Stark BFA 91
photos courtesy of west elm
Stark believes in making “treasure from trash” and is a master at working with paper. This overstuffed chair pair was one of many playful items made from packing boxes and shredded company catalogues to celebrate the
A good listener, Stark loves collaboration and knows how to make his clients relax despite the stress of planning events that may be weather-dependent and/or meant to raise funds— and that invariably reflect on the host. “Most of our ideas come about by climbing into the hearts and minds of our clients,” he says. “My designs include many aspects of fine art, but at the end of the day my work has to satisfy the client.” In his latest book, David Stark Design (which follows two others, To Have and To Hold, featuring 150 unique flower bouquets, and Napkins with a Twist, focusing on the art of table setting), Stark presents this ode to what he does: “I’m really lucky. I wake up every day and jump onto a rollicking roller coaster of art-making. Yet, the art that I make is not what many might recognize as art. It’s not a romantic, lone act performed in a garret. It does not end up for sale in a gallery…. The art that I create with the incredible team at my namesake firm makes people impossibly happy, perhaps more so than the kind of art people collect. Why? Because this art masquerades as a party, a magical environment in which people have FUN, pure and simple.”
For more information: davidstarkdesign.com.
opening of a new west elm store in 2009. Since then west elm has commissioned him to create two lines of holiday items, with the newest [above] releasing in November.
Stark recently added a new twist to his art-making by designing a line of holiday décor and accessories—made from 100% natural and recycled materials—for the west elm stores. For last fall’s grand opening of the west elm store at 1870 Broadway in New York, he designed stunning large-scale cacti, topiary, vases and other sculptural pieces made from recycled catalogues and corrugated cardboard. The eco-objects were then auctioned off to benefit the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Shortly after the event, the company’s owner, Alex Bates, suggested Stark design a line for west elm. It did so well that it sold out by Thanksgiving, so this year he’s back with a new holiday line, which debuts in November and will be followed by another line for spring. Thinking back to his experience at RISD and how it opened him up to new possibilities, Stark says: “The greatest surprise of all in what I do is that there isn’t a major or a textbook that tells you how to do it. I didn’t come through a formal program. I just kind of invented things that interested me and my clients along the way. I don’t think I knew what the rules were, but I knew I didn’t want to follow them. So I learned to break the rules—and do it really, really well.” Fall 2010
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As truly global citizens, three RISD graduates— all Korean and all related— ponder the meaning of “home” in an expansive installation created for this year’s Venice Biennale.
photo by Eulho Suh BArch 91 © Suh Architects
No Place Like Home
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Do Hoh Suh BFA 94
ARCHITECTURE
Eulho Suh BArch 91
SCULPTURE
KyungEn Kim MFA 97
A floor piece of highpressure laminate panels lies directly under the floating house like a physical shadow. It reveals a composite image of the townhouse façade, along with the hanok in Seongbukdong where the two brothers grew up and Venetian windows that suggest a typical Italian villa. Instead of merely overlapping, the three building façades adopt characteristics of one another to emerge as a composite shadow reflecting three different homes at once.
This isn’t the first time brothers Do Ho Suh and Eulho Suh have worked together, or with KyungEn Kim, Eulho’s wife and partner at Suh Architects in Seoul. But it is the first time the three RISD graduates have collaborated on a conceptual installation piece—and they couldn’t have picked a more high-profile venue for unveiling it: the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2010 Venice Biennale, the revered international extravaganza on view in Venice from August 29 through November 21. Their piece, Blueprint, builds on Do Ho’s ongoing exploration of the notion of home in a highly mobile, global society. It presents an evanescent life-sized replica of the artist’s New York City townhouse floating above a reflective floor piece that reveals building typologies of three disparate cultures. Viewers walk onto the floor piece as they’re simultaneously enveloped in the gauzy townhouse hovering above. It’s an evocative piece that questions the distinctions between art and architecture, reality and memory, and past, present and future. “We came up with the idea of a 1:1 ‘shadow’ or reflection on the floor mirroring Do Ho’s hung fabric façade because it would tell
a story the hanging piece could not on its own,” Eulho explains in describing how the trio worked together to fuse their fine arts and architectural approaches. “Both of the brothers are extremely meticulous,” KyungEn says of her husband and her brother-in-law, adding that “mediating between the opinions of us three was the most difficult part.” The brothers agree, but concede that KyungEn, who studied sculpture at RISD before meeting Eulho in the MArch program at Harvard, actually served as the perfect negotiator and connector. And through this project the three Koreans also reaffirmed their shared RISD connection. “There is an air of communal, uncompromising exploration at RISD that I have never quite found anywhere else,” KyungEn says, summing up what she and the Suh brothers remember of their experience here. “I still go back to some of the nascent ideas—timid sketches/installations—I did at RISD that I was sure were worthless. But it turns out that, another degree and 12 years later, I’ve rediscovered that original ideas come from exploring what you know. I learned that at RISD, but I just didn’t know it then.”
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“ I’ve rediscovered that original ideas come from exploring what you know. I learned that at RISD, but I just didn’t know it then.” KynungEn Kim MFA 97 SC
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PAINTING
Do Hoh Suh BFA 94
Strange Coincidences “I found out about RISD in late 1970s,” Do Ho recently told XYZ. “But Eulho went there before me, even though he is my younger brother. When he went back to Seoul after his studies, I came to the US to go to RISD and began looking for an apartment in Providence. A broker showed me a random flat that happened to be in the exact same building where Eulho had lived! Several years after I graduated from RISD, when I returned to Providence to give a lecture, my friend Doug Borkman from the Sculpture Department mentioned KyungEn and asked me if I knew her. I didn’t, but then several years later, Eulho and KyungEn met at Harvard and got married. Strange coincidences…. So, given our crossed paths, it made perfect sense for the three of us to work on a project that deals with this notion of home and place. Starting with our childhood in Korea, we clearly have many common places to share.”
ARCHITECTURE
Eulho Suh BArch 91
SCULPTURE
KyungEn Kim MFA 97
top: photo by Craig Murdoch © Do Ho Suh 2010 | bottom: photos by Eulho Suh BArch 91 © Suh Architects
Constructed entirely of hand-stitched nylon, the upper part of the installation is a 12.7-meter-tall translucent façade representing a 1:1 scale reproduction of the New York townhouse where Do Ho currently lives. From one side, the viewer enters this dream-like drapery building as if through the “ground floor.” From the other, the fabric hovers above, an ephemeral blueprint floating in from New York.
photo by Stefano Graziani Š Do Ho Suh 2010
To comment on this article, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
Fall 2010
29
Keep connected to RISD through the Alumni Association’s network of clubs around the country and the world.
PHILLY LEADER WEAVES CONNECTIONS
Designer Laila Ahmadinejad 01 GD is excited to be the new club leader of RISD/Philadelphia and looks forward to helping bring together “like-minded people who want to create good stuff.”
“RISD grads tend to be very openminded. They’re constantly looking for new things and new sources of inspiration.”
30
RISDXYZ
It starts with a single knot in Tibet. Made by a seasoned weaver, that knot is joined by another knot and then another, until a strong and sturdy rug takes shape. Though half a world a way, the Tibetan weaver uses Skype to keep in close contact with Laila Ahmadinejad 01 GD, cofounder and creative director of Proper Rugs in Philadelphia. The end product isn’t just a beautiful rug—it’s a collaboration of tradition, technology and creativity that spans the globe. It’s the physical expression of connection. Whether she’s designing rugs or acting as club leader of RISD/Philadelphia, the 31-year-old Ahmadinejad is all about connections. In addition to designing rugs that Tibetan artisans bring to life using Chinese silks and Himalayan wools, she is a graphic designer, photographer and writer. After earning her BFA at RISD, Ahmadinejad studied textile design at Fashion Institute of Technology and then returned to her native Philadelphia in search of a vibrant arts community. She found that community, but was still nostalgic for the contagious energy of RISD, where people speak their own language, embrace challenges and continually expand their goals. If she could find that creative energy in Philadelphia, she figured she would have the best of both worlds. So she joined RISD/Philadelphia. “I think RISD grads tend to be very open-minded,” Ahmadinejad says. “I think they’re constantly learning.
They’re constantly looking for new things and new sources of inspiration.” After attending a number of events, including the club’s annual Valentine’s Day party, she began feeling like she wanted more—more knots, more ties, more momentum. So last year she ran for a leadership position and was elected head of the newly formed 14-member board. Ahmadinejad is the first to admit that she’s got a lot to learn about outreach, but she’s using the club’s Facebook page and trying to draw in more people. Her goal is to offer events and programming at least once a quarter that appeal to people of all ages and backgrounds—and that energize fellow alumni, while also connecting them to the larger Philly community. So far, they’ve attended the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby (think art meets motion—like an alien ship powered by bicycles or a hand-crank-driven pirate ship), gone to a gallery opening and taught art to underserved children at the city’s Honickman Learning Center. In the future, Ahmadinejad plans to create a guide to alumni-owned galleries, stores and services in Philadelphia. She hopes it will appeal to both locals and visitors, expanding opportunities to connect. Eventually, she hopes clubs in other cities will follow suit, so that a patchwork of guides will arise across the country, weaving together RISD clubs one knot at a time. “It’s a way to connect to like-minded people who just want to create good stuff,” she says. —Kate Silver
RISD clubs are jumping—quite literally so in Colorado, where alumni recently gathered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.
CLUB ACTIVITY ON THE RISE
bottom right: courtesy of Museum of Art, RISD | top: photo by Jim Leggitt BArch 73
RISD/Colorado, which had been idle for a few years, got off the ground again in September with a gathering at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. The Colorado club has been re-energized by club leader Jim Leggitt BArch 73, who says the museum gathering generated a lot of enthusiasm for future events. “It was very encouraging to see the turnout,” says Leggitt, “and better still, to hear from so many alumni that there is a genuine interest in staying connected.” Fellow Denver alum Carol Diaz BIA 06 has set up a Facebook page for the club, which held the MCA Denver reception to celebrate an exhibition by painter Bunny Harvey 67 PT/MFA 72 PT. RISD/NY continues to create innovative events to entice alumni, including a recent hike through the new High Line Park, a former elevated rail line that ran through Manhattan’s meatpacking district in the 1930s. Club leaders Polly Carpenter 76 PT and Michael Neff 04 PH report a strong turnout and say that offerings like this add a different flavor than more traditional alumni events. With help from Joe Borzotta 85 GD, RISD/NY also held a wine tasting at Astra’s, a Charlie Palmer restaurant in Manhattan famous for its stunning terrace views. The club raised more than $500 for the Alumni Association Scholarship Fund at the event.
SEIBERT FUND SUPPORTS ALUMNI ART The Phil Seibert Acquisition Fund, established posthumously in honor of Phil Seibert 67 IA, helps the RISD Museum add alumni work to its permanent collection. Last year the fund supported the acquisition of Undomesticated by Joseph Segal MFA 09 TX and In his Shabbat’s best by Anna Gitelson-Kahn MFA 09 TX. And since its inception in 2004 it
has helped the museum to acquire works by Janine Antoni MFA 89 SC, Clare Rojas 98 PR and Kara Walker MFA 94 PT/PR. “The Seibert Acquisition Fund allows us flexibility to pursue alumni art in a variety of mediums,” says Judith Tannenbaum, the museum’s Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art. She points out that the current exhibition The Figure, which continues through March 2011, features Take a Stand, a large mixed-media piece by Ryan Trecartin 04 FAV and Lizzie Fitch 04 FAV that was purchased in part through the fund. “The Seibert Fund is modest in size and is not the only method by which we acquire alumni art,” says Tannenbaum. “But it fills an important role and continues to help us add significant works by RISD artists.”
Take a Stand (2006, mixed media, 90x72x78") by Ryan Trecartin 04 FAV and Lizzie Fitch 04 FAV
WHO’S YOUR SWEETHEART? The RISD Alumni Association is developing a new program to recognize and celebrate RISD alumni who have married one another. “It’s an idea that has been percolating for a while,” says Christina Hartley 74 IL, director of Alumni Relations and Special Events. “We’re just in the planning stages, but our initial research reveals more couples than we first thought. So this will be a fun program.” The new program is tentatively called RISD Sweethearts. Hartley encourages all alumni to update their personal info in the alumni directory (risd.edu/alumni_directory), but particularly alumni couples. “We hope to reach all RISD couples when the program kicks off,” she says, “and the alumni directory is the best way to ensure that.” Fall 2010
31
2
3
1
RISD BY DESIGN 2010 This year’s alumni and parents’ weekend at RISD (October 8–10) was full of fun and inspiration, bursting with the collective energy of a record number of visitors who mixed and mingled with students, faculty and staff. From the outdoor art sale to thoughtprovoking panel discussions, hands-on workshops, mural-making and animated conversations among reunion-ing friends, the weekend offered a range of enticing options for making and renewing connections. 4
Find email addresses for officers and club leaders at:
risd.cc/clubs_xyz
IN THE USA Arizona (Phoenix)
Amanda Blum 98 CR Atlanta
Becky Fong 05 GD Austin
Dianne Mullen BArch 82 Look for selected alumni clubs on Facebook, where you’ll also find pages for the RISD Balls (basketball team) and an informal London/UK group.
32
RISDXYZ
Boston
Karen Fox BIA 74
Co n n ec ticut
Ma in e
Ne w Yor k
Michael Esordi 91 GD Karen Healey 90 GD Jim Healey BArch 91
Mira Alden 03 GD
Polly Carpenter 77 PT Michael Neff 04 PH
Da l l as
Steven Kinder 97 ID Dave Ramos MFA 06 GD Housto n
April Rapier Irvine MFA 79 PH
Chicag o
m i d - Hudso n Va l l e y, NY
Kyle Henderson BArch 99
Joan Sussman 72 PH
Colorado
Los A n g e l es
Jim Leggitt BArch 73
John Kim 01 ID
M idw est
Stephanie Henry 87 GD Robert Wright 76 PT
No rt h e r n Ca li fo r n ia
N ew Ha m psh i r e
P h i la d e l p hi a
Christine Hall 00 ID
Laila Ahmadinejad 01 GD
N ew M ex i co
P o rt la nd, OR
Nat Hesse 76 SC
Brian Bainnson BLA 87/88 AR
N ew O rl ea ns
Carrie Lee PiersonSchwartz 93 GL
Kristina DiTullo 96 IL
R h o d e I sl a nd
Linda Coulombe MAT 86 Sava n na h
Jamie Kutner 06 PR
photos by Melinda Rainsberger 04 FAV
A lum ni A ss o ciatio n COntac ts
5
1. These alumni look like they’ve barely skipped a beat since they last saw each other. 2. Marina Brolin 85 GD and her classmates had fun comparing notes on the past 25 years. 3. Helga Jorgensen 60 GD reminisces with a friend at her 50th reunion reception.
6
4. The weather was perfect for the perennial favorite: the outdoor art sale on Benefit Street. 5. The Bamboo Build project was one of several Art + Design in the Wild demos out at Tillinghast Farm in Barrington. 6. Will the real Esther Lee BArch 91 please step forward?
7
7. People of all ages and abilities helped finger-paint a giant mural on the RISD Beach. 8. This happy 50th-reunion celebrant shows off a photo from the old days. 9. Two friends reunite at RISD. Please email risdxyz@risd.edu to help us identify anyone shown in these photos.
9
8
S eattle
Kyle Gaffney BArch 91 Bill Gaylord BArch 77 Sou th F lorida
Nessie Ruiz 06 PH St. Louis
Patricia Boman 85 GD T w i n Cities ( Mi nnesota)
Peter Zelle 87 GL
ABROA D Argentina
Andres Rosarios BArch 97 Australia
Brad Buckley MFA 82 SC Bahamas
John Cox 95 IL/MAT 96 Dionne Benjamin-Smith 91 GD
U ta h
Colombi a
Deanpaul Russell 95 ID
Sylvia Montana 90 GD
Was hington, DC
Du bai
Anthony Dihle 04 GD
Anika Azad 97 GD
Ge r ma ny
Ro m e
David Incorvaia 96 FAV
Denise Fralley MLA 02
A LUMNI COUNC I L OF FICERS
H on g Kon g
Sou t h Ko r ea
P r es i d e n t
Donald Choi BArch 80 Frank Chow BLA 92 Rex Wong BArch 03
Chang-ho Han MFA 01 GD Yunjin Lee 97 IL Namoo Kim MFA 09 GD Won Hee Cha 08 SC
Nat Hesse 76 SC Santa Fe, NM
I nd ia
Praneet Bubber MArch 97 Anuradha Parikh BArch 82
Ta i wa n
N ew Z eal a nd
T ha i l a nd
Rick Lucas 72 IL
Amornpimol (Viravan) Thanakitamnuay 86 GD
P e ru
Claudia Ferrari BGD 91 Claudia Hernandez 90 PT
Su-Yi Wun BArch 99
V i ce P r es i d e n t
Meghan Reilly 01 GD Merrimac, MA Co m m i t t e e L i ai so n s
Carolyn (Mills) Peck 71 AE Hampton, GA Michael Martella BArch 91 Philadelphia, PA
Fall 2010
33
Rhode Island School of Design
repurpose remake rethink redo reuse
A glimpse of what’s happening at the heart of campus— with the president, students, faculty and staff.
RISD’s Interior Architecture Department is accepting applications to two new Graduate Programs in Adaptive Reuse: Master of Arts in Interior Architecture [ 1+ years ]
Master of Design in Interior Studies (Adaptive Reuse) [ 2+ years ]
CORE VALUES
Get more information and apply at risd.cc/adaptive_xyz
message by
John Maeda RISD’s President
CE Never Sleeps H undreds o f co u rses o ffered y e a r-roun d for a d u lts , teen s + chi l dre n
Join us!
Open House Friday, January 14 5:30-7pm 20 Washington Place Providence
Happening Now at RISD | CE + Collecting Art series continues; next class February 3 + Digital Design Intensives Week; February 20-25 + School vacation camps for Young Artists + Business of Art + Design classes offered every term + Historic Preservation Certificate Program; updated and relaunched + Alternative course formats – Online, Hybrid (classroom + online), Daytime/Weekend Workshops – offered every term
RISD Continuing Education
ow registering for Winter term courses. N Classes start January 10.
Spring CE and summer Pre-College Program registration begins January 10, too!
risd.edu/ce
I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of the institution. More and more I find myself starting by looking way into the past— to RISD’s founding. In 1877 Helen Metcalf sat with her counterparts on the Rhode Island Women’s Centennial Commission, who had successfully raised funds for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition (world’s fair) in Philadelphia. They’d been granted a windfall: a surplus of $1,675 that remained after the exhibition. Many ideas had been floated for how to use the money— everything from giving it to charity to donating it to Brown or the public library. But in the end, they debated two final choices: a proposal to fund a fountain at Roger Williams Park, and Mrs. Metcalf’s proposal to seed a school of art and design. Happily for RISD, the school of design won by a vote of 34 to 13, giving birth to what is now a legendary symbol of creativity well beyond the state of Rhode Island. We’ve kept Mrs. Metcalf’s flame burning bright through our faithfulness to the three core values embodied in our original mission: 1) the importance of art and design above all; 2) the profound difference an education can make; and 3) the value of valid critique. In an ever-changing external environment, constantly aligning with these core values in all that we do at RISD—and in all that you alumni do in your work after RISD—keeps our community strong. Staying true to these values is why RISD is the international beacon of possibility that it is today. The values of art and design, education and critique can express themselves in whatever work you find yourself pursuing. Some of the connections are obvious, like in the case of David Schoffman 78 PT, who I heard about from trustee and RISD parent Erica DiBona. David is an art teacher in Los Angeles who has inspired countless students to come to RISD to “shape their intuitive temperament” and experience the same transformative growth he did while here. We thank David for inspiring young creative types in this way. Others pursue less traditional career paths, but still embody these values. Recent Illustration graduate Jennifer Hom 09 IL now finds herself at the
Portrait of Mrs. Jesse Metcalf by the American impressionist painter Frank W. Benson (1862–1951)
As R IS D ’s p r es ide n t
For more, follow John on our.risd.edu + twitter.com/johnmaeda.
Googleplex every day, part of a team of five people who create “Google Doodles”: versions of the Google logo that reflect events going on in the world. It’s a way for Google to introduce “a human hand…as part of our interaction with users,” as her colleague Ryan Germick explains. And Jen says that doodling for Google isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. In fact, it feels a lot like being at RISD, and there’s a lot of pressure to “get it right.” No matter how they are expressed, RISD’s core values help to restore a bit of the humanity the world has lost, especially in recent years. I’m grateful to Helen Metcalf and our other forward-thinking founders for first fighting for the concept and imagining what RISD could become—an inspired international community fired up about the fundamental value of art, design, education and critique.
Support STEAM in Congress As you may know, I have been working hard to make the case that creativity needs to be part of our national agenda for promoting innovation. As a result, RI Congressman James Langevin recently introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives to recognize the importance of adding art and design when advocating for more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education in America (STEM+Art=STEAM). Please contact your own representative and ask him or her to support H. Res. 1702. You can read the resolution and find direct links to contacting your own rep by photographing this QR code with your smart phone (you will need to download a QR code reader application).
Fall 2010
35
Rhode Island School of Design
repurpose remake rethink redo reuse
A glimpse of what’s happening at the heart of campus— with the president, students, faculty and staff.
RISD’s Interior Architecture Department is accepting applications to two new Graduate Programs in Adaptive Reuse: Master of Arts in Interior Architecture [ 1+ years ]
Master of Design in Interior Studies (Adaptive Reuse) [ 2+ years ]
CORE VALUES
Get more information and apply at risd.cc/adaptive_xyz
message by
John Maeda RISD’s President
CE Never Sleeps H undreds o f co u rses o ffered y e a r-roun d for a d u lts , teen s + chi l dre n
Join us!
Open House Friday, January 14 5:30-7pm 20 Washington Place Providence
Happening Now at RISD | CE + Collecting Art series continues; next class February 3 + Digital Design Intensives Week; February 20-25 + School vacation camps for Young Artists + Business of Art + Design classes offered every term + Historic Preservation Certificate Program; updated and relaunched + Alternative course formats – Online, Hybrid (classroom + online), Daytime/Weekend Workshops – offered every term
RISD Continuing Education
ow registering for Winter term courses. N Classes start January 10.
Spring CE and summer Pre-College Program registration begins January 10, too!
risd.edu/ce
I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of the institution. More and more I find myself starting by looking way into the past— to RISD’s founding. In 1877 Helen Metcalf sat with her counterparts on the Rhode Island Women’s Centennial Commission, who had successfully raised funds for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition (world’s fair) in Philadelphia. They’d been granted a windfall: a surplus of $1,675 that remained after the exhibition. Many ideas had been floated for how to use the money— everything from giving it to charity to donating it to Brown or the public library. But in the end, they debated two final choices: a proposal to fund a fountain at Roger Williams Park, and Mrs. Metcalf’s proposal to seed a school of art and design. Happily for RISD, the school of design won by a vote of 34 to 13, giving birth to what is now a legendary symbol of creativity well beyond the state of Rhode Island. We’ve kept Mrs. Metcalf’s flame burning bright through our faithfulness to the three core values embodied in our original mission: 1) the importance of art and design above all; 2) the profound difference an education can make; and 3) the value of valid critique. In an ever-changing external environment, constantly aligning with these core values in all that we do at RISD—and in all that you alumni do in your work after RISD—keeps our community strong. Staying true to these values is why RISD is the international beacon of possibility that it is today. The values of art and design, education and critique can express themselves in whatever work you find yourself pursuing. Some of the connections are obvious, like in the case of David Schoffman 78 PT, who I heard about from trustee and RISD parent Erica DiBona. David is an art teacher in Los Angeles who has inspired countless students to come to RISD to “shape their intuitive temperament” and experience the same transformative growth he did while here. We thank David for inspiring young creative types in this way. Others pursue less traditional career paths, but still embody these values. Recent Illustration graduate Jennifer Hom 09 IL now finds herself at the
Portrait of Mrs. Jesse Metcalf by the American impressionist painter Frank W. Benson (1862–1951)
As R IS D ’s p r es ide n t
For more, follow John on our.risd.edu + twitter.com/johnmaeda.
Googleplex every day, part of a team of five people who create “Google Doodles”: versions of the Google logo that reflect events going on in the world. It’s a way for Google to introduce “a human hand…as part of our interaction with users,” as her colleague Ryan Germick explains. And Jen says that doodling for Google isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. In fact, it feels a lot like being at RISD, and there’s a lot of pressure to “get it right.” No matter how they are expressed, RISD’s core values help to restore a bit of the humanity the world has lost, especially in recent years. I’m grateful to Helen Metcalf and our other forward-thinking founders for first fighting for the concept and imagining what RISD could become—an inspired international community fired up about the fundamental value of art, design, education and critique.
Support STEAM in Congress As you may know, I have been working hard to make the case that creativity needs to be part of our national agenda for promoting innovation. As a result, RI Congressman James Langevin recently introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives to recognize the importance of adding art and design when advocating for more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) education in America (STEM+Art=STEAM). Please contact your own representative and ask him or her to support H. Res. 1702. You can read the resolution and find direct links to contacting your own rep by photographing this QR code with your smart phone (you will need to download a QR code reader application).
Fall 2010
35
“I hope no one will repeat this, but Brown’s commencement was… a sleeper compared to this!” Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University and a 2010 RISD honorary degree recipient, speaking at RISD’s Commencement
ELLE PRESENTS RISD STUDENTS’ DESIGNS IN NYC
Kudos to Our Newest Alumni! The weather gods smiled on RISD’s June 5 Commencement, when thunderstorms rumbled around the region but didn’t prevent roughly 640 undergraduate and graduate students and their families from enjoying the fast-paced ceremony. The comments from student speakers were incisive, hilarious and wonderfully energized— first, in stereo from twin brothers Kirk and Nathaniel Mueller MFA 10 DM, who spoke on behalf of grad students, and then from undergrad Stephanie Rudig 10 GD, who belted out a portion of her pop-song-inspired speech. Even keynote speaker Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, echoed the students’ message: that we desperately need the critical thinking and refreshing originality RISD grads infuse
significant cash value. David Yoo 10 AP won the $25,000 ELLE|RISD Design Award, Jessica Castellano 10 AP the $25,000 Maybelline New York Fashion Next Award and Caroline Hust 10 TX the $10,000 Kate Spade New York Award. And the ELLE People’s Choice Award, which also came with a $10,000 prize, went to HeeYoen Uee 10 TX based on online voting in the weeks following the show.
the three top winners in the ELLE + RISD Fashion Next competition, which centered on an amazing runway show presented as part of New York’s fall Fashion Week.
Designs by Edda
Hayley Johnson 10 AP, Sheridan Irwin 10 AP and Jessica Castellano 10 AP wowed the crowd at Lincoln Center.
RISDXYZ
GLOBE-TROTTING RESEARCHERS
10 TX is one of
Thors 10 AP ,
36
into the world.
Caroline Hust
photos by Scott Indermaur
designers—to select the 22 students who participated in the adventure and were profiled on the ELLE site. ELLE also produced an extensive, five-part RISD Fashion Next video series that captures the behind-the-scenes process of preparing for a show of this caliber. In addition to benefiting from great exposure, students were competing for awards with
photos by Joe Schildhorn © Billy Farrell Agency
Four students won major recognition and cash prizes in the ELLE + RISD Fashion Next show, which was presented as part of New York’s Fashion Week in September. But all of the Apparel, Textiles and Jewelry + Metalsmithing students selected to participate found the experience to be both “nervewracking” and “awesome.” ELLE invited RISD to help celebrate its 25th anniversary via a runway show and design competition, along with coverage on its website and in the October issue of the magazine. The magazine’s fashion editors teamed up with a panel of judges—including Tommy Hilfiger, Derek Lam, Nicole Miller 73 AP and several other well-known
Making Science visible
Two NEW GRAD PROGRAMS
RISD, Brown and the University of Rhode Island are among a coalition of nine RI colleges and universities to benefit from a $20-million National Science Foundation grant to study the effects of climate change on marine organisms and ecosystems. The coalition includes “one unusual but key player in fostering better communication—RISD,” as The Providence Journal put it. As part of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), the NSF awarded URI and principal investigators RISD and Brown its maximum grant amount because of the complementary nature of research capabilities they bring to the table. RISD’s role during the five-year grant period is to research innovative approaches to visualizing data and communicating scientific findings through a new initiative called Making Science Visible. The goal? To help make science more accessible and understandable to the broader public. “This project will provide a platform for engaging scientists, artists and designers around the pressing issues of understanding and communicating the impacts of climate change,” notes David Bogen, associate provost for Academic Affairs. Watch for more news on this new initiative as studio projects begin to unfold.
In 2011 RISD’s Interior Architecture Department will introduce two new graduate degree programs: a Master of Arts (MA) in Interior Architecture and a Master of Design (MDes) in Interior Studies (Adaptive Reuse). The short but intense MA program—for students who have earned a BArch—entails a summer program in Copenhagen at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, plus one year of study on campus. “We developed this new degree program here at RISD because there’s nothing quite like it elsewhere,” says Department Head Liliane Wong. “The demand is growing for architects who can practice with a full and nuanced understanding of adaptive reuse, which involves not only reimagining existing structures and recycling materials, but making transformative interventions to preserve memory, culture, community and so forth.” Students who have not earned a first professional degree in architecture may opt for the MDes program, which starts with an intense, design-based summer session, followed by two years focused on interior architecture and adaptive reuse. Applications to both new programs are being accepted through January 21, 2011. For more information, go to risd.cc/adaptive_xyz.
For more campus news, go to our.risd.edu.
RISD’s Career Center staff has a great track record of helping students and recent alumni win Fulbright grants for study abroad, with more than 50 positive outcomes in the past 15 years. This year Louie Rigano 10 ID is in Japan focusing on the design and fabrication of functional objects that reference Wabi Sabi philosophy. During his year in Australia, Matthew Perez MFA 10 GL is researching shape-induced stress factors in annealed glass in support of a new body of work. And Andrew Bearnot 09 GL, a RISD/Brown dual degree student who majored in Glass and Engineering, is in Sweden and Denmark exploring the relationship between tradition and innovation in contemporary Scandinavian glassmaking (his research is also being supported by an American-Scandinavian Fellowship). In addition, Fulbrights are helping Gigi Gatewood MFA 09 PH , Michael Hahn 08 ID, Sloan Kulper MID 06 and Lindsey Meyer MArch 06 to study in Trinidad/ Tobago, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Morocco, respectively. Fall 2010
37
“I hope no one will repeat this, but Brown’s commencement was… a sleeper compared to this!” Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University and a 2010 RISD honorary degree recipient, speaking at RISD’s Commencement
ELLE PRESENTS RISD STUDENTS’ DESIGNS IN NYC
Kudos to Our Newest Alumni! The weather gods smiled on RISD’s June 5 Commencement, when thunderstorms rumbled around the region but didn’t prevent roughly 640 undergraduate and graduate students and their families from enjoying the fast-paced ceremony. The comments from student speakers were incisive, hilarious and wonderfully energized— first, in stereo from twin brothers Kirk and Nathaniel Mueller MFA 10 DM, who spoke on behalf of grad students, and then from undergrad Stephanie Rudig 10 GD, who belted out a portion of her pop-song-inspired speech. Even keynote speaker Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, echoed the students’ message: that we desperately need the critical thinking and refreshing originality RISD grads infuse
significant cash value. David Yoo 10 AP won the $25,000 ELLE|RISD Design Award, Jessica Castellano 10 AP the $25,000 Maybelline New York Fashion Next Award and Caroline Hust 10 TX the $10,000 Kate Spade New York Award. And the ELLE People’s Choice Award, which also came with a $10,000 prize, went to HeeYoen Uee 10 TX based on online voting in the weeks following the show.
the three top winners in the ELLE + RISD Fashion Next competition, which centered on an amazing runway show presented as part of New York’s fall Fashion Week.
Designs by Edda
Hayley Johnson 10 AP, Sheridan Irwin 10 AP and Jessica Castellano 10 AP wowed the crowd at Lincoln Center.
RISDXYZ
GLOBE-TROTTING RESEARCHERS
10 TX is one of
Thors 10 AP ,
36
into the world.
Caroline Hust
photos by Scott Indermaur
designers—to select the 22 students who participated in the adventure and were profiled on the ELLE site. ELLE also produced an extensive, five-part RISD Fashion Next video series that captures the behind-the-scenes process of preparing for a show of this caliber. In addition to benefiting from great exposure, students were competing for awards with
photos by Joe Schildhorn © Billy Farrell Agency
Four students won major recognition and cash prizes in the ELLE + RISD Fashion Next show, which was presented as part of New York’s Fashion Week in September. But all of the Apparel, Textiles and Jewelry + Metalsmithing students selected to participate found the experience to be both “nervewracking” and “awesome.” ELLE invited RISD to help celebrate its 25th anniversary via a runway show and design competition, along with coverage on its website and in the October issue of the magazine. The magazine’s fashion editors teamed up with a panel of judges—including Tommy Hilfiger, Derek Lam, Nicole Miller 73 AP and several other well-known
Making Science visible
Two NEW GRAD PROGRAMS
RISD, Brown and the University of Rhode Island are among a coalition of nine RI colleges and universities to benefit from a $20-million National Science Foundation grant to study the effects of climate change on marine organisms and ecosystems. The coalition includes “one unusual but key player in fostering better communication—RISD,” as The Providence Journal put it. As part of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), the NSF awarded URI and principal investigators RISD and Brown its maximum grant amount because of the complementary nature of research capabilities they bring to the table. RISD’s role during the five-year grant period is to research innovative approaches to visualizing data and communicating scientific findings through a new initiative called Making Science Visible. The goal? To help make science more accessible and understandable to the broader public. “This project will provide a platform for engaging scientists, artists and designers around the pressing issues of understanding and communicating the impacts of climate change,” notes David Bogen, associate provost for Academic Affairs. Watch for more news on this new initiative as studio projects begin to unfold.
In 2011 RISD’s Interior Architecture Department will introduce two new graduate degree programs: a Master of Arts (MA) in Interior Architecture and a Master of Design (MDes) in Interior Studies (Adaptive Reuse). The short but intense MA program—for students who have earned a BArch—entails a summer program in Copenhagen at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad, plus one year of study on campus. “We developed this new degree program here at RISD because there’s nothing quite like it elsewhere,” says Department Head Liliane Wong. “The demand is growing for architects who can practice with a full and nuanced understanding of adaptive reuse, which involves not only reimagining existing structures and recycling materials, but making transformative interventions to preserve memory, culture, community and so forth.” Students who have not earned a first professional degree in architecture may opt for the MDes program, which starts with an intense, design-based summer session, followed by two years focused on interior architecture and adaptive reuse. Applications to both new programs are being accepted through January 21, 2011. For more information, go to risd.cc/adaptive_xyz.
For more campus news, go to our.risd.edu.
RISD’s Career Center staff has a great track record of helping students and recent alumni win Fulbright grants for study abroad, with more than 50 positive outcomes in the past 15 years. This year Louie Rigano 10 ID is in Japan focusing on the design and fabrication of functional objects that reference Wabi Sabi philosophy. During his year in Australia, Matthew Perez MFA 10 GL is researching shape-induced stress factors in annealed glass in support of a new body of work. And Andrew Bearnot 09 GL, a RISD/Brown dual degree student who majored in Glass and Engineering, is in Sweden and Denmark exploring the relationship between tradition and innovation in contemporary Scandinavian glassmaking (his research is also being supported by an American-Scandinavian Fellowship). In addition, Fulbrights are helping Gigi Gatewood MFA 09 PH , Michael Hahn 08 ID, Sloan Kulper MID 06 and Lindsey Meyer MArch 06 to study in Trinidad/ Tobago, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Morocco, respectively. Fall 2010
37
Faculty Newsbits
Joe Deal (1947–2010)
Associate Professor Paola Demattè (History of Art and Visual Culture) has been awarded a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to continue her planning for the conservation of the Xumishan archaeological zone. The large site in China’s northwestern Ningxia province includes more than 130 Buddhist grottoes dating from the 5th–15th centuries. Assistant Professor Leora Maltz-Leca (History of Art and Visual Culture) has earned a Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon Fellowship from the Library of Congress to support her post-doctoral work on William Kentridge. An article she wrote on Marlene Dumas appears in the November issue of ArtForum, and the same month she is speaking in Seoul, Korea on Streetwalkers: Phantom Monuments of the Post-Apartheid City. This fall work by Carrie Moyer, assistant professor of Painting, was shown in Los Angeles, NYC and at Skidmore College’s Tang Museum (through February 27, 2011). She published a review of the RISD Museum’s Pat Steir show in Art in America (October 2010) and parti-
It’s never too early to think about your own legacy.
“ The RISD community has just lost a great artist, friend, professor, former provost and museum advocate who had a special gift for communicating.”
Professor Emeritus Joe Deal, an accomplished photographer, died on June 18, 2010 in Providence, RI after a prolonged battle against cancer. He was hired as RISD’s provost in 1999 and served in that position through 2005, when he stepped down in order to focus on his photography and teaching. Deal’s photographs are held in numerous national and international collections and have both earned accolades from artists, curators and critics, and influenced countless other photographers. Earlier this year the Joe Deal Archive was established at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography. Since his death, family and friends have also donated approximately 50 photographs in his memory to the RISD Museum. Deal cut an elegant figure but was wonderfully down-to-earth, with a self-deprecating wit. “Eloquence and integrity marked not only the man but also his abilities as an administrator and teacher,” notes current Provost Jessie Shefrin. “Joe will be deeply missed by all those who had the opportunity to know and work with him.”
Ferris O’Shaughnessy 93 GD says her “interest in giving back started early” because her parents had always supported nonprofits. “But it was the tragedy of 9/11 that really brought it home for me. To see how suddenly life can change, and to imagine loved ones having to sort through financial issues at such a tragic time—that’s when I felt I had a responsibility to do some planning.” That year Ferris began to plan her estate, focusing first on her family. Then she turned her attention to something else near and dear to her heart—RISD. “RISD prepared me to think. It taught me how to see. It was such an extraordinary experience that I wanted to contribute to its future.” After learning about the options through RISD’s Office of Leadership Giving, she designated the college as a beneficiary in her will.
Jan Howard, curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, RISD Museum
cipated in SkowheganTALKS, a lecture
“As a student, I had seen certain names around campus, so I know that my education rested on the shoulders of the Metcalfs, the Ewings, and others who did so much to keep RISD strong. It’s intensely
series at the Skowhegan School of of the most influential visual artists working today. Jalo Kivi (Maahenki Oy, 2010), a new book on “light rocks” published in Finnish, features an article by Professor Yuriko Saito (History, Philosophy + the Social Sciences) on The Role of Rocks in Japanese Gardens. Professor of Painting and Printmaking Duane Slick, a member of the Meskwaki tribe, is one of five indigenous artists nationwide selected to receive an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, which includes an unrestricted grant of $25,000.
38
RISDXYZ
gary metz (1941–2010) Professor Emeritus Gary Metz, a well-loved faculty member who taught at RISD 23 years, died at home on September 28, 2010 after a long illness. After teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Colorado, he joined RISD’s faculty in 1981 as head of the Photography Department, a position he held until 1993 before returning to full-time teaching. During his tenure at RISD, Metz was deeply committed to participating in the political, social and intellectual life of the college, inspiring his students, friends and colleagues to be equally engaged. An early proponent of interdisciplinary learning at RISD, he readily embraced the “new” and even pioneered distance learning through an early version of Skype-like software. Both in the studio and beyond, his enthusiasm and wit were infectious; he was also a voracious reader and avid traveler. This fall the department’s T.C. Colley Lecture by Israeli photography Shai Kremer was dedicated to Professor Metz’s memory, with special remarks made by his close friend, Professor Emeritus Baruch Kirschenbaum.
gratifying to be a part of that tradition.” To find out about your estate planning options at RISD, contact Molly Garrison at 401 454-6425 or via email at giftplanning@risd.edu.
give to risd The late Professor Emeritus Gary Metz was an influential leader in the Photography Department and a fully engaged member of the RISD community for the 23 years he taught here.
top: photo courtesy of Betsy Ruppa
Painting and Sculpture featuring some
risd.edu/giftplanning
Faculty Newsbits
Joe Deal (1947–2010)
Associate Professor Paola Demattè (History of Art and Visual Culture) has been awarded a grant from the Asian Cultural Council to continue her planning for the conservation of the Xumishan archaeological zone. The large site in China’s northwestern Ningxia province includes more than 130 Buddhist grottoes dating from the 5th–15th centuries. Assistant Professor Leora Maltz-Leca (History of Art and Visual Culture) has earned a Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon Fellowship from the Library of Congress to support her post-doctoral work on William Kentridge. An article she wrote on Marlene Dumas appears in the November issue of ArtForum, and the same month she is speaking in Seoul, Korea on Streetwalkers: Phantom Monuments of the Post-Apartheid City. This fall work by Carrie Moyer, assistant professor of Painting, was shown in Los Angeles, NYC and at Skidmore College’s Tang Museum (through February 27, 2011). She published a review of the RISD Museum’s Pat Steir show in Art in America (October 2010) and parti-
It’s never too early to think about your own legacy.
“ The RISD community has just lost a great artist, friend, professor, former provost and museum advocate who had a special gift for communicating.”
Professor Emeritus Joe Deal, an accomplished photographer, died on June 18, 2010 in Providence, RI after a prolonged battle against cancer. He was hired as RISD’s provost in 1999 and served in that position through 2005, when he stepped down in order to focus on his photography and teaching. Deal’s photographs are held in numerous national and international collections and have both earned accolades from artists, curators and critics, and influenced countless other photographers. Earlier this year the Joe Deal Archive was established at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography. Since his death, family and friends have also donated approximately 50 photographs in his memory to the RISD Museum. Deal cut an elegant figure but was wonderfully down-to-earth, with a self-deprecating wit. “Eloquence and integrity marked not only the man but also his abilities as an administrator and teacher,” notes current Provost Jessie Shefrin. “Joe will be deeply missed by all those who had the opportunity to know and work with him.”
Ferris O’Shaughnessy 93 GD says her “interest in giving back started early” because her parents had always supported nonprofits. “But it was the tragedy of 9/11 that really brought it home for me. To see how suddenly life can change, and to imagine loved ones having to sort through financial issues at such a tragic time—that’s when I felt I had a responsibility to do some planning.” That year Ferris began to plan her estate, focusing first on her family. Then she turned her attention to something else near and dear to her heart—RISD. “RISD prepared me to think. It taught me how to see. It was such an extraordinary experience that I wanted to contribute to its future.” After learning about the options through RISD’s Office of Leadership Giving, she designated the college as a beneficiary in her will.
Jan Howard, curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, RISD Museum
cipated in SkowheganTALKS, a lecture
“As a student, I had seen certain names around campus, so I know that my education rested on the shoulders of the Metcalfs, the Ewings, and others who did so much to keep RISD strong. It’s intensely
series at the Skowhegan School of of the most influential visual artists working today. Jalo Kivi (Maahenki Oy, 2010), a new book on “light rocks” published in Finnish, features an article by Professor Yuriko Saito (History, Philosophy + the Social Sciences) on The Role of Rocks in Japanese Gardens. Professor of Painting and Printmaking Duane Slick, a member of the Meskwaki tribe, is one of five indigenous artists nationwide selected to receive an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, which includes an unrestricted grant of $25,000.
38
RISDXYZ
gary metz (1941–2010) Professor Emeritus Gary Metz, a well-loved faculty member who taught at RISD 23 years, died at home on September 28, 2010 after a long illness. After teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Colorado, he joined RISD’s faculty in 1981 as head of the Photography Department, a position he held until 1993 before returning to full-time teaching. During his tenure at RISD, Metz was deeply committed to participating in the political, social and intellectual life of the college, inspiring his students, friends and colleagues to be equally engaged. An early proponent of interdisciplinary learning at RISD, he readily embraced the “new” and even pioneered distance learning through an early version of Skype-like software. Both in the studio and beyond, his enthusiasm and wit were infectious; he was also a voracious reader and avid traveler. This fall the department’s T.C. Colley Lecture by Israeli photography Shai Kremer was dedicated to Professor Metz’s memory, with special remarks made by his close friend, Professor Emeritus Baruch Kirschenbaum.
gratifying to be a part of that tradition.” To find out about your estate planning options at RISD, contact Molly Garrison at 401 454-6425 or via email at giftplanning@risd.edu.
give to risd The late Professor Emeritus Gary Metz was an influential leader in the Photography Department and a fully engaged member of the RISD community for the 23 years he taught here.
top: photo courtesy of Betsy Ruppa
Painting and Sculpture featuring some
risd.edu/giftplanning
A look at some of the many ways people invest in RISD and support current and future generations of students.
FINDING A CALLING
40
RISDXYZ
for 30 years, Carol Goldenberg
Rosen 71 IL doesn’t think of herself as a philanthropist. She just says that “it feels right” to give back to a place that has “played such a critical role in shaping” her life.
“I was a RISD student before I was a RISD student. The school was just always there for me.” salary—she began giving back to RISD. She made her first donation in 1978, and has given to the Annual Fund every year since. “Honestly, it just never occurred to me not to give back,” she says. “RISD played such a critical role in shaping my life that supporting it feels right.” Goldenberg says she doesn’t think of herself as a philanthropist, describing her Annual Fund support as modest. But she views that support as a lifelong testament to the importance of art education, and to RISD’s approach in particular. “I think my life would have been much different if I hadn’t attended RISD, and I want to make sure that opportunity is there for others.” “Loyal donors like Carol allow the Annual Fund to really make an impact here on campus,” notes Jim Wolken, director of the RISD Annual Fund. “Carol has been doing her part for 30 years now, which is just outstanding.” For 30 years Goldenberg has also stayed loyal to children’s books, serving as an art director at both Houghton-Mifflin and its imprint Clarion Books before going out on her own as Summit Street Design in Newton, MA. She has designed five Caldecott Medal-winning books, including Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg MFA 80 SC and Flotsam by David Weisner 78 IL (see also page 6). But the craft, she says, is a commonly misunderstood art. “If you go to a party and tell people you’re a book designer, they’ll say, ‘Oh, you mean the jacket,’” she says. “But there is more to a book than a jacket.” Size, shape, typeface, binding, paper quality, illustrations,
even the headbands and footbands all take careful consideration, but shouldn’t overshadow the work itself. Goldenberg likes to paraphrase British typographer Beatrice Warde, who likens good book design to a crystal goblet of wine. “You want to enjoy the wine, not the container,” she says. “You wouldn’t serve fine wine in a heavy beer mug—you’d serve it in a crystal goblet to show off the contents.” Now freelancing full-time, Goldenberg lectures widely at museums and art schools on ”the invisible art of book design.” She holds a silent hope that each lesson might offer a revelation to certain members of the audience—that they will find their own spark of passion, just as she found hers, and will stay loyal to it. —Dan Morrell
photo by Jim Rosen
For Carol Goldenberg Rosen 71 IL her love of RISD seemed predestined. As a child, she took Saturday morning classes at RISD, her interest in art so strong that she even brought a sketchpad when having her tonsils out. At 12, she began taking private art lessons from RISD graduate students. As a teenager, she and her friends would head to RISD fashion shows and never miss the sales. “I was a RISD student before I was a RISD student,” the Rhode Island native says with a laugh. “The school was just always there for me.” Despite this early exposure, Goldenberg says she felt unprepared as a freshman. “I was a conventional student growing up. Straight A’s. Did well on tests. Terrific memory—all the things that get you gold stars,” she says. “But that wasn’t what RISD was looking for.” Beginning with Foundation Studies, RISD taught her how to use her mind, her eyes and her hands, she says. “RISD taught me a new way of looking at the world.” A lifelong book lover, Goldenberg gravitated towards the book arts, and had an epiphany during a visit to a traveling book design show. As she pored over the glass cases filled with books, there was a spark. “Ah,” she thought. “So this is where I belong.” Soon after she launched her book design career—earning what she considered her first solid
Although she has been faithfully contributing to the RISD Annual Fund
FOUNDATIONS SUPPORT RISD STUDENTS RISD students are benefiting from a strong fundraising year in Corporate and Foundation Relations, highlighted by three endowed scholarships. In July 2009 the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation endowed a $50,000 merit-based scholarship for graduate students in Textiles. The fund is named in honor of Lenore Tawney (1907–2007), an American fiber artist who pioneered the development of woven sculpture as an art medium. In June 2010 The Tiffany & Co. Foundation added $150,000 to its endowed scholarship fund, enabling RISD to award two scholarships concurrently to undergraduate or graduate students majoring in Jewelry + Metalsmithing. In addition, thanks to the generosity of RISD’s Board of Trustees in meeting a $50,000 challenge grant from the
George I. Alden Trust, the match raised $100,000 for RISD’s general endowed scholarship fund. “These grants are a wonderful tribute to RISD,” says Pamela Harrington, director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. “These foundations truly appreciate the unique attributes of a RISD education and the artistic achievements of our alumni. They also
understand the important role art and design play in our culture and in our economy.” Harrington also points out the benefits of a term scholarship from the Target Foundation, as well as two grants for graduates in the crucial year following graduation: one from The Toby Fund for unrestricted support and one from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust
for travel abroad. The Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery in the Chace Center was built with funding from the Gelman Trust, which also supports scholarships for RISD graduate students in Painting and Sculpture. In all, foundations contributed more than $1.2 million in support of RISD students and academic programs in fiscal year 2009–10.
top & middle right: photos by John Supancic | middle left: photo by Erik Gould
At the annual RISD Scholarship Luncheon, students have an opportunity to thank the individuals and foundation representatives who help with financial aid. Donor Kathleen Fischer [above center] enjoyed talking with Peter Pa 11 FAV [to her left] and Caleb Wood 11 FAV. The recipient of this year’s Tiffany & Co. Foundation scholarship, Toby Milgrim 10 JM, created the necklace shown to the far left. Other scholarship recipients at the luncheon include Orissa Jenkins 12 IL, Alex Kalil 13 FAV, David Harris 13 ID and Emma Altman 13 AP.
Solid Results RISD raised more than $2.6 million in new scholarship gifts and pledges during its 2009–10 fund drive, which ended on June 30. “President Maeda identified scholarships as RISD’s top priority this past year, and RISD alumni, parents and friends rose to the challenge, helping us exceed our announced goal by more than $1 million,” says Director of Leadership Giving Louise Olson. In addition to the successes noted above in Corporate and Foundation Relations, the Annual Fund raised $1 million from 3,688 donors and nearly $500,000 came in through gift planning. “Despite a less-than-robust economy, RISD enjoyed a solid fundraising year,” says Olson. “That says a lot about our alumni, parents and friends, whose gifts help students realize their full potential as creative leaders.” For more on giving to RISD, go to risd.edu/give.
Fall 2010
41
underGraduate Class Notes
614 2000s Graphic Design alumni referenced
most referenced classes
most common major among alumni club leaders
Jerry Williams 65 PT
Ed Baranosky 69 PT Jonathan Kaplan 73 CR
Karen LaMonte 90 GL
Margaret Jackson 87 GL Sylvia Montana 90 GD
Marlene Frontera 10 IL
Anika Azad 97 GD
Dolores Avenda単o 93 IL
Sally Csavas 96 PH
Brooklyn Kim Lee 28
1938 14
mollymook, Australia
most popular stomping ground after graduation
furthest location from RISD
most common alumni
2nd most common alumni
# of RISD clubs in the US
surname (237)
surname (228)
1960
1965
relative attendance at 2010 reunions
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1970
1975
1980
1985
earliest class reference
# of RISD clubs abroad
1990
1995
2000
2005
1947 Last summer Joyce Briner IL (Elkins, NH) and her husband Marty exhibited their intricately carved and painted life-size birds at Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness, NH.
1949 James Clark PT had a birthday
party/exhibit at Center of the Earth Gallery last spring in Charlotte, NC, where he lives.
1953 Leo Irrera SC and Eva (Amman) Irrera IL (Washington,
DC) wrote to update RISD on their news: “Leo has had commissions for statues from the city churches and especially the Navy Memorial. Eva retired from being illustrator and graphic designer for a college. She has also created greeting cards and children’s film strips. To see the work go to irrerastudioarts.com.”
1954 Jim Owens IL sent in this note: “After RISD I did commercial art work in Manhattan for eight years. Tiring of that life I got my teaching credentials at NYU and took a job in my hometown on Cape Cod where I taught art for 26 years. I do pen and ink work, mostly houses, design logos sometimes, do a lot of calligraphy and occasionally teach it, some cartooning, taught and exhibited photography, scrimshaw, watercolor and now have three coloring books on the market. Over the years I have done work
David Estey 65 PT David was named one of Maine’s 60 most collectible artists in Maine Home + Design magazine, which featured his 2009 painting Untitled (pink) (oil, 24 x 24") in its April issue. His drawings and paintings were recently featured in a solo show at Husson University in Bangor, ME and at Mulford Collectors Gallery in Rockland, ME.
for the Cape Cod National Seashore Park, particularly signs identifying flora thanks to Ms. [Edna] Lawrence’s Nature Drawing classes. My goal was to make my living as an artist and I have done that thanks to RISD.”
1955 Mary Melikian Haynes PT (NYC) was awarded the gold medal for her pastel in the round entitled A Cloud Witnesses in the 111th Annual Exhibiting Artists Members’ Show at the National Arts Club in New York. The exhibition was in March; Mary had begun the work following the earthquake that hit Haiti in January.
Jerry Williams 65 PT Jerry (Uddevalla, Sweden) and Karen Aqua 76 IL (Cambridge, MA) worked with Swedish animator Olov Burman to co-curate Animated Art, a show on view through November 21 at the Trollhättan Konsthall in Trollhättan, Sweden.
Sherrill (Edwards) Hunnibell 64 AE
1957 Women’s Work/Lives/Art, a solo show of work by Elisa (Tufenkjian) Khachian AE, was featured earlier this fall at ArtPlace Gallery in Fairfield, CT, where she lives.
1958 Merle Temkin TX (NYC) is the recipient of a 2010 PollockKrasner Foundation Award.
1959 Last summer Robert Cronin PT exhibited small paintings at the David M. Hunt Library in his hometown of Falls Village, CT. He also had an early fall exhibition of new paintings at Cornwall [CT] Library. Chris Gorman GD (Larchmont, NY) and the design and production team at Chris Gorman Associates created the 2009 annual report for Lutheran HealthCare, a network of health and community services based in Brooklyn. The report focused on the theme of growth, while also illustrating the diversity of LHC’s patient population and services.
To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
Cloud Anatomy/Thunder Wing (2010, mixed media on paper, 4x4") was among the pieces on view in New Mixed Media Paintings & Altered Books, a solo show held last spring at Mulford Collectors Gallery in Rockland, ME. Sherrill lives in Rehoboth, MA.
Esterruth (Feldman)
Wilmot Winslow IL (Lowell,
Rumpler TX/BArch 84 sent in
MA) curated Children’s Book Illustration, an exhibition that ran at The Brush Art Gallery & Studios in Lowell, MA in September and October. The show included work by David Macaulay BArch 69, Chris Van Allsburg MFA 75 SC, David Wiesner 78 PT, Christopher Bing 83 IL, Kelley Murphy 99 IL and Matt Tavares.
this update: “In 2009 I was lucky enough to be at RISD for both my 50th and 25th reunions and it was great fun to see so many young/old friends. I continue to use my RISD education every week…at Barrington Kitchen and Design, where I have been for over 10 years. I love my work because no two jobs are alike and I get challenged by the tastes, needs and pocketbooks of all kinds of people. My husband Lenny and I have five granddaughters and as he is a prizewinning photographer we have great shots of all of them.”
1960 Judith (Pashall) Edwards AP
lives in Westfield, MA with her husband Ron. The couple’s website, ronandjudyedwards .com, showcases Judith’s paintings and Ron’s sculpture.
1961 50th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Work by Gretchen Dow Simpson PT* (Providence)
is included in The Abstract in Realism, an exhibition at the Newport [RI] Art Museum through January 2, 2011. Mort Libby GD (Cincinnati, OH)
retired in June from LPK, the international branding design firm he founded in 1983. Fall 2010
43
Stuart Murphy 64 IL MATH = FUN! Selected Artists from Stuart J. Murphy’s MathStart Series is on view through December 29 at Gallery Della-Piana, the fine art and illustration venue run by Elissa Della-Piana 64 IL in Wenham, MA. The exhibition features illustrations by 15 artists (including Renee Andriani 85 IL) who have contributed to Stuart’s well-regarded books aimed at teaching math skills. In July Charlesbridge Publishing launched his new series of 16 children’s books for the pre-kindergarten crowd. Also based on visual learning strategies, the I SEE I LEARN series (stuartjmurphy.com/iseeilearn) addresses social, emotional, health and safety, and cognitive skills for young learners.
1962 Richard Levine AR* (Lexington, KY), an architect and professor at the University of Kentucky, has earned the Passive Solar Pioneer Award from the American Solar Energy Society for his achievements in solar architecture and sustainability.
1963 Painting the Navy, a show of paintings by Wilma Parker de Pavloff PT (San Francisco), was on view in August at the Naval War College Museum in Newport, RI. Helen Webber AE (Exton, PA)
created The Four Seasons of Motherhood, an extended 8-page Mother’s Day e-card, with Dovetail Publications.
1965 In May Art Place Gallery in Fairfield, CT hosted Face Book: 2010, an exhibition by Dave Pressler ID (Shelton, CT). Dave also gave a lecture with the show.
1966 45th reunion October 7–9, 2011 In August Karen Moss PT (Brookline, MA) showed her installation The Commuter in the window of Montserrat College of Art’s Frame 301 Gallery in Beverly, MA.
1967 Geo Lloyd PT* (Portland, ME) exhibited at GMS Gallery in York, ME in the summer show Who’s Counting: An Exhibition Celebrating 15 years of Art, Artists and Patrons at the George Marshall Store Gallery.
(Berkeley, CA) had a solo show titled Small Worlds… & Large at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, CA in August.
In Portrait of an Artist, a spring solo show at the Canton [CT] Artists Guild’s Gallery, Diane (Torrington, CT) exhibited works spanning the past 40 years, including a recent group of mixed-media wall assemblages like the one shown here.
RISDXYZ
Donuts (2009, oil on linen, 19x 24") is among the evocative and exquisitely executed paintings in Alternate Universe, an October solo show at Adelson Galleries on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Andrew is represented by Adelson and creates his eminently contemporary, Renaissance-inspired paintings out of his studio Northborough, MA.
Mary Curtis Ratcliff AE
Diane Wright 69 IL
44
Andrew Stevovich 70 PT
Amalie Rothschild GD
(NYC/Florence, Italy) wrote: “I am happy to report a number of interesting things happening with my rock music photographs. First, a selection of 28 pictures appears in the Abrams book Grateful Dead 365 by Holly GeorgeWarren (2008). Since 2009 Hal Leonard Music Publishers has used a number of my images of Duane Allman…. I continue to be with the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe and was featured in a group show, The Art of Sound, in February. Last year I changed New York galleries and am now represented by Bonni Benrubi, where I’ve been in several group shows. Earlier this year I had a selection of pictures in the Six Decades of Rock’n’Roll exhibition at Amerika Haus in Munich, Germany, which is slated to travel to other European cities later this year and next year.”
1969 Painter of Small Objects, a new poem by Ed Baranosky PT (Toronto, Canada), was published in the June 2010 issue of Lynx Magazine. He runs a publishing business out of his home, where he also paints and restores artwork.
Pamela (Becker) Stoessell
TX wrote in to tell us that she’s a “full-time professor within the fashion design and merchandising programs at Marymount University, Arlington, VA. I teach courses in fashion industry and its promotion, fashion show production, textiles, textile design, and visual merchandising.”
Jane Hickey Caminos IL
(Watchung, NJ) presented a solo exhibition of recent oil paintings at the Wellfleet, MA library in August. Titled Sentimental Journey, the show featured a series of narrative portraits of the lives of women.
Jack Dickerson 69 GD Jack (Brewster, MA) sent in a photo of his latest painting, Rowboat Waiting. As Jack explains, he had meant to start painting the John Deere machines digging in his back yard, but the rowboat picture is what he ended up with instead.
Kate Frank Cohen 69 PH Last spring Kate showed photographs in two juried exhibitions in Columbia County, NY. A resident of Spencertown, NY, she was also profiled in an article in Berkshire Living, a regional magazine.
Robert Carsten 73 SC Based in Springfield, VT, Robert serves on the Board of Governors of the Pastel Society of America and is a contributing writer to The Artist’s Magazine and The Pastel Journal. His pastel, Recycled Light, was shown earlier this fall at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, MA. “The beauty of my RISD education is that it replaced the likelihood of mere repetition with a far broader concept: recycling,” he writes. “I find that other ideas and concepts, whether from distant times and cultures or present time and company, become precious resources for creating new applications and elegant solutions.”
1976 35th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Last spring Carol Heft PT had an exhibition entitled Transformation: bits and pieces at Blue Mountain Gallery in NYC, where she lives. Stephen Talasnik PT (NYC)
Spencer Lawrence IL*
(Brooklyn, NY) is showing Seeing The Blues, a series of large-scale paintings celebrating blues music, through mid November at Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, NC. Apparel designer Nicole Miller AP recently met with RISD juniors and grad students in Textiles at her Manhattan showroom. The visit was part of the students’ tour of NYC design studios, showrooms and galleries in their quest to learn about different aspects of the textiles and apparel industries.
Howard Newman BID 69 Working from images of the 19th-century original, Howard and his wife Mary reproduced a bronze horse trough that’s now installed at the foot of Washington Square in Newport, RI, where they live. The 838-lb. replica is part of an ongoing restoration of the historic square.
1970
1971
Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters 1985-2010 is the most recent curatorial endeavor of
40th reunion October 7–9, 2011
Elizabeth Resnick GD/MFA
96 (Chestnut Hill, MA). She worked with co-curator Javier Cortes on the show, which is on view this fall in the Stephen B. Paine Gallery at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Elizabeth is a professor and chair of the college’s Graphic Design department.
bottom, far right: photo by John Bartelstone
Patrick Linehan 75 PH Patrick’s recent photographs were included in Searching for Sanctuary, a group exhibition held in the summer and early fall at The Mary-Frances and Bill Veeck Gallery in Chicago. He lives in nearby Evanston, IL.
1973 Howard Gladstone FAV (NYC) enjoyed a month-long painting residency at Vytlacil in Sparkill, NY in April; he presented his work in their residents’ open studio show Transcendence and Tradition at the conclusion of the residency.
1975 Dennis Congdon PT, professor and head of RISD’s Painting Department, and Toots Zynsky 73 GL/SC, a RISD trustee and member of the RISD Museum Board of Governors, exhibited together last spring at Providence’s Lenore Gray Gallery in a show titled Dennis Congdon + Toots Zynsky 2.
Last spring Roni Horn SC (NYC) had her first solo exhibition devoted solely to drawings. The show at Hauser & Wirth New York included six new largescale works that were shown for the first time.
Last May Kirk Magnus CR, a professor of art and head of the Ceramics department at Kent [OH] University, exhibited his Story Bowls at the Clay Place in Carnegie, PA. Mark Rabinowitz SC (Alexandria, VA) was awarded an American Academy in Rome Prize for 2010-2011 in the category of Historic Preservation and Conservation.
Last summer Rory Marcaccio
showed the site-specific piece Stream: a folded drawing last spring at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, NY. Joan Waltemath PT joined
the Maryland Institute College of Art in August as director of the Hoffberger School of Painting. She notes that the MFA program at MICA is noted for producing generations of painters who have had an impact on the world, and she is excited to be working with them.
Schaffer AE/MAE 79 (Vienna, VA)
John Whalley IL (Damaris-
served as an adjunct professor of sculpture for Virginia Commonwealth University, Graduate Department of the School of Fine Arts. Her work was featured in the Recent Works 10th Anniversary Show held in October at the Fairfax Railroad Museum.
cotta, ME) showed paintings at Greenhut Galleries in Portland, ME in August.
Ellen (Schwartz) Wexler 71 AE Allan Wexler BArch 72 This 60’-long granite tile structure cantilevers over the ticket booths and train platform entrances at the LIRR Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn and has already won a 2010 Building Brooklyn Award. Commissioned by the MTA, Ellen and Allan (allanwexlerstudio.com) created Overlook to provide travelers with a place to pause and take in the bustling activity in the atrium below. “It reminds us of the scenic off-road viewing stations in National Parks that our parents used to pull into on long summer car trips,” they say, adding that the overlook offers “a much-needed break in our everyday journeys.”
Earlier this fall Henry Isaacs PT (Sharon, VT) exhibited in Three Colorists at Gleason Fine Art in Boothbay Harbor, ME. Jonathan Kaplan CR is the
curator at Plinth Gallery in Denver, the only venue exclusively for fine contemporary ceramics in the area. The gallery showcases a new artist at First Friday openings each month and has received a Denver Mayor’s Design Award. Jonathan also continues to exhibit his work nationally; his series Nouveau Moche-Ware was included in the 3rd Biennial Concordia Continental Ceramics Competition.
To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
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Karen Hackenberg 78 PT Talking Rain (2009, gouache on paper, 5.5x7"), one of Karen’s recent works focused on water and the environment, was included in Shape of Water, a regional juried show at the new Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend, WA, where she lives.
1979 Ana Flores PT (Wood River
Junction, RI) participated in spring open studios at I-Park Foundations, where she is an artist-in-residence. Acrylic Innovation (September 2010), a new book by Nancy Reyner IL (Santa Fe), is an artist’s resource for ideas, styles and techniques, and includes paintings and process tips from 64 painters. Her first book, Acrylic Revolution, continues to be a bestseller.
Keith Campbell 78 AR left: As a vice president at RTKL Associates in Chicago, Keith is currently designing mixed-use projects in Shanghai, Kunming, Chengdu (all in China) and Mumbai. Closer to home, he and his wife Mary renovated the Northern Michigan lake house shown here and featured in Dwell (February 2010) and Traverse Magazine (June/July 2010).
1978
1977 In July Deborah Gavel IL (Albuquerque, NM) had a solo show titled ROTA FORTUNAE (Wheel of Fortune) at 5Gallery in Albuquerque, NM. Jay Litman BArch (Barrington, RI)
is a senior planning consultant and architect for Fielding Nair International and principal of Litman Architecture, a multidisciplinary practice focused on institutional, historic, commercial and residential projects and urban planning. Jay and his wife Jill (Levine) Litman 79 IL have two sons, Adam and Isaac Litman 12 IL.
Alex O’Neal 79 IL Chapelle des Penitents Noirs, a solo show of Alex’s paintings, was featured in Aubagne, France as part of the summer Festival d’Art Singulier. More images of the Brooklyn-based artist’s work are online at alexoneal.com.
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Barbara Maslen IL creates hand-painted murals for residential and commercial installation at her studio in Sag Harbor, NY. Robynn Smith PT (Aptos, CA) had a solo show titled MontereyNOW: Robynn Smith from July to October at the Monterey [CA] Museum of Art. The exhibition was one in a series showcasing local artists who have made significant contributions to the visual arts.
Last summer Valerie Hird PT (Burlington, VT) showed The Maiden Voyages Project: An Exhibition of Visual Blogs at Nohra Haime Gallery in NYC. Etienne Perret SC/JM
(Camden, ME) participated in the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Show, an event held in August in Rockland, ME. The Sound of It, a show of ceramic work by Arlene Shechet CR, was on view earlier this fall at Jack Shainman Gallery in NYC, where she lives. David Wiesner IL (see page 6)
1980 In September T Barny SC (Healdsburg, CA) had a solo show titled Join Me in Santa Fe at Hunter Kirkland Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe. Linda Fraser SC wrote to share the news that after living in Toronto for six years, she has moved back to Melbourne, Australia to continue her work in sandcast glass sculpture and other media. William Jacobs BArch/MID
(Washington, DC) has been appointed director of exhibitions at the Library of Congress following a 28-year career as an exhibition designer for the Smithsonian Institution. Bonnie Katzman GD writes to tell us her company BK Design recently won the International Special Events Society (ISES) Esprit Award for Best Marketing/ Graphic Design under $25,000. The award was for a project she did in St. Tropez.
Katherine Kean 78 FAV left: Atmospheric, Katherine’s latest series of paintings, is on view from November 2–27 at TAG Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, near where she lives in Tujunga. Inspired by her travels, she blends realism with an otherworldly viewpoint in depicting natural wind, storm and volcanic forces.
Susan (Kramer) George 76 PT Susan’s Ocean Sky paintings are on view through November 21 at Harris Gallery in Houston, where she lives; she has also shown recently in Chicago, Vero Beach, FL and London. For the past 10 years, Susan has worked to provide a fresh look at the meeting point between the ocean and the sky. One of her paintings can be seen in the 2009 movie Duplicity.
1981 30th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Last spring Daniel Ludwig SC (Newport, RI) exhibited Paradigms Lost at NYC’s Allan Stone Gallery.
Geoffrey Warner 77 PH* Geoffrey’s Owl Stool, offered at the recent Providence Fine Furnishings Show, is one example of his ongoing quest to create affordable furniture that emphasizes the natural beauty of wood and exhibits fine craftsmanship. He sells the stool in cherry or walnut with ash legs (and in kit or finished form) out of his studio in Stonington, ME.
Karen Rand Anderson 77 CR It’s Not What You Thought, Karen’s MFA thesis exhibition at Vermont Studio Center/Johnson State College, was shown in April at the college’s Julian Scott Memorial Gallery. She also has a solo show in November at Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at the University of Connecticut in Groton. Karen’s daughter Danica Mitchell 14 just started the RISD/Brown dual degree program this fall and her older daughter, Ariel, earned her BFA from MICA and a post-bac certificate from SMFA, Boston.
Laurie Karp 76 SC Steven Rosen IL (Brooklyn,
NY) wrote to RISD: “Never let it be said that I don’t lead an interesting life. I spent Friday at the Dances of Vice Tango Diablo party shooting portraits of tango dancers (and folks who like to dress like tango dancers). Saturday was spent in Coney Island frolicking with the mermaids at the annual Mermaid Parade. Sunday was spent at the Folsom Street East Festival, taking portraits of gay men in leather, rubber, and latex. Only in New York, and that’s why I love it here.”
1983 Preston Scott Cohen BArch
(Cambridge, MA) was noted in Paul Goldberger’s New Yorker review of the new Goldman Sachs building in NYC. Preston completed some of the interior rooms of “serious consequence.” Laura Honse PH owns the Gallery Atomic Salon in Hamburg, Germany, where she recently exhibited her analog color photography in a show titled Glory and Shame.
David Mazzucchelli PT (see
page 10) Deborah Ravin IL (Phoenix, AZ)
participated in Grand Canyon’s Green Heart: The Unsung Legacy of Plants, a group show of botanical illustration at Kolb Studio, situated on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The
show ran last summer and will be on view again from December through February 2011. Deb’s illustration Imperata brevifolia (Satintail Grass) is done in pen and ink on Bristol paper.
had a solo show in September at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art in Utica, NY.
The recipient of a 2009-10 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, Annette Rusin BArch (Brooklyn, NY) showed Road Work, a site-specific installation and drawings at the Brooklyn gallery earlier this fall. A series of 20 of her drawings was also on view in the 2009 International Incheon [Korea] Women Artists’ Biennale.
Jamie Hogan 80 IL
Stuart Karten 78 ID
In Ice Harbor Mittens (Down East Publishing, October 2010), Jamie’s colorful pastels accompany text by Robin Hansen. She also illustrated Nest, Nook & Cranny (Charlesbridge, 2010), a book of poems by Susan Blackaby about animal habitats. Jamie showed in the spring exhibition Looking Out, Looking In: Portraits by Twenty-Five Women Artists at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, along with classmate Madeline (Sorel) Kahn 80 IL (Brooklyn). She has been teaching illustration at Maine College of Art since 2003 and writes a column called Art Roamings for the Island Times.
A hearing aid designed by SKD, the product design company where Stuart is principal, was selected for the current National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? The exhibition is open through January 2011 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York. SKD also won Silver IDEA Awards last spring for two hearing aids—the S Series with Touch Control and Zon.
1982 Ann Reichlin CR (Ithaca, NY)
top left: photo by Brian Coon © 2010
Christopher Kirwan AR (NYC) has been working with the Reignwood Group in Beijing this year and enjoying his travels.
Laurie’s installation Water and Ways 1 (glazed earthenware, 100x 57x18") is included in Circuits Céramiques—La Scène française contemporaine, a group show that continues through January 12, 2011 at Musée de Sèvres in France. Musée La Piscine in Roubaix, where she had a solo show several years ago, recently bought one of her earthenware installations based on 18th-century brocade from their collection. Laurie is based in Paris.
To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
Beauty and the Beef, a show of new work by Judith Schaechter GL (Philadelphia), was on view last spring at Claire Oliver Gallery in NYC. Tom Sienewiez BArch (see
page 11) Andy Ziegler ID (River Vale,
NJ) developed the world’s first Braille remote control for a household consumer product. His company has produced over two million of the Magnalik Braille remote control units for a new Haier Energy Star line of air conditioners.
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1984 In September Claudia Flynn SC (Wakefield, RI) had a solo exhibition entitled Reclamation at Hera Gallery in South Kingstown, RI. Robin McAvenia Kramer IL (Manchester by the Sea, MA) recently won the 2010 Innovation in Design Award (in the Landscape category) sponsored by Connecticut Cottages & Gardens. Robin and her husband Dan (a Brown graduate) have two children in college, Jason at Hamilton College and Madison at Cornell. Anne Elliott (Williams) Merica BArch has been busy launching Integrated Framing, a new green building technology that uses the empty channels inside window framing systems to collect and distribute power and data in a more user-friendly location—at the windows. Based in Arlington, VA, she has already
received a patent in China for the new system and has patents pending in the US, Canada and the EU. Thanks to a Clean Tech Grant from Autodesk, Anne was able to acquire all the software needed to do rapid virtual prototyping for the system, along with cost estimates and energy analysis. Find out more at integratedframing.com.
1985 Elizabeth Poulin Alvarez IL wrote to RISD: “My family and I are moving to Auckland, New Zealand in June so I regret that I cannot attend my 25th RISD reunion in October. I’ll be completing an MFA in painting at the University of Auckland.” Mary Jane Begin IL wrote an article for the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of Art Buyer Magazine about transforming illustrated characters from print to animation. Allison Druin GD (Chevy Chase,
MD) was named associate dean for research in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. She will apply her experience directing the Human-Computer Interaction Lab as she works on developing college-wide partnerships with industry, government agencies and nonprofits. She also plans to continue her research pursuits in designing new technologies for children. In May architect Michael Maltzan BARch (Pasadena, CA)
Jack Mathews BID 86 As an independent industrial designer and commercial sculptor based in Barrington, RI, Jack has been under contract with DC Direct, the retail division of DC Comics, for the past seven years. He creates limited-edition sculptural products based on DC’s extensive cast of licensed characters, including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. His sculpture Superman vs Mohammad Ali was featured recently in the LA Times entertainment section.
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received an honorary Doctor of Engineering Technology degree and delivered the Commencement address at Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology. Newsweek (8.2.10) invited him and two other leading LA architects to envision the future of work in the sprawling metropolis best known for its tangle of freeways and snarled traffic. “Maltzan’s firm believes the traditional office spaces scattered throughout the city will be replaced by all-purpose buildings, where people move between floors from their apartments to offices to outdoor recreation spaces,” the article notes. See more at: www. newsweek.com/feature/2010/ future-of-work.
Stephen Burt 87 IL Stephen’s work was included in the 2010 National Juried Exhibition at The ACCI Gallery in Berkeley, CA. He also had two shows in Maine over the summer—a group exhibition at The Leighton Gallery in Blue Hill and a solo show at Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts in Portland, where he lives.
Carol (Ware) Mojarrab AR lives in Santa Fe with her husband Vahid and their children Xander and Leilah.
master metalsmith John Prip, along with pieces by Didi, Peter Prip , Janet Prip 74 SC and Robin Quigley MFA 76 SC.
Jackie Saccoccio PT
Last spring Jeff Waring PT (Middletown, PA) had a solo exhibition at Highwire Gallery in Philadelphia.
(West Cornwall, CT) exhibited a “monumental installation” at Eleven Rivington in NYC last spring. Last March Michael Scaramozzino IL (Wilmington, MA) published a new book, Creating a 3D Animated CGI Short: The Making of The Autiton Archives Fault Effect—Pilot Webisode (Jones & Bartlett Publishers). In May Didi Suydam JM/ID opened a new gallery space for Didi Suydam Contemporary, her jewelry and sculpture business, in Newport, RI. The gallery is currently showcasing work by the late RISD professor and
1986 25th reunion October 7–9, 2011 Michael Blier LA (Salem, MA) is the principal at landworks>studio in Boston. The studio was awarded a 2010 American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award in the category of General Design for the project Theatre Retreat.
Two pieces by Daniel Clayman GL (East Providence, RI) have been acquired by museums in
the past year: Object 4 was added to the permanent collection of the Palm Springs [CA] Museum of Art and Pierced Volume was acquired by the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, TN. Diane Gorman-Sorg PT (Stuttgart, Germany) works as an art teacher and color consultant in her husband’s architecture office, Sorg und Frosch Planungs Gmbh, and continues to paint for herself. Eric Meier IL and his wife Martha (West Warwick, RI) aren’t sleeping much since their second child, Chloe Elena, was born on August 8, 2010. See more at themeiers.blogspot.com.
Last spring Hanna von Goeler IL (Montclair, NJ) had a solo show at the Hunter College/ Times Square Gallery in NYC.
1988
are the proud parents of two daughters, Claudia and Olivia. Samantha is designing and making belts and jewelry.
Wendy Gonick GD and Pat White 64 IL took part in last
spring’s Open Studios-Central in Cambridge, MA. Allison Massari IL (Tiburon, CA)
Linda Zelenko 83 ID York Street Studio, the interior design and home furnishings studio operated by Linda (Washington Depot, CT) and her husband Stephen Piscuskas, was featured on the cover of Elle Décor (June 2010). The accompanying article discussed the company, their home and their family.
1987 A solo show by Trine Giaever IL (Piermont, NY) was on view in April at the city hall in Oslo, Norway. She also showed recently at SIP and Pisticci, both in NYC. Margaret Jackson GL published Moche Art and Visual Culture in Ancient Peru in 2008 (University of Mexico Press).
In July Lisa Palombo IL (Caldwell, NJ) was featured on Whopple: Interviews with Artists on whopple.com.
was one of 10 people selected for inclusion in ReSolve, an international documentary film that shares solutions for helping people cope with post-traumatic stress. Allison was excited to share her perspective from the art world. AFTER HOURS, a summer solo show of work by Lucas Michael ID (Los Angeles), was featured at the Silverman Gallery in San Francisco. A children’s editorial illustration by Sarah (Hand) Wisbey IL (Rochester, NY) was accepted for the spring publication of 3x3 Illustration Annual No. 7.
Banners, a solo show of work by Karen Gelardi PT (South Portland, ME), was featured earlier this fall at Perimeter Gallery in Belfast, ME. She is also involved in The Group Formerly Known as Smockshop, an artistrun enterprise that generates income for artists whose work is either non-commercial or not yet self-sustaining.
David Collins 88 PT
Earlier this fall Kristen Gossler
David (NYC) had a solo exhibition last spring called In Bound at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY.
PT (East Providence, RI) exhibited in Quixotic at Hutson Gallery in Provincetown, MA. After years of working in a high-pressure job in the fashion
1989 Samantha Grisdale PR (Los Angeles) writes to tell us that she and husband John Biggs 89 PR
industry, Rebecca Harkins AP has started her own children’s clothing company, Chirp & Bloom. She is thrilled that she can now work from her home in Dallas and spend time with her family while still doing what
Allison (Kluger) Rae 87 ID Last year Allison launched Pulse Anatomy and Pulse R&D in Bucks County, PA to support the development of medical devices. She makes custom soft tissue anatomical models for research and development, sales demonstrations and professional education, and also provides industrial design, engineering, prototyping and manufacturing services. Allison notes that creating organ and tissue replicas requires a great blend of RISD problem-solving skills, knowledge of biology and art/model-making expertise.
she loves. She opened her Etsy shop (under the name Chirp & Bloom) last January. So Yoon Lym PT (Edgewater,
NJ) had an exhibition entitled The Dreamtime: Hair and Braid Pattern Paintings at the Paterson [NJ] Museum earlier this fall. Leslie Rogers PT (NYC) was
interviewed by David Coggins for the Huffington Post in July in connection with his summer show at Haunch of Venison, NYC. Last spring Lisa Stefanelli IL (NYC) exhibited sassyfras paintings at NYC’s Heskin Contemporary. In January Stephanie Yoffee GD (Rockville, MD) gave a presentation on “How Museum Internships Shape Careers” to a group of college and postgraduate interns at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She was an intern at the museum in 1986 in the office of exhibition design.
1990 Lisa Albin BArch (Brooklyn, NY) and her company Iglooplay exhibited at the spring International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC.
Sohyun Bae PT/SC participated
in the summer group show Selections 2010 at Skoto Gallery in NYC, where she lives. Kimberly Becker TX wrote to RISD: “I have been making art of one form or another for about twenty years. For many years I was an upholstery designer in NYC, working for manufacturers and domestic cotton mills. After my two children were born, I ‘retired’ from the industry and started making my own art. I have explored painted art quilts, porcelain, baskets, and painting. I am now living in the Boston area and painting daily.”
In conjunction with last summer’s SOFA West show, Karen LaMonte GL (Prague, Czech Republic) spoke to the Friends of Contemporary Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. After working exclusively in glass, she recently created a major body of work in ceramic, which she says “was a thrilling eye opener!” Karen now hopes to continue her work with large-scale ceramic pieces.
Susan Pogany 81 IL In the past year Susan has exhibited work in group shows at Gallery 225 in Manhattan and Grace Gallery at CUNY/NYCCT in Brooklyn, where she lives. To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
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1991 20th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Eve Alyson PH (Seattle) is the creative director for WonderChess, a fabulous game that teaches children as young four to play chess. She designed the packaging for the company’s games, which include WonderChess, WonderCheckers, WonderGo and WonderLetters, an innovative game that teaches spelling. Rebecca Chamberlain AP (Brooklyn, NY) took part in InContext Tours, an artists’ studio walking tour in the Graham Area of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Greg Foley AP (NYC) wrote to
update RISD on his good news: “In addition to my work on Visionaire/V Magazine/VMAN, I’ve just released my fifth children’s book, Willoughby &
the Moon (HarperCollins 2010). And in November Viking will release I Miss You Mouse (the newest in the Thank You Bear book series—winner of the 2008 Charlotte Zolotow award).” Rebecca Hannon JM (Halifax, Nova Scotia) recently began a position as assistant professor in Foundations at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. She had a solo exhibition called Black and White and Red all Over at Ornamentum Gallery in Hudson, NY, last summer. Robin Pfahning IL and her husband Ramunas Balcetis welcomed their son Lukas in February. Robin lives in Rhode Island and teaches Argentine tango at the Providence Tango studio. Melissa Prest PT (San Francisco) has a new website (melprest.com) and was part of last spring’s STOP & GO
Tour—a tour of Europe by visual artists and filmmakers of stop-motion works. Last summer Michael Rich IL (Providence) exhibited new mixed media pieces in the solo show Intimate Landscapes at Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in Center Sandwich, NH. He has exhibited there for the past seven years. Michael Riley GD (Los
Angeles) and his company Shine received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Main Title Design for the HBO Films production Temple Grandin.
Nakhee Sung 94 PT left: Between You and Me, her solo show of paintings, was on view in September at Doosan Gallery in NYC. Nakhee lives in Seoul, Korea.
Franklin Einspruch 90 IL After Yuan Hongdao (the waters have a secret method for flowing beyond this world) (2010, ink on paper, six sheets, approx. 36x120") is featured in the solo show The Talk That Walked (thetalkthat walked.com), which runs from November 4 – December 19 at the Main Library in downtown Miami. In the past year, Franklin has written for The New Criterion, the Boston Weekly Dig, Big Red & Shiny and two exhibition catalogues. His art has also been featured in group shows in NYC, Miami Beach and Charlottesville, VA. (See also page 64.)
Donald Robinson GD (Peekskill, NY) wrote to RISD: “Just wanted to reach out to the RISD community and announce the launch of GreenVybe.com. GreenVybe LLC is an interactive social network website for sharing knowledge related specifically to the environment and natural health, thereby promoting positive change for both people and planet.” David Stark PT (see pages
20–25) Eulho Suh BArch (see pages
26–29)
1992 Richard Dubrow BArch (Tenafly, NJ) and his studio, studio amd, won their second Hugh Feriss Memorial Prize in 2010. The prize is the highest award conferred by the American Society of Architectural Illustration for work in the field of architectural illustration.
Sadie Jernigan Valeri 93 IL Sadie earned the top prize for still life in Art Renewal Center’s 2010 International Salon competition for her painting Bottle Collection (oil on panel, 18x24").
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Shepard Fairey IL (Los Angeles) was the inaugural recipient of the AS220 Free Culture Award at Foo Fest 2010 in Providence. He was honored by artistic director Umberto Crenca with a one-of-a-kind, handcrafted Free Culture Award. Shepard was also part of a special Action Speaks forum at the annual event. He is one of many artists whose work was showcased at the first MONIKER international art fair (October 14-17), which coincided with Frieze week in London.
Recent paintings by Bo Joseph PT (NYC) were featured in Berliner Geschichten, a threeperson summer show at Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas. Kathleen Keeler-Hodgetts IL (Santa Barbara, CA) is pleased to tell RISD that she and her seven-year-old daughter Elizabeth enjoy reading together “immensely.” Kathleen is creating hand-drawn coloring books for Elizabeth to use. Nelson Ryland PH was one of the editors of the documentary Freakonomics, a film adaptation of the bestselling book. Filmmakers Alex Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing, Rachael Grady, Seth Gordon and Eugene Jarecki collaborated on the
project, which was screened as the closing film at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 30. Ryland was also editor for Art Through Time: A Global View, a 13-part series produced by Annenberg Media and available online at learner.org/courses/globalart/. The series examines themes connecting works of art created around the world in different eras; it aired nationally on PBS in September and includes a photograph of the Pantheon Nelson took during his RISD EHP year.
Derek Taylor ID (Saco, ME) sent in this bit of boast: “I can eat 50 eggs.”
1993 Mark Callahan PR (Athens,
GA) and his wife Ashley welcomed their second son, Arrow Ruskin Callahan, on June 29, 2010. Arrow’s older brother is named Copper. Lisa Catalone GD (Bethesda,
MD) sent RISD samples of her studio’s latest stamp designs for the USPS—a series of four
stamps portraying memorable Supreme Court justices. Catalone Design Co. created the LOVE stamp for the USPS in 2001. Work by Lucy King SC, assistant director of admissions at RISD, was featured recently at PeaceLove studios in Pawtucket, RI.
1994
Patrick Keesey 90 PT/GL Drawings such as this were featured in Traces and Accumulations, a summer solo show at the Deffebach Gallery in Hudson, NY. Patrick lives in Marfa, TX.
Buenos Aires-based artist/athlete Dolores Avendaño has traveled the world in pursuit of seemingly impossible dreams. Here she shares how she made them happen. What did you discover as a transfer student at RISD? Well, first, that I was not among the best students, who we called “God’s Gift to Illustration.” They seemed to already have all the talent they might ever need. But I kept dreaming about becoming a children’s book illustrator, a dream I’d had since I was about 6 years old. So I drew and painted nonstop. Illustration was all there was for me.
(Brooklyn, NY) was awarded a 2010 Visual Artist Fellowship from the Edward F. Albee Foundation last spring. She was also selected by The Abrons Arts Center in NYC as one of six artistsin-residence for its 2010-2011 AIRspace residency program. Marie Keller IL (Surry, NH)
Philip Crangi JM (NYC) has enjoyed a successful career since graduation, including collaborations with Vera Wang and Jason Wu. For GQ’s “Dress Like a Rebel” series Philip was asked about men wearing jewelry: he wisely suggests starting off with one item you like and slowly adding other pieces.
MIND OVER MATTER
Veronica Frenning CR
received a grant from the US Embassy in Czech Republic to create a show with her marionettes in July 2010. She gathered a troupe of puppeteers from Canada, Finland, Iceland, Italy and the US to perform A Bug Cabaret at Teatrotoc, the international performing arts festival in Prague. Stephanie Schechter ID (Providence) and husband, chef Mark Garofalo, are excited to announce the re-launch of their Providence-based catering company. Now called Fire Works Catering, the firm is a full-service gourmet caterer serving Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Stephanie designed all the new branding
Denyse Schmidt 92 GD When Denyse created Tried & True (based on a traditional pattern for Chinese coins) for Pottery Barn, the company featured her Bridgeport, CT-based quilting studio on its website. She also recently designed Squaresville, a new line of girls’ and crib bedding for Land of Nod.
and is Fire Works’ business and marketing manager. Work by Do Ho Suh PT (NYC) is featured in A Perfect Home: The Bridge Project, a solo show that continues through December 23 at Storefront for Art & Architecture in NYC, where he lives. His work is also included in a group show continuing through January 16, 2011 at Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY. (See also pages 26–29.)
Dolores Avendaño 93 IL How did you get started as a professional illustrator? As soon as I graduated, everyone around me knew I was looking for work—even the priest at Brown University! I went to every interview I could get. Finally, after two months of intense search, a publisher in Manhattan gave me my first picture book. EMECE publishers soon asked me to illustrate a Spanish picture book and right after that the same publisher commissioned me to illustrate the first cover for the Spanish edition of Harry Potter (written by J. K. Rowling). Since then I have illustrated all the Harry Potter covers distributed in Spain, Latin America and even in the US. How and why did you start running? When I turned 30 I realized that if I didn’t begin to train seriously, my other dream—to be an accomplished runner—would never come true. About three years later, I ran the New York Marathon and then became the first (and still the only) Argentine woman to run the 243-km Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert. I ran the 100 Himalayan Miles (finishing in first place in the women’s category), a 42-km marathon across the Andes (in high altitude) and the Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset 100-km race in the mountains. Since then, I have gone on expeditions to the Andes and to the Southern Patagonian ice field. Do the two parts of your life ever converge? My experience at RISD has been truly invaluable, not only for my art but also for my career as an athlete/adventurer. I now give motivational talks and present at conferences about performance under pressure and the importance of training the mind as well as the body. An exhibition of more than 100 of Dolores’ Harry Potter originals is currently on view in Buenos Aires.
For more information, go to doloresavendano.com.ar.
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Essentials, the fourth book in the Essential Design Handbook series (September 2010). Heather Henson IL (Hollywood)
Charles Wilrycx BArch 96 Charles (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) was the lead designer on an oceanfront multifamily project on Ocean Boulevard in Delray Beach, FL. He met challenges presented by ecologically sensitive native plants and sea turtle populations by devising a low-density, infill design supported by technologies intended to mitigate visible light transmission, storm water runoff and human activity.
1995 Michael Berg ID and Laura Cary GD (Portland, OR) welcomed a son, Calder Cary, on May 26, 2010. Chris Dina BGD (NYC) and his wife Yukari are happy to announce the arrival of their daughter Emika Sekine Dina, born on March 8, 2010. Chris and Yukari have recently teamed up to design custom pictograms and signage for Hoshi Kodomo (Children’s) Clinic in Saitama, Japan. Additionally, three of Chris’ logo designs have been selected for inclusion in Brand Identity
is the founder, president and artistic director of IBEX Puppetry. The work allows her to share her views on “ancient themes in a new medium”; she has performed throughout the country including at RISD this fall. After being recognized as the second top grossing and netting studio in the US by Professional Photographers of America, Ryan Phillips PH went on to launch PurePhoto.com in early 2010. PurePhoto offers professionallevel services and education direct to consumer DSLR users. Ryan lives in Bend, OR with his wife, two kids and a black lab named Porter. In July each of the artists who performed at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago was given an Eric Clapton Crossroads Duffel Bag designed especially for the event by Andrea Valentini BIA (Providence) and a team of recent RISD graduates including Seth Wiseman MArch 09, Walter Zesk MArch 09, Rich Pelligrino 06 IL, Nina Gils 08 FD, Stephanie Retz 10 ID and Jessica Desautels 11 IA. Proceeds from the event support the Crossroads Centre, a treatment facility founded by Clapton to help recovering addicts and alcoholics.
Jeff Hantman 95 PR
1997
Jeff’s three-dimensional mixed media works combine photography, appropriated images and screen-printing on scrap plywood. They were included in Residency Projects Part II, a fall exhibition at Kala Gallery in Berkeley, CA, where he was a 2009-10 fellowship artist. Jeff lives in nearby Oakland.
Cory Brookes BGD and his wife Melissa had a son, Porter Edward Brookes, on January 3, 2010 in Philadelphia. Saul Chernick PR (Brooklyn,
Family Guy writer/producer Seth MacFarlane FAV (Los Angeles) is included in Vanity Fair’s October list of the top 100 “New Establishment” types in 2010. In addition to continuing his YouTube cartoon comedy channel, Seth is working on a live-action CGI hybrid called Ted, which focuses on a man and his teddy bear.
moving to Phuket, Thailand in 2008. They have since moved on to Mollymook, Australia, where Sally teaches kids to draw through her business Da Vinci Kids. She also exhibited landscape paintings at Shoalhaven’s Artfest 2010. To keep in touch, visit davincikids.com.au or sallywillbanks.com.
1996
appointed an assistant professor of Foundation Studies at RISD as of this fall.
15th reunion October 7–9, 2011 Laura Brooke-Yattaw IL/MAE
01 (Cranston, RI) recently married Demian Yattaw. Marc Cavello FAV (Locust
Valley, NY) released his twenty-first album, B MADNESS, in July. Michelle Courtois AP and
Eric Mongeon 95 IL Eric (North Eastham, MA) recently spoke at the TEDxBoston conference about 4 by Poe, his illustrated collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Each season for one year, he is releasing a short story by Poe in the form of an illustrated, individually bound limited-edition softcover volume.
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Nathaniel Pearson 93 ID (Brooklyn, NY) had a son, Sebastien Lane Pearson, on March 18, 2010. Sally Csavas PH married Jeff
Willbanks in Las Vegas before
Shawn Greenlee PR has been
David Hanson FAV (see page 9) Jen Matic GD recently relocated
from NYC to San Francisco to join Banana Republic (Gap Inc.) as senior director of Art and Design. In this position she is co-leading branding and visual communications in advertising and in-store applications; she is also the creative marketing lead for the international and Edition segments of the organization. David Medina IL married Whitney Schecter on March 20, 2010 in Virginia.
NY) recently exhibited new work in Borrowed from the Charnel House, a solo show at Max Protetch Gallery in NYC. The exhibition of highly detailed pen and ink drawings demonstrated his penchant for borrowing from the relics of art history and transforming them into the elements of his own visual language. Brian Chippendale PR* (Providence) had a solo exhibition titled Fruiting Bodies at Cinders Gallery in Williamsburg, NY in June. He recently finished an 800-page comic called If N’ Oof, to be released this fall by Picturebox.
In July Eric Kos IL (Alameda, CA) was part of an exhibition at Uptown Body & Fender in Oakland featuring reproductions of pinball art. Eric explains that he and the other artists took some of the finest works by pinball designers and revisioned them as paintings and murals. He is the co-owner and founder of the Alameda Sun newspaper, but decided to dust off his paintbrushes for this show.
Kristina (Bell) DiTullo 96 IL Ellen Godena 97 PT Johanna Burns Maxey 98 PT Last spring Kristina (Cambridge, MA), Ellen (Boston) and Johanna (Northampton, MA) presented 6.7.8, a weeklong series of installation and performance works at Mobius arts space in Boston. In September Kristina’s work was included in the four-person exhibition Pattern and Repetition at Simmons College.
KRELwear, the clothing line by Karelle Levy TX (Miami), made its international debut in Stockholm over the summer. The line has been extremely popular in the US and has been featured in Harpers Bazaar and Elle. Karelle is very excited to start selling her line in Europe. Ari Benjamin Soltysiak was born on July 19, 2010 to Mark Soltysiak BArch (Boston) and his wife Randi.
1998 Alison Evans CR has opened
a gallery in Yarmouth, ME called Alison Evans Ceramics. She features her own work as well as pieces by other artists including Rebecca Saundres 98 GL*.
In addition to completing a recent site-specific commission at UMass Amherst (see page 10), Anna Schuleit PT (Dublin, NH)
delivered the keynote address at the Alliance of Artists Communities Conference in Providence in October. She also did the set design for the Ivy Baldwin Dance production of Here Rests Peggy at the Chocolate Factory in NYC and will be talking with students at RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome when she visits in late November.
1999 Val Britton PR (San Francisco)
Kati London PT (NYC) was
recently named one of “35 Innovators Under 35” by MIT’s Technology Review magazine. She is a vice president and senior producer at the NYC game company Area/Code. ColorQuarry, the design studio run by Amanda McCorkle GD (Central Falls, RI), has launched a new website, colorquarry.com, which highlights work she has done for 826 Boston, Mass MoCA and other nonprofits. Amanda is also happy to announce the birth of her first child, Ada Grey Katter.
completed a fellowship at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA in July; her fellowship exhibition was on view through August. She is showing Mapping: Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art at the Katonah [NY] Museum of Art through January 2011. Suzi Cozzens GD (Oak Park, IL)
received a fellowship from the University of Iowa to study papermaking in September with the Macarthur Foundation award winner Timothy Barrett. Rachel Doriss TX and her husband Joel Hamilton welcomed
Stephanie Diamond PR (NYC)
participated in the summer show Day-to-day at NYC’s Martos Gallery. The exhibition showcased artists who incorporate the notion of time in their work.
Maria Virginia (Marivi) Gonzalez 94 GD Maria’s project Interior Landscapes earned an honorable mention in the photo competition sponsored by Duke University’s Daylight Magazine/Center for Documentary Studies. She lives in Asuncion, Paraguay.
Eric Sabee 97 IL Eric (American Canyon, CA) illustrated the new fast-paced fantasy card game Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer (Gary Games). It features multiple factions, demons, heroes and constructs from different planes in a battle to determine which player will ascend to godhood.
their first child, Coco Doriss Hamilton, on December 23, 2009. They live in Brooklyn, NY.
Museum of Craft and Design. Each artist used either paper, wire, wood or fiber to transform a section of the museum.
Jason Fernald ID and
Gwendolyn Fernald (Portsmouth, NH) welcomed a daughter, Kaia Lizabeth, on May 26, 2010. Kaia joins her big sister Chloe. Alicia Goodwin GD (Kittery,
ME) opened Drift Contemporary Art Gallery in Kittery, ME last spring, with the goal of attracting top-notch emerging and established visual artists from all over the country. She has featured work by alumni Frank Poor MFA 92 SC (Cranston, RI), Caroline Rufo 88 GD (Needham, MA), Lorraine Nam 10 IL (Brooklyn, NY), Tyson Jacques 10 PR (Providence), Joe Delaney BArch 85 (Portland, ME), Christian Berman BLA 10 (Westport, CT), Adam Doyle 98 IL (Long Island City, NY) and Jane Hesser 02 PH (Providence) in various exhibitions throughout the summer and fall. Alicia will be participating in the Takt Kunstprojektraum artistin-residence program in Berlin, Germany during November and December 2010.
Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute (2009, Knopf Books for Young Readers), the first book in the Lunch Lady graphic novel series by Jarrett Krosoczka IL, won the Children’s Choice Award for 3rd to 4th Grade Book of the Year. It was also nominated for a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for Best Publication for Kids at Comic Con in July.
Amanda DumasHernandez 97 GD Amanda’s Chicken Purse appeared as the cover image on the July 2010 issue of the French news publication Courier International. She lives in Atlanta.
Paul Hayes IL (San Francisco) has been making large-scale installation art from paper and participated in FourSuite: 4 Artists | 4 Materials | 4 Sites, a summer show at the San Francisco To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
fall 2010
53
In July and August Daniel Bruce SC (Long Island City, NY) exhibited Make A Wish, an interactive sculptural installation, at WAVE HILL Sunroom Project Space in Bronx, NY. Katie Herzog PT (Los Angeles)
Andrew Kuo 99 GD Andrew’s illustration/commentary piece Wheel of Worry ran in the New York Times Magazine’s May 16, 2010 issue focusing on worth.
2000 Last summer Dan Abdo FAV and Jason Patterson 99 FAV (both Brooklyn, NY) created the dance project Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Moving’ with Art Spiegelman and Pilobolus at Joyce Theater in NYC. In May Carey Ascenzo SC (Brooklyn, NY) was part of a 64-artist exhibition called WORKS ON PAPER at Big&Small/ Casual Gallery at her studio building in Long Island City. Olivia (Olive) Moffett Scappaticci was born to Rachel Moffet ID and Nick Scappaticci ID on July 28, 2010. The family lives in Cranston, RI. Jack Ryan BArch (see page 11)
2001 10th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Adrianna Bamber IL (San
Francisco) exhibited in PONY UP, BOT last summer at Design Guild SF. (See also page 7.)
had a solo painting show called Informel at LA’s Actual Size Gallery in August.
Jen White PH and Sharon
Matt Lamothe FAV, Julia
Katy Horan IL and Daniel
Noh PR got together in Los
Rothman IL, Jenny Volvovski
Angeles last year to launch a web design, branding and graphic design studio; in 2010 they renamed it Drawing from Memory. The new name is a toast to Jen and Sharon’s long history together as friends as well as a metaphor for the concrete realization of abstract ideas.
GD (see page 6)
Bloomfield FAV were married on April 3, 2010 in Austin, TX, where they now live.
2002
Ryan Kundrat ID was married
on October 3, 2009 to Amy Grabowski in Eastford, CT. The couple lives in Bethel, CT and both work at ARK Projects, a public relations and design firm. Ryan has also started Ryan Kundrat Jewelry. Jesse Ragan GD (Brooklyn, NY)
has been helping to plan and coordinate a new certificate program in typeface design at Cooper Union. Jesse is teaching the core hands-on typeface design class in the program, which debuted this fall.
Uhuru, the Brooklyn-based furniture design company headed up by Bill Hilgendorf ID and Jason Horvath ID, launched its second “local materials” line for New York Design Week in May. Uhuru’s Coney Island Line is crafted from reclaimed wood taken from the demolished iconic boardwalk. Tana Martin Llinas GD was
2003 Amy (Exner) Bloom BArch
and Jeremy Bloom ID welcomed new baby Max Paul Bloom on Sunday, June 27 at 1:15pm in Winchester, MA. Michele (Glick) Erez PT/MFA 04 AE is living in Israel, where she teaches English for Berlitz and makes jewelry and cards. She got married in May 2010; she and her husband are raising a guide dog puppy.
Brian Martin 98 IL Arrival (oil on canvas, 23.5x32") is among Brian’s painting featured in BroadstreetStudio Exhibition (thebroadstreetstudio.com), a three-person show held in October at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. Brian lives with his wife Amy in Seekonk, MA.
Sonjie Feliciano Solomon 02 ID
Joel Savitzky (NYC) married
Sharon Mary Martin on June 4 at Auberge de Soleil, a hotel in Rutherford, CA. Joel is a senior art director for Rosetta, an advertising and marketing agency headquartered in Hamilton, NJ. He works in the NYC office.
Sonjie had a summer solo show at Causey Contemporary in Brooklyn, where she lives, and also worked on a recent installation by SOFTlab architecture at Bridge Gallery in NYC.
In August Sarah Small PH (Brooklyn, NY) showed work in a photography exhibition at Bleicher/Golightly in Santa Monica, CA. The show featured seven artists whose work explores intriguing narratives.
Tell us what you’re up to and we’ll share your news with the RISD community.
Here are some of the ways you can contribute to your magazine:
upcoming deadlines:
1/ submit updates (professional and personal) to class notes email risdxyz@risd.edu (subject line: class notes)
April 1 for Spring 2011 (due out in May)
2/ send us your responses to the content of each issue email risdxyz@risd.edu (subject line: feedback)
To submit information via post, write to:
3/ send in story ideas for articles or subject matter you’d like us to cover email risdxyz@risd.edu (subject line: story suggestions)
To speak to the editor: call Liisa at 401 454-6349
RISDXYZ
had a solo show in May at the Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco entitled These Are the Days of Miracle and Wonder. Forty of his latest works were on view, including one that was also featured in the March 2010 issue of Dwell magazine.
married in 2009 to Leopoldo Llinas and now lives in Miami, FL. She is owner of the design and branding studio R+M Collaborative.
Kristian Rangel BGD (The Woodlands, TX) was part of an October group show entitled Subtle Arrangements at the Gelabert Studios Gallery in New York.
Send us your XYZ info!
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Alex Lukas IL (Philadelphia)
December 15 for Winter 2011 (focused on food /due out in February)
RISD XYZ, Two College Street, Providence, RI 02903
Sarah (Acheson) Rand 98 IL/MAT 99 Sarah and her husband David Rand 97 GD are excited to announce the birth of Jack Marley Rand, born on July 24, 2010 in Mount Kisco, NY. Jack is shown here with his big brother Max, who is 4. Sarah continues to teach studio art to students in grades 6-12 at Wooster School in Danbury, CT.
The LA Times Magazine highlighted young LA designers in May, and David Wiseman FD was among them. David is currently working on a commission for Dior in China for an installation that incorporates 500 porcelain lily-of-the-valley blossoms—a motif commonly used by Dior—that will cover part of the ceiling and walls of the flagship Dior boutique in Shanghai.
2004 Arla Bascom TX (Brooklyn, NY) Michael Sherman IL
Nancy Wells AP re-launched
(Brooklyn, NY) wrote to RISD about his busy summer exhibition schedule including shows in Basel, Switzerland, Chelsea and Harlem.
her brand Smashing Darling in Providence last spring. She moved to New York four years ago and took a break from her own designing, but now she’s back and having fun working in Providence. Check out her new line at smashingdarling.com.
David Sherry PH (Brooklyn, NY) was included in MoMA P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center’s Greater New York exhibition this summer and fall.
Mila Zelkha BArch 01 Mint Condition Homes, the company Mila runs in Oakland, CA to transform foreclosed properties into quality, affordable housing, recently won two 2010 Partners in Preservation Awards from the Oakland Heritage Alliance. “I renovate these homes sustainably, using green materials and a vintage-inspired aesthetic that highlights the historic character of each one,” she says.
BEFORE
sold her company’s pottery at SummerWare in July. SummerWare is the first of a series of seasonal market days showcasing the talents and new work of local ceramic artists in Brooklyn. Bryan Boyer IA (San Miguel,
CA) is a design lead at Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund— an independent government endowment that reports to the Finnish Parliament. His Strategic Design Unit is working on Helsinki Design Lab 2010. Noah Breuer PR (Brooklyn, NY) participated in New Prints 2010/ Spring, a group exhibition at the International Print Center New York in May and June. Work for the show was selected by Philip Pearlstein.
AFTER
Melissa Santram Chernov IL
was featured on “Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” a blog about books, on May 2, 2010. Last spring Anthony Dihle GD (Washington, DC) gave a visiting artist lecture on design and printmaking at Towson University in Baltimore. Michael Neff PH (Brooklyn, NY) showed in Structured, a group exhibition on view last spring at Spattered Columns at Art Connects in SoHo.
Last spring Heather Hedin Peacock IL (Phoenixville, PA) exhibited in the Yellow Springs Art Show 2010 in Chester Springs, PA, and was named the 2010 Art Show Poster winner. Last spring Ryan Trecartin FAV (Los Angeles) took part in Seven on Seven: Connecting Art & Technology at the New Museum in NYC. Organized by RHIZOME, the event paired seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenged them to develop something new—an application, social media, artwork or product— in one day. This fall the Museum of Contemporary Art Pacific Design Center in LA hosted an exhibition of his piece Any Ever, which he has been working on since 2007. (See also page 31.) Who Needs the Explorers Club Anyway, a solo exhibition by Christopher Ulivo PT (Brooklyn, NY), was held earlier this fall at Susan Inglett Gallery in NYC. Christopher was featured recently in Time Out New York.
Jane Kim 03 PR In addition to earning her BA in Science Illustration from California State University last spring, Jane participated in the student show Illustrating Nature at the Pacific Grove Natural History Museum. One of her illustrations was selected to promote the exhibition in the spring issue of ARTWORKS Magazine.
2005 Jamie Allen IL received a full
scholarship from the Dedalus Foundation to participate in the Vermont Studio Center Residency Program. She focused on mixedmedia paintings during her four-week stay in October. Follow her work at jamierallen.com. Character Design for Games and Animation volumes 1 and 2, movies by Cameron S. Davis IL (Cornelius, OH), were released in July by The Gnomon Workshop. Cameron walks the watcher through his creative designmaking process from story idea to fully rendered design and discusses character design fundamentals. Mark Ellingwood ID has developed ProPel Paddles, paddles for canoeing, kayaking and whitewater rafting that can be used by people with varying physical abilities and mobility. He explains that he was motivated by his love of the outdoors and a desire to develop tools for people who have limited choices in current equipment. Look for the paddles and more at propelpaddles.com. Aaron Gilbert PT (Brooklyn,
NY) won the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award is presented to a “young American painter of distinction.” To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
fall 2010
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2005 continued Timothy Liles FD launched his
three-piece furniture collection New New England in May at the CITE Goes America exhibition. The show was held at the CITE Showroom in NYC and was co-curated by Alissia MelkaTeichroew MID 04. Cara Llewellyn IL is a senior designer in the children’s book department at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and she recently moved to Boston’s South End. She has designed a large number of books including Bone Soup by Cambria Evans and Little Panda by Renata Liwska. She had the pleasure of working with David Macaulay BArch 69 on Built to Last, a newly illustrated, colorful compendium of his beautiful classics Castle, Cathedral and Mosque. Sung Hee “Katie” Park GD and Dr. Jason Jikang Song were married on June 20, 2010 at the Tides Estate in North Haledon, NJ. Katie is working in Manhattan as a graphic designer at Coty, the fragrance maker, where she specializes in packaging design.
When I Was Six, an exhibition of recent work by Eric Telfort IL, was featured at the Bulawayo Art Gallery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where he lives.
Matthew Mignanelli 05 IL Earlier this fall, the Medicine Agency Gallery in San Francisco featured Matthew’s newest paintings on birch panel, canvas and paper. The NYC-based artist’s work was also included in the Awesome Number One Big Fun Group Show! at the same gallery. His recent solo exhibition at Recoat Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland nearly sold out.
Lana Williams TX* (Wilmette, IL) was part of designboom mart at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC last spring.
2006 Kelly Eident AP (Woodbridge,
CT) has created a witty dress that is printed with the cuts of meat that correspond to each body part. Brandon Herman PH (Los Angeles) took part in a group exhibition at Envoy Enterprises in NYC called Blue, Bluer, Orange Blues.
2007 Alex Auriema AR (Woodstock,
VT) is one of the recipients of the Transient Spaces—The Tourist Syndrome research and production grant. His residency took place from February to April at Lanificio25 in Naples, in cooperation with the Franco Rendano Association and the program napoliconnected. Alex presented his residency project, Economy of Dissonance, at the Transient Spaces—The Tourist Syndrome, Napoli exhibition in April. Meghan Gordon PT (NYC) had a solo show at Michael Rosenthal Gallery in San Francisco in September. She will be in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace program from September through May; she also received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in painting this year. Rachel Guardiola PT is serving as an environmental education extension agent for the US Peace Corps in Saint Louis, Senegal. Her blog can be found at rachelguardiola .blogspot.com. Xephyr Inkpen IL (Pascoag, RI)
designed and produced three articles of clothing/costuming for the Pyramid Collection national catalogues (pyramid collection.com). Sales are going very well; Xephyr has moved production to India and is looking into expanding the clothing line as well as beginning a jewelry line. For the past six years Megha Khandelwal GD (New Delhi, India) has been designing, manufacturing and supplying her line of hand-crafted sterling silver jewelry to design houses, boutiques and retailers in NYC,
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California and Dallas. She has plans to open a US flagship jewelry store for her company Libra in the near future. Last summer Sami Nerenberg ID (San Francisco) returned from Kathmandu, Nepal, where she was working as a marketing and sustainability consultant for a social enterprise. Chardonnay Pickard IL
became public relations director at Clodagh Design in December 2009 after assisting with a variety of successful launches, including the W [hotel] Fort Lauderdale, Yogaworks SOHO, and products for Bentley Prince Street, Mark David, Perennials Fabrics, Visual Comfort and Duralee fabrics. She is responsible for the promotion of all Clodagh Design, Clodagh Signature and
Jessica Hess 03 IL Jessica’s work was included in several shows last spring, including Looking East at Galerie d’Art Yves Laroche in Montreal, Singles at Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, MA, Selections From the Cultural Corridor V at the Storefronts Artists Project in Pittsfield, MA, and As They See It at White Walls expansion gallery in San Francisco, where she lives. In addition, one of her illustrations was published in San Francisco Weekly’s “Best of SF 2010” issue.
Clodagh Collection projects, products and events. Clodagh Design is located in New York’s Noho neighborhood. Nikolay Saveliev GD (NYC), Jessica Walsh 08 GD (NYC), Michael Freimuth 03 GD (Har-
rison, NY) and Joe Marianek 03 GD (Providence) are among the 50 winners in the Young Guns 8 competition sponsored by the Art Directors Club. ADC Young Guns is an international, cross-disciplinary competition
that identifies the world’s most promising young creative professionals, age 30 and under.
2008 Dino Almaguer-Cigno FD (Washington, DC) was featured at the first ever Art House Open House in Washington, DC last summer with his work Papurniture. Described by the artist as “art first, functional furniture second,” the pieces are composed of 100% recycled paper and feature no-VOC paint.
programs, make discoveries, and learn together in an informal setting. In addition, he designed and implemented engaging educational programs for over 200 young people at local community centers to bring the museum’s activities to children in need.
Diana Schoenbrun 04 IL Based in Brooklyn, Diana wrote, illustrated and made the silly creatures featured in her new book Beasties: How To Make 22 Mischievous Monsters That Go Bump in the Night (Penguin Perigee, August 2010).
Asher Dunn FD let RISD
know that he has started his own studio, Studio Dunn, in Pawtucket, RI. In May the studio launched its first collection of contemporary furnishings and a website, studiodunn.com. Asher also exhibited at the 2010 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in NYC. Elizabeth Grammaticas PT (Boston) recently organized and participated in Teen TV Residue, a group show at The Distillery Gallery in South Boston. Mike Hahn ID (see page 9) Charlie Immer IL (Hagerstown, MD) had a solo show at NYC’s Last Rites Gallery during the month of June. His show Peeled studies what lies beneath when smooth creatures peel away layers and reveal their complex inner workings. Harrison Love IL was featured
in The Late Work, a book of artwork from several artists creating a dialogue on the future of art. Margaret Middleton ID (Oakland, CA) wrote an article for her blog that was also published on Museum 2.0, a blog by Nina Simon. In “A Tale of Two
University Museums” she discussed the RISD Museum and the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab, focusing on the difference between museum users and museum visitors.
as an assistant art teacher for the Lower School. In the meantime, I have decided to continue working on my own art, experimenting with different forms and media.”
Laura “London” Shirreff TX and Joseph Segal MFA 09 TX are part of Waste Not Want Not, a design collective in Providence that specializes in creative reuse. The artists and designers use sophisticated techniques— machine knitting, shibori dying and silk screening, among others—on discarded, unwanted and recyclable materials, from t-shirts to cashmere to bullets, to create inspired and one-ofa-kind clothing, accessories and jewelry.
Korakrit Arunanondchai PR (Brooklyn, NY) was interviewed by The Bangkok Post last summer because his work is starting to appear in art galleries; it’s also in demand in the technology and fashion industries. For the Dell Design Studio, which he was selected for in summer 2009, he came up with four abstract patterns that are now available to customers.
2009 Monica Alisse GD wrote to RISD: “My animation Guess The Typeface, based on a Typeradio recording, has been screened in The Graphic Design Museum in Breda, The Netherlands for a Typo Film Festival (April 2009) and also chosen with around 34 other short typography animations for Upload Cinema’s monthly screenings in Cinema De Uitkijk in Amsterdam. I now live in Madrid, Spain, working
To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
John Verdery IL (see page 7) Sarah Young SC won the 2010
Danny Kim ID (see page 8)
Outstanding Student Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center. Her work was featured in the October issue of Sculpture magazine and in the Grounds For Sculpture Fall/ Winter Exhibition catalogue.
Fuzzy Insides, a film directed by
2011
Michaela Olsen FAV, was one
Samantha Gosling IL/PT, who
of ten films chosen for the first-ever Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival held in May.
calls art her “territory,” earned the 2010 Bermuda Society of Arts (BSoA) Bursary award.
2010
Jake Zien GD (see page 9)
Dorion Barill IL (Pittsburgh, PA) was the curator for a show of fellow RISD graduates called No More Hotdogs at the DV8 Gallery in the Pittsburgh area. Other 2010 alumni participating included Christina Svenningsen PR (Katonah, NY), Alison Dubois IL (NYC), Myles Dunigan PR (Worcester, MA), Marlene Frontera IL (Barcelona, Spain) and KJ Martinet IL (NYC).
Work by Charlie Thornton BArch (New Bedford, MA) and his father John Thornton was featured in a two-person show that just completed its run at Phillips Academy’s Gelb Gallery in Andover, MA.
Connie Weng AP and Emma Walsh AP won summer
internships through the Fashion Scholarship Fund, a national nonprofit association consisting of influential members of the fashion community. They were two of only fifty-six students chosen for the prestigious positions; Connie worked at Donna Karan and Emma at Polo Ralph Lauren.
Anna Kukuchek 06 GD + William Keith Zollman II BArch 06 Anna and William (Phoenix) were married on April 17, 2010 at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, AZ.
Art Buyer Magazine (Spring/ Summer 2010) featured Zoe Brookes IL and Allie Runnion IL and their final projects for Artistic License, a course taught by Mary Jane Begin 85 IL in RISD’s Illustration Department. Carl Maxwell Douglas FAV (Nashville, TN) was employed at Providence Children’s Museum as an AmeriCorps Museum Educator from September 2009 to August 2010. At the museum, he facilitated hands-on, openended play to encourage visiting children and their families to explore interactive exhibits and fall 2010
57
KEY current majors AP Apparel Design Arch Architecture CR
Ceramics
DM
Digital + Media
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
former majors AD Advertising Design AE Art + Design Education LA Landscape Architecture MD
Machine Design
TC
Textile Chemistry
TE
Textile Engineering
FIfth-year bachelor’s degrees BArch Architecture BGD
Graphic Design
BID
Industrial Design
BIA Interior Architecture
A Tradition of Play Both in the studio and beyond, every generation of RISD students has intrinsically understood that creativity springs from a willingness to play around and try new things—including futzing with apparel on fashionable dolls just prior to WWII, acting in the student pageant in 1913 or dressing in style for the 1961 artists’ ball.
BLA Landscape Architecture master’s degrees
MArch Architecture MAT
Teaching
MFA
Fine Arts
MID
Industrial Design
MIA
Interior Architecture
MLA Landscape Architecture OTHER CEC
Continuing Education Certificate
FS
enrolled for Foundation Studies only
* attended RISD, but no degree awarded
deaths Joseph Smith O’Neil 38
Diploma of Pawcatuck, CT on July 3, 2010. Joyce G. (Swirsky) Franklin
44 PT of Brewster, MA on August 8, 2010.
RISDXYZ
Barbara Weber 49 IA of Essex,
CT and West Newbury, VT on August 2, 2009. Dennis Izzi 50 AE of North
Providence, RI on August 19, 2010. Barbara C. (Warner) Maslen
Alice Fromuth-Robinson
51 LA of Yarmouthport, MA on April 8, 2010.
48 PT of Olympia, WA and Lunenburg, VT on February 24, 2010.
William M. Wagner 55 GD
Kenneth J. Bosted BArch 69 of Crystal River, FL on March 22, 2010.
of East Providence, RI on July 14, 2010.
Denis Pratt 72 AR* of
of Tolland, CT on January 14, 2010.
Norma Berger Green 45 AP of Arlington, VA on July 28, 2010.
Raymond Crompton 49 MD of North Smithfield, RI on August 4, 2010. 58
Walter Francis James 49 MD
Arthur P. O’Sullivan 53 MD
of Newport, RI on May 27, 2010. Lionel B. Sherrow 55 ID of Huntington Valley, PA on April 23, 2010.
James Rowe Fowlie 57 CR
of Tampa, FL on April 22, 2010. Stephen P. Irza 57 MD of
Woonsocket, RI on June 20, 2010. Richard Wood 57 AP of
Montpelier, VT on January 8, 2010. Donn DeVita 58 IL* of East
Dennis, MA on March 13, 2010. Benjamin Weiss 67 MA of
Providence, RI on August 11, 2010.
Kennebunk, ME on July 7, 2010. Andrew Boettcher 82 GD
of San Francisco, CA on June 26, 2010. Marilyn Puschak 83 GL* of Mollymook, Australia on November 11, 2009. Andrew S. Bray BArch 85
of Severna Park, MD on July 12, 2010. Walter F. Pasieka BArch 87 of Greer, SC on August 21, 2010.
photos courtesy of the RISD Archives / top: Arthur Griffin © 1944
MA Art Education (formerly MAE)
Graduate Class Notes
1961 50th reunion October 7– 9, 2011
1966 45th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Julie Wagner MFA SC (El Rito,
NM) recently exhibited new work at The Gallery at Pioneer Bluffs in Matfield Green, KS.
Bunny Harvey 67 PT/MFA 72
Judith Unger 69 SC/MAT 70 CR
Bunny’s paintings are featured in a solo show at Providence’s Chazan Gallery at Wheeler through November 10. Earlier this fall her work was shown in Burlington, VT, at Wellesley’s Davis Museum and in Denver. This year she’s living at her home in Vermont while on leave from Wellesley, where she teaches.
Judith’s large sculptural vessels were on view in Woman, a summer show at the Catamount Arts Gallery in St. Johnsbury, VT, where she lives.
his book of the same title, which Lark Books published in a revised edition in 2009. Alma Davenport MFA PT
(Jamestown, RI) exhibited photographs from her series Totems at Gallery 4 in Tiverton, RI. Many of the pictures were twisted versions of personally significant, autobiographical shots. Also featured in the show were selfportraits by Jane Tuckerman MFA PT (Westport, MA) in 1973. Jane appeared in many forms in the series: covered in a doll dress or obstructed by a cloud-like blur.
Ames National Juried Exhibition at Borderland State Park’s Ames Mansion in North Easton, MA and Abstraction in Photography at the Vermont Photography Workshop.
1973 David Akiba MFA PH (Jamaica Plains, MA) showed photographs earlier this fall in Knot This Broken Thread, a solo exhibition at Alibi Fine Art in Chicago.
1976
Two photos by Rosalie N. Post
James Engebretson MFA CR
67 PT/MFA PH, Sands of Change and Green Bats, Barker Dam, CA, were accepted into the Blanche
retired recently after teaching glass at the University of Wisconsin River Falls for 33
35th reunion October 7– 9, 2011
1971 40th reunion October 7– 9, 2011
1977 years. He continues to operate his own studio in Hudson, WI. Transit, a sculptural installation by Wendy Ross MAE (Bethesda, MD), was included in the spring exhibition A Century of Design: The US Commission of Fine Arts, 1910-2010 at the National Design Building in Washington, DC.
1975 right: © Kathie Florsheim 2008. All rights reserved.
Last summer Steven Branfman MAT had an exhibition called Mastering Raku at Newport [RI] Potters Guild. The show corresponded to
Kathie Florsheim MFA 74 PH Gotcha is from Kathie’s latest documentary photographic series Living on the Edge, which focuses on a coastal community in Matunuck, RI. To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
In July the façade of Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art came alive with streaming poetry presented by Jenny Holzer MFA PT (Hoosick Falls, NY), who collaborated with choreographer and dancer Miguel Gutierrez to present a new work in the Co Lab: Process + Performance series at the ICA. Susan Sklarek MFA SC, who teaches in RISD’s Textiles Department and through Continuing Education, earned CE’s 2010-11 Teacher of Excellence Award, which was presented at last spring’s CE certificate program graduation ceremony.
1978 New works by Laurence Young MAE PR were featured
over the summer at Alden Gallery in Provincetown, MA, where he lives. fall 2010
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1979 Linda Hudgins MAE sent in
this update on her teachings around the world: “After turning over the Spartanburg Day School to other teachers who also love RISD (we’ve had several students admitted), in 1992 I went off to teach art in Botswana. After three years I went to China, where I taught art for a year before teaching English in Guilin for two years. Home after that to set up studio again. The rest is on my website, lindahudgins art.com. Now I’m meeting interesting RISD graduates in this area (Polk County, NC).”
1981 30th reunion October 7– 9, 2011
Robert Tedrowe MFA FD (Columbus, IN) wrote in to say that he’s producing furniture, decorative objects and mixedmedia sculpture in his shop and gallery in south central Indiana.
1986
1982
25th reunion October 7–9, 2011
Brad Buckley MFA SC (Potts
Point, Australia) has started a new position as associate dean (Research) at Sydney College of the Arts. His new book Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The Artist, the PhD, and the Academy (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2010) has been getting positive reviews around the world; he convened a conference loosely based on the book with Tim Marshall (provost, The New School) and Joel Towers (dean, Parsons) in October. His work was also on view recently in
John Willis MFA 86 PH Since 1992 John (jwillis.net) has been photographing at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, earning the trust of the Oglala Lakota Sioux community and its elders. In Views from the Reservation (Center for American Places, September 2010), his black and white images and color plates—accompanied by poetry and other words from the reservation—paint a poignant portrait. Ken Burns applauds it as “a beautiful, painful book” and RISD Photography Professor Henry Horenstein 71 PH/MFA 73 confirms that “every photograph is a classic: carefully seen, lovingly captured and painstakingly executed.” All proceeds help the reservation.
a solo show at Tsukuba [Japan] University Art Gallery and a group show at the Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax, Canada.
1988 Virginia Barrett MAT (San
Francisco) has published a travel memoir entitled Mbira Maker Blues: A Healing Journey to Zimbabwe (Jambu Press/Studio Saraswati, 2010). The book includes her own illustrations and song lyrics. Bob Martin MFA PH (Cranston, RI) exhibited Family Pictures last spring at Moses Brown School’s Krause Gallery in Providence.
1989 W. Spencer Finch MFA SC (Brooklyn, NY) was the keynote speaker at the Northeast Regional Conference of the Society for Photographic Education, held in Providence at the beginning of November. The conference focused on The Experiential in Photography.
1991 20th reunion October 7–9, 2011
1992 Katie Salen MFA GD (see
page 14-19)
1994 Bill Allen MFA PT/PR (Charlotte, NC), the interactive director at Boone Oakley, was with the firm for the relaunch of Boone Oakley.com in May 2009. The website, built completely inside of YouTube, has garnered international attention and won multiple awards, including a 2010 Cannes Gold Cyber Lion and a 2010 Webby Award.
Maryjean Viano Crowe MFA 81 PH Maryjean’s work was included in two recent exhibitions, the I-95 Triennial at the Museum of the University of Maine/Bangor and the San Diego Book Arts 3rd National Juried Show at UC/ San Diego. After 39 years of teaching, Maryjean has retired from Stonehill College and now lives in Belfast, ME.
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In June and July Susan Breary MFA PT/PR (Putney, VT) exhibited in Contemporary Naturalism at the Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe.
1996 15th reunion October 7–9, 2011
1997 Victoria Crayhon MFA PH
(Providence) received a Fulbright scholarship to do photography work in the Russian Federation for seven months starting in January 2011. She will be based in Vladivostok. KyungEn Kim MFA SC (see
pages 26-29) After 10 years as creative director at Metropolis, Criswell Lappin MFA GD (Brooklyn, NY) accepted a new position this fall as design director at Farhenheit 212, an innovation consultancy in NYC. Last spring he and his studio WellNow Design created the new design of RISD XYZ. Last spring Nermin Kura MFA CR (Providence) lectured, exhibited and taught a workshop on her clay techniques at the International Ceramic Symposium in Israel. The US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs awarded her a grant in recognition of her participation in the symposium. Gayle Wells Mandle MFA PT/
PR (Doha, Qatar) was invited to curate a show last April at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition, Beyond the War: Contemporary Iraqi Artists of the Diaspora, brought together the work of seven Iraqi artists who were forced to leave their war-torn country and now live in various parts of the world.
1999 William Christenberry MFA
FD (Washington, DC) has won the Jimmy Ernst Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The award is given to an artist “whose lifetime contribution to his or her vision has been consistent and dedicated.” You can find his work at christenberryonline.com.
Make it Bigger, a solo show by Lawrence Cromwell MFA PT/
PR (Baltimore), was featured at the Beckler Family Members Gallery in Delaware last spring and summer.
2000 Following on the heels of two RISD alumni who competed during Season 7, Kristin HaskinsSimms MFA GD (Philadelphia) was selected as a contestant on Lifetime’s popular show Project Runway. She made it through several episodes of the 8th season before being eliminated. Michele Jaquis MFA SC has
been appointed the first director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. In her new role, she oversees the interdisciplinary studio concentrations and minors (Art History, Community Arts Engagement, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Sustainability, Teacher Credential Preparation) while continuing to teach in the Integrated Learning and Artists, Community and Teaching programs.
2001 10th reunion October 7– 9, 2011 Presence (Veils), a solo show of Cynthia Farnell MFA PH’s larger-than-life photocopy transfers, was on view last spring at McClellanville [SC] Arts Center. Earlier in the year, she exhibited in Transitive Geographies: Contemporary Visions of an Evolving South at Georgia College and State University. Cynthia lives in Conway, SC. Todd Lambrix MFA SC is an
assistant professor of Core Studies at Parsons The New School for Design in NYC. Robin M. Tagliaferri 86 IL/MA (Cranston, RI) has been appointed executive director at the Forbes House Museum in Milton, MA.
2003 Work by Mark Bowers MAT (Evanston, IL) was on view recently at Chicago’s Ann Nathan Gallery, where he has been represented since 2007. His paintings
Paul Housberg 75 PT/MFA 79 GL Paul specializes in site-specific and architecturally integrated works in glass and recently unveiled this installation at the Governor Philip W. Noel Judicial Complex (formerly the Kent County Courthouse) in Warwick, RI. He lives in Jamestown, RI.
the company one of the “100 Brilliant Companies of the year” to watch. She exhibited last summer at the New York International Gift Fair. Intertidal, a solo show of photographs by Jesse Burke MFA PH (Rumford, RI), was exhibited recently at Clampart in NYC.
Dungjai Pungauthiakan MFA
GD (Brooklyn, NY) has been promoted to creative director at Metropolis magazine, where she has worked as the associate art director since graduating from RISD.
2005 Melissa Borrell MFA JM has
Shadi Khadivi MArch (Albany,
moved her studio, Melissa Borrell Design, to Austin, TX. Entrepreneur Magazine named
NY) married Jason D’Cruz on July 10, 2010. They met in Providence. Jennifer Lin MArch (Cambridge,
Mary Kocol MFA 87 PH Blooming Cherry Tree at Twilight, Somerville, MA (2010, archival inkjet photograph, 23x34.5") is among the photos Mary exhibited earlier this fall in Twilight Garden, a solo show at Gallery NAGA in Boston.
were featured in Art Chicago 2009 and he was recently selected for the Vermont Studio Center’s Frankel Anderson Chicago Artist Award. He completed a residency at the center in August. Mark is a tenured instructor at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL.
2004 In the summer and early fall work by Deana Lawson MFA PH (Trinity, NC) was included in the Greater New York show at MoMA P.S.1.
After becoming friends while working on their MFAs at RISD, Adam Eckstrom MFA PT and Lauren Was MFA 04 SC progressed to couplehood in Brooklyn in 2006 and were married in 2007. They also began to collaborate artistically, finding inspiration in the discarded lottery tickets they’d collect on walks with their dog. The results—sculptural installations created from thousands of lottery tickets—are staggeringly colorful, meaningful and bittersweet.
Alissia Melka-Teichroew MID
(Brooklyn, NY) of byAMT Studio presented her Jointed Jewels collection in New York last spring. The line is a union of new and old, organic and industrial, functional and decorative. She also presented her Peasant Collection—a playful and innovative furniture series of friendly and familiar shapes that are balanced with slightly surreal and off-kilter features.
Matt Monk MFA 91 GD Findings: Matthew Monk was on view last summer at FARM Project Space and Gallery in Wellfleet, MA, which Susie Nielsen MFA 05 GD founded to focus on contemporary processdriven art. Matt is a professor of Graphic Design at RISD.
MA) was appointed to the board of directors for the New England Foundation for the Arts last summer. She is an architect at Linnea 5 Inc in Boston. Fo Wilson MFA FD (Milwaukee, WI) curated The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the
Boundaries of Contemporary Craft for the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. The exhibition is open until February 6, 2011 and includes work by RISD alumni Brian Boldon MFA 88 CR, Shaun Bullens MFA 07 FD and Susan Working MFA 00 FD.
2006 Ashley Pigford MFA GD
(Newark, DE) had a solo exhibition last spring at Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI. Lauren Bollettino MArch
married Nicholas Sberlati on October 24, 2009. They moved from Manhattan to Chicago shortly after the wedding.
2007 Adam Geremia MID (see
page 9) Anjali Srinivasan MFA GL
(Haryana, India) and Yuka Otani MFA 07 GL (Forest Hills, NY) were co-curators of The Post-Glass Video Festival, an exhibition that debuted at Heller Gallery in New York and traveled to Sydney, Australia and other locations. Christopher Robbins MFA DM (Little Neck, NY) has joined the SUNY Purchase College sculpture faculty as an assistant professor of Art + Design, a tenure-track position.
Kevin Morosini MFA PR and Jerry Mischak 73 PT exhibited
together last spring in the show Two Guys From Providence at DRIVE-BY in Watertown, MA. A painting by Mark Pack MFA PT (Wilmington, DE) was acquired recently by The New Community South Hospital in Indianapolis.
To submit updates for class notes, email risdxyz@risd.edu.
fall 2010
61
2008 Jeanne Jo MFA DM (NYC)
and Milton Stevenson MFA SC established a gallery in Brooklyn, NY called Tompkins Projects in fall 2009. Last summer Jeanne’s work was shown in Objectified: the domestication of the industrial at the Honfleur Gallery in Washington, DC. She also curated The Wrong Side of Reno: 30 Years of Punk and Hardcore Music from the Biggest Little City, an exhibition that’s open at the Nevada Museum of Art through March 2011. She also recently began doctoral studies at the University of Southern California. Making Allyah, a video by Nathaniel Katz MFA DM (Jupiter, FL) and Valentina Curandi, was screened in the Moscow [Russia] Biennial for Young Artists in July.
New Natives, another video they made together, was selected for cameraVideo at the Fondazione March in Padova, Italy and the Tina B. Festival in Prague, both in October; it also appeared at the LOOP festival in Barcelona, Spain (May) and the Kaunas in Art festival in Lithuania (July). Nathaniel also collaborated with an Italian and a German artist for a recent show called Hinterland at Dada Post, an art space in Berlin, Germany. Michael Radyk MFA TX (Philadelphia) has been selected as the fall visiting artist-inresidence in fibers at Oregon College of Art and Craft. During his residency, he will make two presentations and continue his textiles research by exploring light, material and the interaction of place and abstraction.
Annie Feldmeier Adams MFA 02 PT Requiem: Lincoln Park Conservatory, Annie’s public art sound installation, recently transformed the Fern Room at Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago, where she lives.
Yong Joo (Providence) was among the 58 artists from around the world invited to participate in LOOT 2010, the popular biennial sales exhibition of contemporary jewelry held in October at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC. Sandra Enterline 83 JM (San Francisco) and Kiwon Wang MFA 91 JM (NYC) also participated in the MAD show again this year. Jong Joo’s piece Reconfiguring the Ordinary (velcro + silver, 2x4x 2") is shown here.
Recess Activities, Inc. in NYC was the site of Brand New Bag, the spring 2010 MFA Sculpture exhibition. Terra Goolsby MFA SC, Anders Johnson MFA SC, Jonggeon Lee MFA SC, Alee Peoples MFA SC, R.C. Sayler MFA SC, Joshua Webb MFA SC and Brett Windham MFA SC all showed their work.
Tom Weis MID and Emily
The Wassaic Project, an artist-run,
Yong Joo Kim MFA 09 JM
Rothschild MID (see page 9)
2009 Shoham Arad MID (Boston) wrote to RISD to let us know that she is working with Chris McCray MID 08 (Syracuse, NY) at Syracuse University on a project called COLAB; an article she wrote about the project was published recently on Core77.com. Caleb Larsen MFA DM (see
page 8) Eli Levenstein MFA FD (NYC)
wrote in to say: “I’m very excited to be a part of Material World, a show that opened on April 24 at Mass MoCA, and will continue through to February 27, 2011. I was commissioned by curator Susan Cross to design and install a reading room to accompany the installations of artists Michael Beutler, Orly Genger, Wade
Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen, Tobias Putrih, Alison Shotz 87 TX and Dan Steinhilber. In creating the space of the Reading Room, my primary goal was to offer a moment for pause and reflection on the work of these artists. While the room is inviting, it can at times be confrontational as it plays with the fluid boundaries between art and design, object and space, nature and technology, and interior and exterior space.” Monica Martinez MFA SC
(San Francisco) had a recent solo show at EyeLevel BQE Gallery in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. City-inspired 3D drawings by Luke O’Sullivan MFA PR (Jamaica Plains, MA) were on view last summer at arsenalARTS in Watertown, MA. Huy Vu MFA GD (see page 9)
Jenna Goldberg MFA 04 FD Falling Water Cabinet (2008, painted, carved and handprinted basswood and poplar, 75x28x18") is among the pieces Jenna exhibited in a summer solo show at Gallery NAGA in Boston. She lives in Providence.
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sustainable, multidisciplinary arts organization in “the hamlet of Wassaic, NY,” is run by Colin Williams MFA DM, Bowie Zunino MFA 09 SC and Jeffrey Barnett-Winsby MFA 06 PH and has proven to be hugely successful. The new organization has already won awards, including the 2010 Historic Preservation Commendation Award from The Garden Club of America. Ryan Arruda MFA GD (Worcester, MA), Lauren V. Francesconi MFA GD (Providence), Lindsay M. Kinkade MFA GD (Providence), Jae Un Jeon MFA GD (La Crescenta, CA), Alpkan Kirayoglu MFA GD (NYC), Cameron D. Neat MFA GD (Seattle), Marcos A. Ojeda MFA GD (Providence), Heather K. Phillips MFA GD (Pleasanton, CA), Elise S. Porter MFA GD (NYC), Kate M. Quinby MFA GD (Providence),
2010
Taylor M. Stapleton MFA GD
Based on the quality of her work, Sooyeon Kim MFA JM was a finalist for the 2010 Daisy Soros Prize for Fine Arts, which offers fine arts graduate students the opportunity to study at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg in Austria.
and Jeshurun L. Webb MFA GD (Providence) set up a shop based on their thesis exhibitions and exhibited at the Brooklyn Flea over the summer. Visit the Make, Do website at makedoshop.com to learn more about the designers and their work.
Wings for your pinkies. Wear a pair or fly with one. Pinky Wings by Emily Rothschild MID 08 available in gold vermeil, white powder coated or rodium-plated
risdstore.com overnight shipments available on request 30 North Main Street | Providence, RI 02830 Questions? Contact risdstore@risd.edu or 401 454-6464 find us on Facebook + Twitter
The RISD Museum helped open the world of art and design to you when you were a student. It’s still here for you. 2010–11 exhibition highlights Lynda Benglis Changing Poses: The Artist’s Model 2011 Faculty Biennial Cocktail Culture Newly restored Ancient, Medieval and Early Renaissance galleries risdmuseum.org 20% of your Alumni Membership is directed to the Phil Seibert [BFA ’67 IA] Alumni Acquisition Fund, which supports the purchase of works of art by RISD alumni. Join today! Call 401.454.6322 or join online at risdmuseum.org/join.
Chace Center, 20 North Main Street | Providence, RI 401 277-4949 | risdworks.com
illustration by
Franklin Einspruch 91 PT
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After more than a decade of painting, Franklin began playing around with comics, the genre that got him interested in art in the first place. October to November is
among the watercolor vignettes he posts periodically on the site he created for his comics illustrations, The Moon Fell On Me (themoonfellonme.com).
Please submit your own visual commentary about anything that’s on your mind. Our favorite will appear in the next issue. For details email: risdxyz@risd.edu.