nGallery Photo Gallery

The Silkroad Project

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:23:22 GMT

No Description

Merrill W. Sherman

Thu, 10 May 2007 15:38:44 GMT

RISD Board of Trustees Chairman
Merrill W. Sherman

� Photo by Constance Brown

>> press release

ICFF 2007

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:39:46 GMT

RISD + CRYSTALLIZEDT - Swarovski Elements
at ICFF 2007
May 19-22
Javits Center, NYC

Fleet Library at RISD

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 12:36:36 GMT

click to view and then right-click to download.
warning: large files = long time to load in your browser

Angela Manes and Jenna Robb

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:08:34 GMT

Angela Manes [RISD '08, Apparel Design] and Jenna Robb [RISD '08, Textiles]

artists' statement
This collection is based on the concept of the constant traveler. We were inspired by images of nomads and nature, especially people in wintry climates enveloped in animal skins and bundled in layers of fabrics. The "Modern Day Nomad" who wears these garments needs to feel that her clothes are her most constant environment and that they truly are her "home." Flexibility and versatility are important qualities of the pieces, and the knitwear is key to the feelings of safety, comfort and warmth that we wanted to evoke.

Kathrine Zeren and Maggie Davern

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:09:14 GMT

Kathrine Zeren [RISD '08, Apparel Design] and Maggie Davern [RISD '08, Textiles]

artists' statement
The detailing and silhouette of this coat collection combine Ottoman and Art Deco aesthetics. We developed several different print ideas, using both silkscreen and wood blocking techniques to print on silk. Machine embroidery was also used on the coat. We wanted to take advantage of the rich materials provided by the Italian mills, so we used mostly wools and silks for this fall collection.

Jessica Tracy and Frances Beck

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:10:12 GMT

Jessica Tracy [RISD '08, Apparel Design] and Frances Beck [RISD '08, Textiles]

artists' statement
We created our collection as a reflection of Guatemalan culture. Our initial inspiration came from Worry Dolls, and the cultural value of this tradition became a major conceptual component of the collection, along with the relationship between the Guatemalan people and their land. The collection is elegantly simple, boldly colorful and structural in a modern way. We enhanced our designs with dyeing, printing and embellishing processes, especially gold leaf and embroidery.

Emily Moon and Chung Saena

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:10:32 GMT

Emily Moon [RISD '08, Apparel Design] and Saena Chung [RISD '08, Textiles]

artists' statement
After spending the summer in Korea, we decided to explore the conflicts and mutual stereotypes that still exist between Korea and Japan as a result of the Japanese occupation. The collection focuses on the assassination of the last empress of Korea (the event that marked the beginning of the occupation) by merging the uniforms of the imperial Japanese army with the voluminous silhouette of the traditional Korean Hanbok. One of our running themes is the contrast between rounded and angular shoulders - a reference to the power struggle between the cultures.

Margarita Alvarez and Sabrina Walker

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:10:57 GMT

Margarita Alvarez [RISD '08, Apparel Design] and Sabrina Walker [RISD '08, Textiles]

artists' statement
We examined the material world of cosmetic surgery, where aesthetics are considered more important than functionality. Italian fabrics and yarns are manipulated through the process of stitching, stretching, gathering and puckering to create organic shapes and silhouettes. Our color palette was inspired by the work of British painter Jenny Saville and the synthetic quality of cosmetic surgery. The construction techniques we used mimic the concept of body modification, resulting in a collection that represents the relentless pursuit of beauty and perfection.

Apparel, Textiles and ITC

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:09:35 GMT

Participating Italian fabric companies include Seterie Giovanni Ones, Marioboselli Jersey, Marini & Cecconi, Luigi Boggio Casero, Puro Tessuto, Vitale Barberis Canonico, Serikos, Taroni, Seterie Argenti, Teseo, Tesso, Gaetano Rossini, Giancarlo Ones, Styletex. Participating Italian yarn companies include Manifattura di Legnano, Botto Poala, Filatura di Crosa, Zegna Baruffa, Luigi Boldrini, Filatura di Grignasco, Monticolor, BE.MI.VA and Lineapi�.

Milan 2008

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:31:51 GMT

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Music Friday

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:14:41 GMT

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Chihuly at RISD

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:15:47 GMT

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RISD Museum

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:20:17 GMT

>> get press releases: www.risd.edu/museum_press.cfm

>> contact Matt Montgomery: mmontgom@risd.edu

Beth Lipman

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:33:18 GMT

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Durer to Van Gogh

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:34:00 GMT

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RISD and Photo

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:35:34 GMT

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Morrison Education Gallery

Thu, 29 May 2008 16:36:21 GMT

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David Macaulay

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:47:39 GMT

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Jessie Shefrin

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:50:56 GMT

Jessie Shefrin

ARCHIVE | Chace Center Documentary Photographs

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:52:06 GMT

RISD graduate student Matt Herz [MArch, '08] is documenting the construction of the mixed-use center, which is scheduled to open in September 2008.

Chace Center

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:52:55 GMT

Chace Center
Rhode Island School of Design
opening September 27, 2008

Zumtobel

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:34:38 GMT

New Lighting in Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab

Collection 2009

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:08:06 GMT

Collection 2009 is May 16, 2008 at 7pm
Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Providence

for complete information, including how to purchase tickets, go to:
www.risd.edu/collection.cfm

Blanche Consorti

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:38:26 GMT

Blanche Consorti [RISD '09, Apparel Design]

The pieces in this collection, called Matryoshka after the Russian nesting dolls, are designed to "stack" from longest to shortest, building off the idea of layering. Using transparencies, I applied similar shapes to the garments while keeping scale in mind. Focus is on the fitted upper half and rounded hips in order to recall the doll's silhouette. Bright color and pattern was kept in mind as I chose a rich brocaded and printed silk for the dress. The looks are finished off with oversized bows that rest under the chin, a personal interpretation of the babushka scarves.

Peggy Sue Deaven

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:38:42 GMT

Peggy Sue Deaven [RISD '09, Apparel Design]

The brilliant colors and rich textures in my collection, called Faux Chill, are taken from the carnival-like Santa Monica Pier in California, and the long, flowing silhouettes and ephemeral qualities of the garments are reminiscent of a walk on Venice Beach at daybreak. Like a beach environment that is forever changing, these dresses similarly explore the ability of silks and meshes to constantly change their form and shape with a gesture of the wearer. I have hand-dyed all of the fabrics using painting, dying, bleaching and distressing techniques, and I constructed all jewelry from objects I discovered on beach walks, playing on the notion that what one pockets on a stroll can then be worn to further adorn the body.

Rebecca Libman

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:19:21 GMT

Rebecca Libman [RISD '09, Apparel Design]

Architecture, along with the way in which technology is broadening the idea of form, was the inspiration for my collection. When looking at architecture, the layers and structure, and the interrelationship between the two, becomes apparent. In a similar manner, knitted and woven manipulations create a sense of structure and optical illusion. Within the digital age, architecture is beginning to reflect complex mathematical equations that are used in order to form complicated organic shapes, and I am exploring these applications to the human form. Through geometric shapes, I have attempted to give structure to garments while allowing freedom of movement, acknowledging the architecture of the body.

ICFF 2009

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:10:26 GMT

Immaterialize
at ICFF 2009
May 16-19
Javits Center, NYC

Mika Tajima

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:36:04 GMT

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Mary Choueiter

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:49:17 GMT

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Rosalinda Gonzalez

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:50:18 GMT

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Yuni Kwon

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:50:46 GMT

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Donko Jeliazkov

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:38:58 GMT

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Elizabeth Skadden

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:39:21 GMT

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Mideum Shin

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 09:29:38 GMT

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Meena Satnarain

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:03:58 GMT

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President John Maeda

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:54:11 GMT

John Maeda | RISD's 16th president

Nora Salzman

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:50:21 GMT

Nora Korsts Salzman was born in Chicago Ill. She received her BFA in painting from Washington University in St. Louis. Fetish subcultures found on the Internet are her main source of inspiration. She would like to profusely thank Reuben Breslar for being her cooperative and compliant model for this thesis work.

Clement Valla

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:54:59 GMT

Clement Valla [RISD MFA '09, Digital + Media]

Clement Valla was born in Paris, France. He received a BA in architecture from Columbia University in New York, and is currently an MFA candidate at the Rhode Island School of Design. After working as an architect and designer in the USA, France, and China, Clement began using computers and digital technologies to explore formal, mathematical, linguistic and social systems. Clement works within these systems, applying a 'programmed brain' that pushes problem-solving logic to irrational ends. He is interested in processes that produce unfamiliar artifacts and skew reality. Like anamorphic projection, his programs produce distorted artifacts that reveal their own underlying logic, but also point to the system as it functions when we fail to notice it- when it works conventionally.

Clement currently lives and works in Providence, RI.

Casey Lynch

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:00:48 GMT

Casey Lynch finds the search for a primary truth or reality to be as important as any conclusions that may be drawn from it. With respect for such pursuits, he creates phenomenological installations, altered primary forms, and conceptual text pieces based on a mixture of forms and ideas found in various religions, sciences, and continental philosophies. Lynch equalizes incongruous ideas by drawing basic definitions of reality from these disparate sources and synthesizing them into forms that reflect a personally inflected philosophy. Casey is originally from Columbus, Georgia, and has lived and worked in Atlanta, New York City, and Providence.

Emma Hogarth

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:02:24 GMT

Emma Hogarth is a new media artist and MFA candidate in Digital+Media at RISD. Born and raised in Australia, she completed her BVA in Painting at Sydney College of the Arts. After graduating, Emma moved to New York City where her artistic path took a detour through an extended study of dance and performance technique, finally arriving back in the realm of the visual arts. Emma's practice draws on her diverse experience across mediums and has included varying combinations of dance, drawing, performance, video and installation work. Her works play at the intersection of portraiture, photographic media and performance, highlighting the performative acts of posing and viewing inspired by the camera's everyday presence. Emma's thesis project "3,600 Seconds" is comprised of multiple videos projected onto cast glass picture frames. The playback of the video is temporally manipulated by custom software, drawing a metaphoric relationship between computer, human and photographic memory.

Esteban del Valle

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:05:10 GMT

Esteban del Valle, originally from Chicago, Illinois, completed his BFA at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 2007. Esteban is drawn to the iconic imagery of revolutionary struggles as they appear in photography, film, and the genre of history painting. Through the process of reductive charcoal drawing, he seeks to reconstruct the monolithic revolutionary moment. Looking at the relationship between theology and the pursuit of democracy, Esteban attempts to create a space that discusses the consequences of certain ideologies and methods. The theatrical space implied by the rendering of dramatic settings, or by the sheer scale of a monumental drawing, allows the viewer to become a witness and possibly an actor in an imagined scene. Influenced by Augusto Boal's book, "Theatre of the Oppressed," Esteban has begun to see painting not as the stage for the revolutionary action in and of itself, but rather a space for the rehearsal of revolutionary thoughts.

Danqing Shi

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:07:49 GMT

Narrative was, is and will always be the most important theme guiding, feeding and even being Danqing Shi's works. Recently, he realizes that the process of fabricating story itself is potentially a meta level story in the context of interactivity. By deconstructing those vivid characters, props and plots in fairy tales, he is trying to transform those old stories into contemporary social events in both virtual and actual world via various digital technologies, such as Internet, GPS, video game and mobile phone. The audience experiencing these interactive works are actually acting as the co-authors who fabricate and finish the new fairy tales metamorphosing from the original ones.

Paulina Sierra

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:14:31 GMT

EYE I. YOU EYE ME, I SEE YOU, I SEE EYE, EYE SEE ME, YOU EYE MEET, EYE YOU, I ME.

My work is ignited by the possibilities that arise between split and integrative processes. This risk starts with a fixation in objects or networks that create specific behaviors. By appropriating and questioning these structures I am able to introduce foreign sets of hybrid associations. Ultimately, I carefully reinsert these transcultural overlays of content that will seek to generate a colorful riot of humor, motion, confrontation and a subjective narrative achieved by the malleability of the digital media.

Yan Da

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:18:48 GMT

Yan Da is a designer and artist in motion graphic, visual music and digital media. From 2007 he has been enrolled in the MFA Digital + Media program in Rhode Island School of Design, where he began an in-depth study and art practice in procedural motion graphics, physical computing, and electronic music. He is self-taught in music and develops a gestural methodology that he terms as "post-conducting", which was frequently projected into the context of visual music, urban space, nature and network. Across*Risd (2009) is a real time system that generates a visual and sonic "aura" from people and any moving objects across RISD campus. It allows real-time interaction with this digital "aura" from others and yourselves across time and space.

Yan has a background in visual communication (BA) and architecture (MA). Since then, he has been working for broadcasting design studios and TV networks. He also teaches in digital media at Tongji University, China. His works have been exhibited internationally at Shanghai Biennial Academic (China), Gasteig Cultural Center (Germany) and RISD Museum (USA).

Website: www.darajan2.com

Maurie Polak

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:21:07 GMT

In the cocoon a larvae's body is literally liquefied and then reconstituted. Nobody knows how this process occurs. The struggle to break through its protective casing is the final stage of development that enables the animal to emerge as a completely new life form. The artist, Maurie Polak [RISD MFA '09, Jewelry], is interested in the universally physical and biological metamorphosis of a larvae as an allegory for the profoundly personal, emotional, spiritual, and psychological transitions and transformations that take place throughout human life. This work encourages the viewer and wearer to consider their own personal evolution and metaphorical cocoons. The wearer and the viewer are given the opportunity to ponder the notion that at each moment every person inhabits a liminal space, continually emerging from one developmental phase upon the threshold of the next, engaging the present as the only potential for the future.

Micaelan Davis

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:28:17 GMT

During her years of architectural study, Micaelan Davis was trained first and foremost to create habitable spaces. Within these spaces were many layers of function, systems that were layered up and forced to work together. The user was ever-present. With her current work, she pulls from this background to develop objects that use the inherent interdependencies present in all systems to physically engage the user. With the design of each piece, she creates a story, often purposefully inconclusive or vague, to allow the user a primary part in the tale.

Micaelan is originally from Austin, Texas where she received a degree in architecture from the University of Texas. Her work was on display at this year's International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York City.

Mariana Acosta-Contreras

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:31:09 GMT

Mariana Acosta Contreras was born in Mexico. She holds her BFA in Graphic Design from The Gestalt School of Design,Veracruz. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing at Rhode Island School of Design.
As a Mexican artist, but also as a woman living in the United States, she feels the urge to guard herself from the desolating grayness of the long northern winters.
By manipulating perceptual notions of form and color, she assembles gradations of circular units, infusing the body with the energy of warm saturated hues that perform as protective shields.

Gigi Gatewood

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:32:51 GMT

Gigi Gatewood [RISD MFA'09, Photography] was born in Buffalo, New York. She had a solo show at GFL Gallery in Williamsburg, New York and was most recently exhibited in a group show at Florence Lynch Gallery in NYC. She has been included in several juried exhibitions, such as the 2009 Albright Knox Collector's Gallery in Buffalo, New York and the Havana Biennial in Cuba. Gatewood photographs symbolic objects that bridge the gap between the universe and us to examine the different ways in which we search for answers about the unknown-from the scientific to the spiritual. The objects, whether a moon rock suspended in a transparent pyramid or a sheathed Newtonian telescope, fuse together the visible and invisible world. Gatewood uses various strategies to defamilarize the objects, reflecting the mystery in all belief systems. She is, as one of her objects is inscribed, an "honest seeker for truth."

Monica Martinez

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:37:40 GMT

Monica Martinez was born and raised in Mexico City. She earned her BFA in sculpture and industrial design from the Massachusetts College of Art. Currently she is finishing her MFA in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she is the recipient of the presidential scholarship. She also has been the recipient of fellowships from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Sculpture Space, and recently the McDowell Colony.
Martinez creative work is engaged with the visual and social language that exists within informal economies and architectures across the world. Her installations and sculptures are created by methods of improvisation and basic construction; they are constructed mostly by local scavenged materials such as cardboard. "I build my sculptures thinking about provisional moments and unstable systems; I'm interested in the cultural complexity found in the metropolis. This could be understood from an artistic, architectural and urbanistic point of view".

Erin Perry

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:39:57 GMT

Erin Perry's sculptures are specific to an intangible creative state that can't be intellectualized without deluding their power.
Through material and sensory admixture her work holds together contradictions of Abandon-Restraint, Gravity-Humor, Fear-Desire, Life-Decay.

Allison Roberts

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:44:56 GMT

At its basic level, Allison Sloan Roberts's work explores genocide in American History and how events have been repressed and distorted in the collective cultural memory.

By combining images that are well known, but whose meaning has seemingly been lost, with her own images of current society, the work serves as an examination of the ambiguous role of the American "hero"--represented by Paul Tibbets moments before taking off to bomb Hiroshima; by B-17 bombers used in the fire bombing of Dresden; and by the character of Ethan (played by John Wayne) searching to find and kill his own niece. More importantly, the work can be viewed as representing the ambiguous nature of American history and the collective failure to learn from it.

Born and raised in New York, Roberts graduated from Kenyon College with Honors in American Studies in 2006.

Lauren Mackler

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:47:00 GMT

Lauren Mackler [RISD MFA '09, Graphic Design]

MAKING STRANGE.

This work is a study of the strange and the uncanny in visual form. The strange in this instance is defined as any occurrence that disrupts the commonplace of a situation. Though historically the Freudian uncanny has been ascribed to horror and fear, I use it today as a class of the strange which invites a tactile, visceral experience as well as intellectual dissonance.

Drawing from a wide range of precedents, including phenomenology, spiritualism, abject art, science fiction and B-horror cinema, a series of narratives, objects and installations arise and offer unusual variations on reality; what Marshall McLuhan referred to as "counter-environments." Each body of work is a testing ground for a perceptual experience of the strange and investigates the translation of this into graphic design form.

Jennifer Magathan

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:47:22 GMT

No Description

Martin Smick

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:48:39 GMT

Martin Smick was born Massachusetts in 1977. His work seeks to deconstruct the language of painting as a decorative medium and it's use as a fa�ade for maintaining embedded hierarchical structures within our contemporary institutions. In a redeployment of the language of painting he seeks to initiate an experience that has the ability to transform how we see and think. By appropriating the decorative languages and symbolic forms within our contemporary culture the nature of the structures we inhabit is exposed and reevaluated in an ongoing search for lost meaning.

Amy Diaz-Infante

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:51:04 GMT

Amy D�az-Infante is the eldest of five children and now seventeen grandchildren raised in California, Arizona and Texas.

Setting the home as backdrop, she employs the psychology of this locale, which often arises as a tension between imposition and intercession, between comfort and discomfort, between being told and telling.

Amy received her B.A. in Art, with a concentration in Printmaking from Yale University in 2003.

Furniture Design '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:52:48 GMT

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Michael Trovela

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:53:09 GMT

Michael Trovela received a BA in painting from San Francisco State University and has worked as a graphic designer within the San Francisco Bay Area. His professional experience inspired him to pursue an MFA at RISD, where he has developed his craft through the design of books, posters, and motion pieces.

Michael's body of work uses consumer culture and myth as a backdrop for his projects, which involve the re-interpretation of modern media's visual language. Glossy fashion magazines, pop culture cinema, and social networking sites are the raw materials used in his work. Rather than prescribing meaning, he plays with the notion of accessibility by creating designs that encourage multiple interpretations by the viewer.

Glass '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:53:42 GMT

No Description

Eli Levenstein

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:55:11 GMT

Through the medium of furniture, Eli Levenstein examines the relationship of people to each other and the spaces they occupy. His work is informed by a variety of cultures and disciplines. The resulting pieces blur the traditional distinctions of art and design.

Graphic Design '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:57:50 GMT

No Description

Industrial Design '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:58:54 GMT

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Gabriela Salazar

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:01:49 GMT

Gabriela Salazar was born in New York City, 1981. She graduated from Yale University in 2003 with a B.A. in Fine Art. Gabriela manipulates and intervenes in the existing architecture to highlight the assumptions and structures of our built environment. She is specifically interested in liminal spaces and thresholds, the layering of surfaces and experiences, and the seams and openings of constructed spaces as sites for exploration.
For more information, please visit www.gabrielasalazar.com.

Jewelry + Metalsmithing '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:04:52 GMT

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Elizabeth Ferrill

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:05:58 GMT

Elizabeth Ferrill is a graduate student at RISD in the area of printmaking. She received her BFA in 2000 from Cornish College of the Arts where she majored in painting and printmaking. From 2005 - 2007 she was the Associate Curator of Education for the Nevada Museum of Art. She was born and grew up in Seattle, WA.

Daily practice is the structure by which she has developed a project that speaks about spaces that facilitate travel and mobility within the public sphere. The daily aspects of the work are intertwined with the transitory imagery that is its subject. The atmosphere within airports, subways, and buses is visually explored through the employment of the pochoir method as well as other media.

Lisa Erin Jones

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:11:15 GMT

Erin Zona (b. Lisa Erin Jones Nashville, TN, 1980) [RISD MFA 2009, Printmaking] received her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2002. She has always admired strangeness and bravery, especially in women and is dedicated to the fulfillment of her artistic and personal endeavors without fear of appearing angry, emotional, unpopular, nonsensical, or potentially insane.

Eleanor Kung

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:13:40 GMT

Timepieces, a graphic design thesis, suggests alternative ways of marking time. It encourages others to stop thinking about time measurement as the fixed movement of seconds or hours, and to view it as a passage that can be understood through the lens of everyday moments and personal rituals. This inquiry considers multiple systems of measurement, from linear to emotional, and finds that time is not made up of equidistant increments, but of personal experiences. The work is a collection of timepieces inspired by everyday moments. The forms, which range from print and motion to three-dimensional object, are understated and generally small in scale, encouraging the viewer to linger and muse. Timepieces hopes that by pausing to experience the modest narratives presented in the work, others will feel inspired to contemplate their own understanding of time.

Landscape Architecture '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:47:01 GMT

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Painting '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:51:14 GMT

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Photography '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:52:11 GMT

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Printmaking '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:54:43 GMT

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Sculpture '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:58:56 GMT

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Textiles '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 14:00:57 GMT

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Maralie Armstrong

Wed, 06 May 2009 14:07:26 GMT

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Digital + Media '09

Wed, 06 May 2009 14:11:44 GMT

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Annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition 2009

Wed, 06 May 2009 14:17:42 GMT

Rhode Island Convention Center
May 15-30, 2009
opening reception: May 14, 6-8pm
exhibition hours: 12-5pm, daily
May 30 hours: 12-8pm

>> click on the albums to the right for department work

Ceramics '09

Thu, 07 May 2009 09:22:28 GMT

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Kelli Adams

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:08:17 GMT

Kelli Rae Adams [RISD MFA '09, Ceramics]

Kelli Rae Adams engages art making as a form of contemplative practice, approaching the creative process as one of internal excavation as much as external manifestation. Responding to her experience of the world through the unique material presence of clay and utilizing this to invite others into moments of attuned awareness and pause, she creates works that reveal a unity beyond rationality.

Pete Oyler

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:09:50 GMT

Pete Oyler [RISD, MFA Furniture Design, 09']

Privileging the fantastical imagination, the objects that comprise the "FOREVER YOUNG" collection illuminate the possibility of three-dimensional objects to incite imaginative pause and playful curiosity. By invoking, dislodging, and bridging stereotypical aesthetics of children's and adult's furniture through color, form, material, and scale, the three-dimensional objects included in this body of work intend to question, highlight, and distill the temporal character of our life experience.

Michael Green

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:10:39 GMT

Michael Green
RISD MFA '09, Furniture Design
rgreen@g.risd.edu
www.mikegreensculpture.com

Stefanie Pender

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:12:06 GMT

Stefanie Pender [RISD MFA '09, Glass]

My expanded definition of art includes my presence, actions, discussion, imagination, and teaching in addition to my dedication to making objects, demonstrations, and performances. My sculptural gestures capture a moment between form and formlessness. I exploit the various material phases of glass to embody the fluidity of liquid in its molten phase and the weightlessness of vapor after it is blown. I use its range of material forms to infuse a visible transformation within an object. As a contemporary alchemist I endeavor to transform the ordinary into the sublime.

I exploit glasses' optical qualities of transparency, translucency, distortion, reflection and refraction to explore the amorphous qualities of form. I also utilize its qualities of being both strong and extremely fragile. Because of these qualities, the material properties of glasses perform to merge concepts of the visible/invisible, absence/presence, seen/unseen and existence/nonexistence.

Hannah Volfson

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:12:54 GMT

Eating and Sleeping: Graphic Design as Positive Persuasion
-Hannah Volfson

Recently the New York Times quoted Danny Meyer, the restaurateur, praising Mrs. Obama for speaking "in real human terms about what kind of choices real human beings can make in terms of their own lives." Eating and Sleeping is the graphic design equivalent. The work demonstrates a belief that by taking care of ourselves, by prioritizing our health and well being, we better our own lives, our communal surroundings, and the environment.

The work takes on our unhealthy lifestyles in a variety of mediums from informational poster design, to board games, to intimate installations, to online concepts. From the hand-made to the computer-based, to the interaction of both, we see that this message can be portrayed in any medium, to any audience, be it a student or a stranger on the street. Its strength is in the sum of the work as it approaches different means of involving the audience and raising awareness of the importance of one's own health and our communal surroundings.

Angela Guzman

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:13:32 GMT

Angela Guzman [RISD MFA '09, Graphic Design]

Angela Guzman is a graduate student in Graphic Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. She also graduated with honors and a 4.0 GPA in Industrial Design as an undergrad at the same institution. She takes great pleasure combining her past and current knowledge in these two fields (see her portfolio at www.guzdesign.com). Born and partially raised in Bogot�, Colombia, she finds herself, like many Hispanics living in the United States, at the center of the cultural "crossroads" - the places where Hispanics and Americans collide head-to-head and where stereotypes meet. Her graduate thesis, "From Both Sides: Visualizing Mutual Adaptation through Hispanic Empowerment and American Awareness" depicts how Hispanics and Americans perceive one another. She feels that through visual design, everyone can effectively learn something new and start a respectful bi-directional conversation. This body of work aims to transfer and translate information from both sides.

Katherine Harris

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:14:13 GMT

Katherine Harris [RISD MFA '09, Graphic Design]

Katherine Harris is interested in how adept we've become at integrating the physical environment, cell phones, television, and the Internet into one complex narrative of everyday life. The archive is particularly impacted by this process of convergence as our photographs, our newspapers, and even our books are increasingly tied to technology. What implications does this shift from physical archive to digital archive have for both graphic design and the engaged reader? Harris' work addresses the tension between digital and physical within contemporary archives such as collections, libraries, and the urban landscape, and looks for ways of extracting a multiplicity of narratives from them. She draws on her dual identities of designer and programmer to bring narrative into conversation with complexity, linking her work across a convergence of form - web sites, designed objects, and physical experience - so that the reader only experiences the whole by participating in its parts.

Elana Joy Wetzner

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:15:33 GMT

Albert Einstein wrote: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." It concerns me that an unfortunate byproduct of our culture's emphasis on expediency is the development of bad visual habits: I fear our eyes are closed. Surrounded by a barrage of visual information, we switch our gaze hastily from one bright light to another, scan these flashes quickly for value, and discard liberally. We often assume that we've seen everything when, in reality, we may have become a culture of trained glancers who fail to notice much. I am interested in visually subverting my viewers' perspective by encouraging them to dramatically reduce the speed at which they look at their surroundings. I strive to tempt my viewers with delicious evidence of the everyday wonder that surrounds us daily. I have divided my study of perception into three areas of investigation - Orientation, Context and Scale - and utilize the diverse media found within the graphic design toolkit to investigate these matters.

Jeongbin Ok

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:16:34 GMT

Jeongbin Ok [RISD MID '09, Industrial Design]

Jeongbin Ok is a designer and engineer having multidisciplinary caliber. After received B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from Hanyang University, he developed innovative materials and products at LG and 3M.
One of his representative designs is tape dispenser, which is a standard tool for solar panel industry in Korea. He synthesized nanomaterials having extreme flame retardancy at Carnegie Mellon University and those are used in public transportation systems worldwide.
At RISD, he has extended the scope of design research focusing on diversity and integrity. Apparatuses for NASA astronauts and redesigned paper shredder show his unique notion.
In thesis project, he suggests food information system helping people make better choices on food products. A personal device was designed to recognize ingredients and nutrients of food, to consider potential health influence and to deliver the information to user. He is working with RI Department of Health and local support groups.

Carter Blackwell

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:17:10 GMT

Carter Blackwell [RISD MID '09, Industrial Design]

My work focuses on the design of objects that allow an intuitive and active rapport between people and nature. I am working to provide people with the tools to cultivate a proactive and informed control of their micro environments. Through sensory, tactile, and interactive channels, the 'sundials' enable the user to 'tune' solar resources to meet the changing needs of the everyday.

Cheryl Eve Acosta

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:18:36 GMT

Cheryl Eve Acosta [RISD, MFA Jewelry, '09]

Hidden life thrives secretly in the shallow waters. Sunlight seeps through, revealing the rich diversity of life. Some surface the water, while others wash away to coastal shores captivating the eyes of wandering souls.
The ocean and abundant plant life of Puerto Rico influenced Cheryl Eve Acosta's creative voice from an early age. Her geography, culture and traditional background there inspired her connection to the ocean and to marine biology in her jewelry. She compares the life and development of coral reefs to her own life to further understand her inner voice.
She is interested in aquatic processes such as how corals adapt and respond to their environment, be it from changing water currents, fluctuating temperatures or the intensity of sunlight. Her jewelry also finds life in such delicate surroundings. Through electroforming in an acid based bath she finds a symbolic way to connect her process to her inspiration through a process rooted in a watery birth.
By means of body adornment she explores how her surroundings affect her mental wellbeing. Wearable art grounds her with a sense of self, reconnecting to the place she calls home. It also symbolizes a layer of protection, insulation, or obfuscation between her and the outside world where she herself rarely feels like she belongs, a world where, indeed, many of us feel alienated and alone.

www.cheryleve.com

Gwen Oulman

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:19:40 GMT

Gwen Oulman-Brennan [RISD MFA '09, Jewelry + Metalsmithing]

Each day we breathe in and out over twenty eight thousand times. Breath activates and touches us through subtle rhythmic movement. This movement of breath is as familiar to our bodies as our heartbeat. Gwen is interested in the kinesthetic and aesthetic qualities of this experience and how it relates to the understanding of self and spirit both collectively and individually. Gwen is forming jewelry and objects that raise awareness of our inspiration and expiration through both materials and process. Just as the physical touch of prayer beads can strengthen worship, her work encourages careful observation of breath.

Gwenoulman.com

Jessica Roundy

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:20:40 GMT

Jessica Roundy [RISD MLA '09, Landscape Architecture]

Jessica's work activates landscape architecture as a tool to integrate science and design. Her explorations of space and place examine the relationships between cultural and ecological networks. Water has become a primary focus of Jessica's work, as she seeks to articulate how we might more effectively and creatively address it as a crucial global resource. Her work considers water as material, concept, surface, icon, system, resource and culture.
Jessica's thesis investigates islands as terrain bound into a single landform by water--a boundary constantly shifting and dissolving in connection with ecological and cultural conditions. In order to be self-sustaining entities, natural and cultural processes must acknowledge a critical balance between where systems transcend the edge and where they are contained by it. In this regard, the dynamic edge of the shoreline becomes a significant space for culture and ecologies where they are either held of released into their greater context.

Nathan French

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:21:26 GMT

NATHAN FRENCH [MLA RISD 2009]

As a LEED Accredited Professional, Nathan French strives to manipulate systems which appropriate neglected infrastructure to maximize social and ecological impact on their surroundings, provide active environments, and encourage emergent systems.

His work includes skatepark advocacy and design, urban design and planning, stream restoration, alternative energy production, and transportation planning. Placement of work is never random or expedient, always vastly important, and a generator for the project.

Civic fuck ups are exposed as attributes within the urban system which emphasize collision, integration, negotiation and avoidance between systems. Tactical interventions appropriate these design miscalculations to create intrigue and facilitate emergent change - whether symbiotic, parasitic, opportunistic, or adjacent - and result in the complex functioning of networked landscapes.

Katy Foley

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:22:02 GMT

Katy Foley

I am utilizing and extending existing structural intervals in the landscape to register a spatial construct of where we are in time and place. There is an ebb and flow of a time line which requires a past and the anticipation of something next. This tension allows the visitor to project an inhabitation of the location not yet occupied. The fullness of waiting rests in the space between.

The sun fills your eyes because you are looking. Your vision is your vantage of here and now, registered against existing intervals of the next here and now. Potential moments are connected through a continuum of perception to those of the past. These moments accumulate into a sense of place.

Cooper Holoweski

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:24:31 GMT

Cooper Holoweski MFA'09 Printmaking

Cooper Holoweski was born and raised in metro Detroit. His work is a narrative of machines. These machines are at once stand-ins for global economic systems, products of the free-market, and the driving force behind it. These machines function to suspend reality through our increasing faith in their ability to do so. With a reverence and disgust for the machine Holoweski records rise of global capitalism as a dominant ideology as well as the implications of it's collision with elements of reality.

Luke O'Sullivan

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:25:30 GMT

I was born in Jamaica Plain and raised Holliston Massachusetts. Growing up in and around Boston I developed a love for the city. I have always been fascinated by urban life and man made forms in nature. Architectural and structural systems are the primary source of inspiration for my work. Through the application of screen-printed drawings on wood metal or other flat surfaces I create facades or facsimiles of familiar objects and structures. My work explores the relationships between occupied space and illusionary space, the physics of drawing and the metaphysics of sculpture.

Anna Gitelson-Kahn

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:30:27 GMT

Anna Gitelson-Kahn [RISD MFA '09, Textiles]

Hasidic traditional dress had a constant visual presence throughout Anna's life. Its elements familiar to the eye, but never questioned until now. To understand the meaning and the origin of this dress Anna's theoretical research developed into a visual play with those familiar elements - the result is a women's knitwear collection that brings masculine hasidic dress into the modern secular woman's wardrobe.

Joseph Aaron Segal

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:31:29 GMT

I create specialty knitted textiles and prints which inform and inspire clothing forms I make. Allowing my textiles to affect form unifies the pattern construction elements with their materials.

By closely observing collected objects within curiosity cabinets I am able to develop pattern and form with uncanny and mysterious qualities. Similar to the characteristics of elements within the cabinets, my work becomes undomesticated and disrupts nature.

Multiple fabric making techniques are used as a way to describe the assortment of unusual and fascinating qualities of the sources I am inspired by. There is a wide range of materials used in my work and each one has a specific property which contributes to the diversity of textures in the collection.
My clothes create an unimaginable landscape for the body. The collection embraces the beauty of the human form, abstracts and reinvents it. Every textile and form has a provocative quality and marries the grotesque with beauty.

Lauren Tickle

Thu, 07 May 2009 16:19:05 GMT

Lauren Tickle [RISD MFA 09, Jewelry + Metalsmithing]

Life and death are uncontrollable. The pain of loss does not disappear, instead it continuously transforms. Repetitive processes are used as agents of transformation to gain a better understanding of one's relationship with grief, while paying homage to life lost. In Lauren Tickle's series Inconsolable, objects and their creation blur the distinction between making and mourning, allowing mixed concepts of grief to be explored. Central to Tickle's investigation of loss is how grief is represented (and not represented) within the public sphere and these objects. Some grief is too great and some losses can never be resolved, yet observing grief's transformation can reveal new depth into loss and life.

www.laurentickle.com

Yong Joo Kim

Mon, 11 May 2009 11:15:18 GMT

Yong Joo Kim [RISD MFA '09, Jewelry + Metalsmithing]

Think of beans, straws, pins, nails, velcro, snaps, cable ties, and electric caps. These objects are not normally considered beautiful or valuable. Yong Joo Kim explores the value of such mundane objects, and discovers their hidden beauty through a process of reconfiguration. She pays close attention to the objects and their system of organization in her environment. She brings in new ways of looking at these objects by creating relationships among them.
By assembling, grouping, clustering, and piling, the small and simple elements become complex, and give rise to the unexpected. Her investigation of creation, innovation, and transformation questions the definition of value, and provides a never-ending field for invention.

Sarah Gross

Mon, 11 May 2009 14:00:47 GMT

No Description

Sunita Prasad

Fri, 22 May 2009 11:30:29 GMT

Sunita Prasad [RISD MFA 09 Photography]

Sunita Prasad makes films, videos, performances and photographs in Providence, RI and Brooklyn, NY. Her work has shown at several film festivals, performance venues, and group shows nationwide, including the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Brooklyn International Film Festival and the HOT! Festival at Dixon Place. Grounded in theories of gender and social movements, Sunita's work employs exaggerated actions and incongruous attributes to make visual experiences that are unexpectedly relatable and warmly political.