Sculpture is a particularly expansive field. Sculptors embody the possibility to create not only new objects for the world we live in, but whole new worlds unto themselves. In this class, we will work collaboratively across several mediums to create a temporary immersive installation that builds a shared world from our collective imagination.

In this course, students will work collaboratively to transform classroom Metcalf 320 into a new, immersive world. This course is designed for students with no prior experience with sculptural materials or processes to experience a fast immersive dive into the pool of major foundational sculptural practices including: welding, woodworking, and casting. We will use metal and wood to create an armature onto which cast elements, and other materials such as found objects, textile, paper/cardboard, paint, and digital projection can be incorporated. We will document the project along the way and create a documentation record of our work together. 

The course will culminate in a public exhibition of our temporary collaborative installation, and a printed documentation booklet, which will serve as the historical record of our shared, temporary world. 

This course is designed for first year students who are considering majoring in sculpture. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Elective

Ever wondered how your favorite artist got to where they are? How did they find the opportunities they received, and how can you map out these opportunities whilst considering your own artistic practice?

This professional practice class will provide the necessary space and time to develop these skills and give you an insight into the gallery selection process, teach you how to search for professional development opportunities and will culminate in an opportunity to exhibit your work.

The course will consist of a combination of field trips to different types of exhibition spaces (including Cade Tompkins Projects and AS220), in-class workshops and lectures, and student-driven research to explore how artists can present themselves and their work to the world. Students will be guided on how to prepare an artist statement and exhibition proposal, which will become the basis for two curated exhibitions–one based in the Red Eye Gallery, and the other in Metcalf 320.

The course will focus on building a practice with longevity and integrity and emphasizes the value of skill sharing and collaborative practices as the basis of long-term success. From planning and logistics to the exhibition’s opening, students drive this practical and hands-on learning course.

Elective

When is a painting actually a sculpture? In this speculative studio course students will be invited to think about and make paintings through the lens of sculpture. We will think about the materially present nature of sculpture and its focus on relationships while making paintings. There will be five total assignments including making a painting without paint, making a painting without a traditional support, making a site-specific painting, and making a time-based painting in addition to smaller warm-up activities. We will talk extensively about the chemistry and properties of paint itself–while also broadening the field to use other materials. We will install and thereby test paintings in different kinds of conditions and environments. We will read philosophical texts and try to undo hierarchies in our thinking. Students will be asked to think critically across disciplinary boundaries–while remaining attenuated to specificity and difference. Students will leave with a better understanding of their relationship to objects, in particular paintings. They will understand both the use and sometimes arbitrary nature of the disciplinary distinctions and be empowered to instrumentalize these categories rather than being beholden to them. They will also have an understanding of how, where, and when a painting is viewed is as significant as the interiority of the image. They will be asked to articulate what they think about the materiality of images and relationships between paintings and the larger world of objects or environments they are found within, both through language in class discussions but also within the work itself.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Elective

This experimental sculpture and performance course explores the profound connections between objects and memory (both collective and personal). Guided through regular performance exercises, students will develop their own sculptural-performance artworks within a supportive, workshop-oriented framework. Through these exercises, students will discover that both human bodies and the everyday objects they encounter contain rich histories that are in constant dialogue with each other. We will begin this course by pulling inspiration from the histories of found objects, utilizing them as sculptures/sculptural materials.

This course will then encourage students to explore the reciprocal relationship between these objects and performance. This intertwining of sculpture and performance will open new temporal, spatial, corporeal, and haptic dimensions, expanding the possibilities of both art forms.  This course will also explore the connections between this interdisciplinary practice and theater modalities. We will investigate the  other potentialities that emerge when sculpture functions as “prop” and architecture or site functions as “set”.

This course prioritizes process, discovery, and exploration over refined completed work, with students being encouraged to maintain an improvisational approach in both individual and group assignments. We will investigate the philosophical, social, and political implications of performance, engaging questions of agency, labor, gaze, and spectatorship. As each student’s own distinctive performative language emerges, lectures and artistic research presentations will help to situate their voice within and outside of the historical and contemporary global art worlds. In this course we will foster an open environment where students are encouraged to work collaboratively, exchange ideas, and share performances.

Elective

This course adds another layer of engagement to the MFA Sculpture curriculum in relation to the work done in Grad Studio and Advanced Critical Issues. The class will be divided into two six-week sections taught by a visiting critic and visiting curator. Through these distinct perspectives, students will develop a deeper understanding of the many roles that the artist can play in society in conjunction with gaining knowledge of professional practices within the fine arts field. Additionally, this course will consider the ways that art is displayed, viewed, contextualized and experienced and how visual art can influence contemporary thought and conversation through the history of curation and exhibition-making.

The course will consist of lectures, discussions, group critiques and one-on-one studio visits. The first half of the semester will focus on professional practice and consider each student’s practice through the lens of relevant historical and contemporary artists. Course content will include discussions about maintaining post-graduate art practices, application processes and cultivating thriving creative communities. The second half will focus on curation with emphasis placed on current trends and shifts in artistic and curatorial production, theory, and criticism. Students will examine a range of curatorial practices and consider case studies of artist curated shows. The class will also develop a proposal for a potential group exhibition to occur post-graduation. Both sections will involve the topic of exhibiting works in various spaces such as galleries (artist-run, for-profit, university, etc.), museums and alternative art organizations.

Enrollment is limited to 2nd-year Sculpture Graduate Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

“Any attempt to understand an artistic medium through the lens of technology alone is futile and counterproductive,imposing limits on the conceptual understanding of the work. Good art is always both deeply rooted in and at the same time transcends its medium.”
-Christiane Paul
 
This course will explore digital design and fabrication within the context of contemporary art, design and architecture. Through a series of technical demonstrations and assignments, connections will be made between CAD/CAM software, fabrication technologies and the physical world. Additionally, the course will explore digital fabrication as it relates to traditional sculptural processes such as mold making + casting, metalworking and woodworking.
 
This course, although technical in nature, is not technical in spirit. Our goal is not the mastery of any one software application or fabrication technology, but instead an understanding of how to effectively leverage digital processes and tools in one’s studio.
 
The semester will be divided into a series of assignments, each exploring various approaches to digital design and fabrication, and will culminate in a final project blending digital fabrication with an existing project and/or research interest.
 
You will leave this course with the ability to model complex geometries, to collect and process 3D scan data, and to output using additive fabrication equipment. We will utilize the resources of RISD at large, but will focus on highly accessible, open source digital fabrication tools available within the Sculpture department.

Elective

Any attempt to understand an artistic medium through the lens of technology alone is futile and counterproductive, imposing limits on the conceptual understanding of the work. Good art is always both deeply rooted in and at the same time transcends its medium.
- Christiane Paul
 
This course will explore digital design and fabrication within the context of contemporary art, design and architecture. Through a series of technical demonstrations and assignments, connections will be made between CAD/CAM software, fabrication technologies and the physical world. Additionally, the course will explore digital fabrication as it relates to traditional sculptural processes such as mold making + casting, metalworking, and woodworking.
 
This course, although technical in nature, is not technical in spirit. Our goal is not the mastery of any one software application or fabrication technology, but instead an understanding of how to effectively leverage digital processes and tools in one’s studio.
 
The semester will be divided into a series of assignments, each exploring various approaches to digital
design and fabrication, and will culminate in a final project blending digital fabrication with an existing
project and/or research interest.

You will leave this course with the ability to digitally model complex geometries in two and three
dimensions, generate toolpaths in two and three dimensions, and output to a CNC Plotter, CNC Plasma
Cutter, and CNC Router.

Elective

This intermediate level mold-making workshop is tailored for sculpture students wishing to learn the advanced skills and processes necessary to achieve reliably repeatable results when confronted with complex problems in mold-making. The course will deliver material and procedural literacy beginning with a limited range of mold making products in the Platinum Silicone, Gypsum Cement families. This skillset will provide the necessary confidence to expand into the broader range of flexible and rigid mold making products to suit their needs going forward. Students will learn key methods to achieve successful multi part flexible molds, with a specific emphasis on silicone rubber products. Direct modeling materials such as Castilene and Magic Sculpt will be demonstrated as companion products for making rigid semi-permanent mold ready objects. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Junior class level and above. Instructor permission is required to register for this course, please contact the instructor directly.

Elective

What is Operational Drawing? This considers the question by making works that address how we image the body in time and space with tools and media. Akin to dance, drawing just might be the next human activity that engages a spontaneous simultaneous interplay of thought, action and acting upon. In this studio we will be working together and individually to explore how drawing relates to your studio practice. Drawing has often been mistakenly viewed as a preparatory or even secondary element within traditional studio practices such as painting, sculpture and printmaking. Today, in an expanded field, those outmoded viewpoints only stand to unfairly discriminate and rank modes of realizing concept and form. It is also true that this archaic view of drawing has origins in the humble materials often associated within the practice, such as charcoal, graphite, chalk, and carbon black (ink). These geological elements on top of skin like substrates were once the defining features of the activity, but in a contemporary studio practice it is the artist's prerogative to either work with or challenge historical presets. The role of drawing in a contemporary studio practice may play multiple roles. Together we will look at, practice and explore that very thing through installations, group projects and large scale immersive work. Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $100.00

Elective

This course is structured according the notion that artists can use what is on hand to research and craft simple solutions to the complex physical, mechanical, and technical problems that must be routinely addressed in their making practices. This material and process based, hands-on, research studio will be structured in response to the issues that the advanced fine arts student is grappling with on a regular basis. Many of the issues that arise in the process of making provide the opportunity to transcend perceived material-based boundaries and thinking. Some of the questions this course attends to include: How do you defy gravity? How do you generate the hidden components required to physicalize the thing we can see in our mind's eye? How is the magic we need to create our work scalable to the resources we have readily available? Example working processes include: mig welding, tig welding, casting for prototyping, woodworking, and mold making.

Junior class level and above and instructor permission is required to register for this course, please contact the instructor directly.

Elective

This course is structured according the notion that artists can use what is on hand to research and craft simple solutions to the complex physical, mechanical, and technical problems that must be routinely addressed in their making practices. This material and process based, hands-on, research studio will be structured in response to the issues that the advanced fine arts student is grappling with on a regular basis. Many of the issues that arise in the process of making provide the opportunity to transcend perceived material-based boundaries and thinking. Some of the questions this course attends to include: How do you defy gravity? How do you generate the hidden components required to physicalize the thing we can see in our mind's eye? How is the magic we need to create our work scalable to the resources we have readily available? Example working processes include: mig welding, tig welding, casting for prototyping, woodworking, and mold making.

Junior class level and above and instructor permission is required to register for this course, please contact the instructor directly.

Elective

The prevalence and rapid evolution of digital fabrication technology is due in large part to open source communities of users who actively develop and contribute to new software, hardware, and publishing platforms. In this hands-on studio we will explore both the history and potential of the open source movement as it relates to art, design, and its production. Specifically, we will build upon, modify, hack, and create new open source tools, workflows, and platforms that aid in the production of original artworks. The semester will begin with a series of projects in which students gain familiarity with the norms and practices of open source collaboration, development, and publishing. From there, students will have the opportunity to devise and use an example of open hardware in the creation of an original body of work. Topics include: bootstrapping, hacking, intellectual property, licensure and attribution, speculative fiction, Cyberpunk aesthetics, Afrofuturism, Shanzhai, additive and subtractive fabrication, physical computing, motion control systems, experimental materials, digital distribution, and dissemination.

Elective

Our eyes are nearly always drawn towards something moving over something inert. What innovative strategies can be employed to incorporate video, sculpture, and physical space into a single work, without one medium dominating the other? How can an artist resolve the fundamental differences between two-dimensional moving images and three-dimensional objects or space? This intensive studio elective will explore methods and issues of assimilating video, photography, sound, performance, objects, and space through studying and constructing multimedia sculpture and installations. Throughout the semester we will be presented with assignments that examine these different possibilities from multiple perspectives, including studio projects that deploy video in a sculptural context, and sculpture that is only activated through a video work. We will study the recent history of artists and designers who engage multimedia techniques and experiment with new formats and technologies. Students will learn the basics of DSLR camera technique, digital video editing, audio production, audio/video display technology, and installation techniques. Students in the course should have an understanding of sculptural materials and fabrication techniques, and should be ready to experiment with the fundamental structure of the presentation of media.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Elective

What is the meaning of contemporary? What is the meaning of critique? What are models for sustainable and ethical artistic practice? What is the role of the artist in contemporary culture? These are but a few of the frameworks we will use to explore an array of new tools for thinking, feeling, perceiving, and analyzing the textures of our inter-subjective environment. Together, we will address the challenges implicit in the willful consideration of what exists beyond what we think we know; beyond what we have been told is true about our chosen field as artists. We take up this exploration through a selection of readings, films, lectures and class discussions. Some of the discourses we engage include the relationship between politics and aesthetics, critical race theory, myriad feminist theories, theories of institutional critique, and methods of radical practice in contemporary art.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Advanced Critical Issues Seminar 2 introduces a rigorous theoretical framework for thinking and writing about contemporary sculpture practice. Each seminar develops from a specific theme drawing on research from Grad Critical Issues 1, current debates in the field and contemporary events. Past seminars include: Artificial Natures, Precarious Relations, Frankenstein and Crime, Vanishing Points, as examples. Trespassing across sculpture, performance, cinema, fiction, feminist, queer, race and political theory and back again, we will address writings by Walter Benjamin, Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Jacques Rancire (as examples) in conversation with contemporary artists writings and projects to cultivate a conceptual grammar to extend to our studio practice. Approaching issues in contemporary sculpture through these discursive perspectives generates new strategies simultaneously material, conceptual, and critical.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

This studio course will examine the expansive nature of installation and its prominent place in contemporary art discourse, both within and outside of institutional settings. The emphasis will not be on making what is termed 'Installation Art' but engaging with strategies and situations where artistic action/production can take place. We will examine the historical lineages surrounding installation, while considering its critical capacities in relation to site, intervention, bodies, public vs. private, the archive, and representation. Assignments allow for students to work in various media and to focus on the process and methodology for developing ambitious ideas, both materially and conceptually. We will deconstruct the ways in which the subject can offer multiple viewpoints and allow for the spectator to take on active and engaged roles. This class is not defined by or limited to a specific technical or artistic discipline. Students should be prepared to challenge the boundaries and limitations of materials, media, and space. The assignments and readings are designed to act as instigators for each student's studio and intellectual work. Experimentation and improvisation will be strongly encouraged, if not expected. The intention is to maintain, advance and expand robust artmaking processes within the mode of installation-based work. There will be group critiques of developed work throughout the semester in addition to lectures, screenings and discussions.

Elective

Building upon the independent work accomplished in Junior studio, students are expected to generate self directed work supported by in-process critiques, formal critiques, and individual meetings. Faculty and peer feedback will help students clarify their objectives, fine tune their technical abilities, and develop a strong working practice. Students are expected to hone their creative problem-solving skills and engage in a high level of dialog and work. Throughout the fall, students will practice integrating their source research into their studio practice. An increased and rigorous integration of contemporary art, critical theory, and criticism is expected. The visiting artist lecture series is a vital component of this course.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Senior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Building upon the independent work accomplished in Junior studio, students are expected to generate self directed work supported by in-process critiques, formal critiques, and individual meetings. Faculty and peer feedback will help students clarify their objectives, fine tune their technical abilities, and develop a strong working practice. Students are expected to hone their creative problem-solving skills and engage in a high level of dialog and work. Throughout the fall, students will practice integrating their source research into their studio practice. An increased and rigorous integration of contemporary art, critical theory, and criticism is expected. The visiting artist lecture series is a vital component of this course.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Senior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Students pursue individual work under advisement of resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. Individual objectives are clarified and professional practices are discussed. Group interaction and discussions are expected.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

This course marks a crucial fulcrum in the pathway out of the sophomore experience and into independent work in sculpture. Thematically driven prompts will provide the scaffolding of three major work sessions that direct the conversation in the studio. These studio conversations will take the form of in-process critiques, formal group critiques, and scheduled individual meetings. Students may also expect intersecting projects with shorter timeframes when appropriate. There will be demos in advanced methods and techniques when appropriate. The visiting artist lecture series is a vital component of this course.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Junior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture