10 more
WOrds more or less
The home fascinates me because it is where we start.
Digital Bits of Home Assistant Professor John Caserta’s Digital Bits assignment got some play in the Twittersphere earlier this fall. The Graphic Design professor asked students to “collect objects that you find in and around your apartment, and draw them using HTML and CSS.” The idea is to use any one foreground and any one background color, “working only with form and counter-form.” Stylization and simplification are welcomed as long as “a faithful copy of the object” emerges. To see more, go to fc12.johncaserta.info/triennial.
Visions of Providence I was a fifth-year student at MIT in 1956 when architect Bill Warner [who just passed away this fall] was working for his master’s degree. But he set up his “workstation” in my studio, sporting (hiding behind?) a huge portrait of his first wife, Sunny Bertrand Warner 53 IL (who was my high school classmate!). Bill was a brilliant architect [credited with the massive river relocation project that transformed downtown Providence in the 1990s]. But it was my brother, RISD English Professor Mike Fink, who first discovered the Providence River [hidden under the asphalt], which extended from north of Steeple Street to the Crawford Street Bridge, and from the Providence Courthouse to the Hospital Trust Bank. Mike prepared a canoe ride with a RISD photography student, lifting manhole covers en route to determine location. And it was in the 1970s that the late RISD Professor Gerald Howes and his Architecture students published Interface: Providence, featuring text and their own illustrations of rivers, green space and trees. This is not to distract in any way from Bill Warner’s Providence—from historic Benefit Street to the uncovering of the rivers. It is merely to identify two other RISD people who made significant contributions to Bill Warner’s vision of the city. Charles B. Fink RISD Architecture Professor Emeritus
Newport, RI 06
RISDXYZ
Real Zest for Zest Having recently moved from the chilly north country of Connecticut to the warmth of the sandy beaches of the Grand Strand in Myrtle Beach, SC, I missed getting the Fall/Winter 2011/12 issue of RISD XYZ when it was published. But I couldn’t believe all the comments [in the last issue] concerning the books SEX, QUEER and CRAP, etc. (These comments? From an educated alumni audience?) I have since received that issue— two copies, in fact, and for that I thank you immensely. The first position I took after leaving RISD in 1965 was to work for a large national textbook publisher in Boston, where I served as an art director while learning all the many typographic design details in creating effective high school and college textbooks (the only gap that I felt was missing in my years at RISD). About Zest Books [Fall/Winter 11/12 issue]! Wow! Like any good ad or sales promotion, the very first job of the designer is to get the attention of the audience. And Zest Books does just that. Well done!! Rik Gobeille 65 IL Myrtle Beach, SC
Find more about all things RISD at our.risd.edu.
Illustration Professor Jean Blackburn 79 PT explaining her series of paintings based on catalogues from Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, Williams Sonoma, etc.
You can’t throw a stone without hitting someone who went to RISD. The Brothers Mueller (Kirk and Nate Mueller MFA 10 DM) in reference to walking around NYC (9.10.12)
Things you didn’t have growing up…define you. RISD President John Maeda tweeting from the GigaOM RoadMap 2012 conference (11.6.12)
I’m passionate about sculpting and grew up playing with PLAY-DOH. Ian Williams 13 SC, Hasbro’s Official PLAY-DOH Artist of the Year based on his busts of President Obama and Mitt Romney (our.risd.edu, 10.4.12)
A solid home base builds a sense of self. a Truism from Jenny
Holzer MFA 77 PT