Leslie Hirst is a visual artist who works across media to consider the language of materials. Using found and invented images, objects and words, she mines the durable memory of things as they shapes societies and place.
Hirst’s solo exhibitions include Museo del Merletto at the 56th International Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Kunstverein Baden (Austria), Pavel Zoubok Gallery (New York, NY) and Center for Visual Research (Allentown, PA). She has exhibited at Weatherspoon Art Museum (NC), Hunterdon Art Museum (NJ), Islip Art Museum (NY), Maryland Art Place (MD), Kala Art Institute (CA), Delaware Center for Contemporary Art (DE), Gregory Lind Gallery (CA), Sala 1 (Rome, Italy), Museu do Douro (Peso da Régua, Portugal) and the VI Biennale di Soncino a Marco (Soncino, Italy), among others.
Hirst was awarded the Rhode Island Foundation MacColl Johnson Fellowship and received two fellowships in printmaking and drawing from the Rhode Island Council on the Arts. She is a two-time nominee for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Hirst’s international artist residency awards include Siena Art Institute (Italy), AIR Krems (Austria), The Emily Harvey Foundation (Italy) and Centre d’Art Marnay Art Center (France). Her US residency awards include Yaddo, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Ucross Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, Foundation House and Hall Farm Center. Her work is included in museum and private collections.
Hirst joined the RISD EFS faculty in 2006. She was chief critic for RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome, Italy (2017–18) and has taught RISD travel courses in Venice, Italy. Hirst was the Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow at the RISD Museum Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs (2016–17, and 2019). Outside of RISD, she has taught drawing, painting, printmaking and design since 2000 and was visiting artist and lecturer at Bilgi University (Istanbul, Turkey), Samsung Art and Design Institute (Seoul, South Korea), and Università Di Pisa, (Pisa, Italy), among others.
She holds certification from The Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University. Hirst’s published works include the chapter entitled “Groundwork” in The Art of Critical Making: Rhode Island School of Design on Creative Practice (Wiley and Sons, 2013).
Studio: Design promotes multidisciplinary studio experimentation across an array of media and processes. Students explore the organization of visual and other sensory elements in order to understand perceptual attributes and the production of meaning. Using various methods of expression, students may create objects, spaces, and experiences that demonstrate their analysis of composition, color, narrative, motion, systems, and cultural signification. Assignments allow for inquiries into scientific, social, cultural, historical, philosophical, technological, and political topics. Critical and experimental utilization of design principles, which underpin all of the arts, are emphasized. Students are guided through progressive investigations, in which the act of seeing is amplified by the study of physiological and cognitive factors that generate perception. Examined subjects are taken through stages of representation, abstraction, and/or symbolic interpretation to reveal essential communicative properties.
Enrollment is limited to First-Year Undergraduate Students.
Major Requirement | BFA
Studio: Design promotes multidisciplinary studio experimentation across an array of media and processes. Students explore the organization of visual and other sensory elements in order to understand perceptual attributes and the production of meaning. Using various methods of expression, students may create objects, spaces, and experiences that demonstrate their analysis of composition, color, narrative, motion, systems, and cultural signification. Assignments allow for inquiries into scientific, social, cultural, historical, philosophical, technological, and political topics. Critical and experimental utilization of design principles, which underpin all of the arts, are emphasized. Students are guided through progressive investigations, in which the act of seeing is amplified by the study of physiological and cognitive factors that generate perception. Examined subjects are taken through stages of representation, abstraction, and/or symbolic interpretation to reveal essential communicative properties.
Enrollment is limited to First-Year Undergraduate Students.
Major Requirement | BFA
Studio: Design promotes multidisciplinary studio experimentation across an array of media and processes. Students explore the organization of visual and other sensory elements in order to understand perceptual attributes and the production of meaning. Using various methods of expression, students may create objects, spaces, and experiences that demonstrate their analysis of composition, color, narrative, motion, systems, and cultural signification. Assignments allow for inquiries into scientific, social, cultural, historical, philosophical, technological, and political topics. Critical and experimental utilization of design principles, which underpin all of the arts, are emphasized. Students are guided through progressive investigations, in which the act of seeing is amplified by the study of physiological and cognitive factors that generate perception. Examined subjects are taken through stages of representation, abstraction, and/or symbolic interpretation to reveal essential communicative properties.
Enrollment is limited to first-year undergraduate students.
Major Requirement | BFA