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Club Stuff Whether it’s in New York, Hong Kong or Miami, alumni have been having fun reconnecting with each other via club events like the ones pictured here. (1, 2, 3) In October RISD/NY celebrated the season
Sweethearts to the End
with a predictably popular Wooly Ball costume dance party at The Wooly on Barclay Street. (4, 5) On
Emily (Gantner) Sola 51 IL + Bill Sola 52 PT After reading about RISD Sweethearts in the last issue, I turned a few pages and something familiar caught my eye: PORTFOLIO 1949 in the Where We Were section. It truly was a “blast from the past.” I began reading the Emily and Bill shown dancing small print on the page in this photo from the describing a ski trip PORTFOLIO 1949 yearbook. to New Hampshire during Christmas vacation in 1948. It was on that ski trip that I met my RISD sweetheart Bill Sola 52 PT. We were married a year and a half later. After Bill graduated he went on to get his MFA at Cornell in 1954. He taught art at Ticonderoga [NY] High School for the next 30 years and continued to paint throughout his life. I never finished my senior year at RISD but after our four children were all in school I started lettering trucks and soon became a very busy one-woman sign shop designing and producing signs as well as lettering trucks and boats for the next 40 years. We were married for 58 years and were sweethearts to the end. Bill died in 2008, but he is still my sweetheart.
December 1 RISD/Hong Kong welcomed President John Maeda as their special guest at an art show and artist’s ball at the Fringe Club’s lush roof garden. (6) And In south Florida, club leader Nessie Ruiz 06 PH did a bang-up job organizing a meet-up as part of the Art Basel Miami festivities in December.
More Ways to Connect Share your hard-earned career advice and ongoing inspiration with students by making your own video response to selected questions on RISD Connect. Sponsored by the Career Center and designed by Aaron Perry Zucker 09 GD of Big New Ideas, the new site encourages you to talk about your personal experiences. But you can also submit your insights in writing and propose news questions to pose to fellow alums. And thanks to Alumni Council member Jeffrey Yan BArch 01, there’s another new site that welcomes good ideas from all you alums out there who either have a story of your own to tell (via podcast) or who want to propose a fellow graduate to be interviewed. RISD Voice is designed to give alumni a central spot for sharing personal stories that are insightful, inspirational, fun, interesting and full of all the good stuff that makes our creative community so incredible.
To find out more about RISD Connect and RISD Voice, go to: connect.risd.edu and risdvoice.org.
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