This class serves as an interface between the new technologies of digital and the old technologies of optics. New digital technologies are given alternative possibilities with the addition of specific projection apparatus (in terms of both, projection optics and projection surfaces), plays with reflection (such as the construction of anamorphic cylinders, zoetropes, and other optical devices), and in the fabrication of project specific lenses. Given the hands-on nature of the glass department, the actual making and/or subversion of traditional optics is possible. The class encourages collaborative work between students of varying experience levels and fosters the incorporation and dialogue between students of the two differing areas of expertise.

Elective

This is a semester long research study group focused on Alchemy and Glass. As a discipline and a material, Glass is inherently connected to Alchemy. Their combined histories have shaped our understanding of the relationship between material and meaning, the role of process in art and science and, ultimately, the ways in which making shapes knowledge. One of the goals of this research group is to explore the conceptual and material potential of Alchemy through Glass. Our research will combine the examination of practical, theoretical and historical texts along with hands-on experiments in Glass Department Shops. The group will meet weekly for discussions, research presentations, lectures and working/lab sessions. As the semester progresses the direction of our research will be determined by the materials brought forth by the group.

Offered as GLASS-7016, GRAD-7016 and IDISC-7016.

Elective

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas while teaching at RISD. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning. As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher- scholars through refining, expanding and updating the teaching portfolio. In an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of diverse learning styles and methods, and an awareness of how social identities produce systemic hierarchies in the classroom to their own discipline-focused art and design instruction. Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Partial requirement for Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design Conferred with Teaching Experience.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas while teaching at RISD. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning. As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher- scholars through refining, expanding and updating the teaching portfolio. In an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of diverse learning styles and methods, and an awareness of how social identities produce systemic hierarchies in the classroom to their own discipline-focused art and design instruction. Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Partial requirement for Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design Conferred with Teaching Experience.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas while teaching at RISD. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning. As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher- scholars through refining, expanding and updating the teaching portfolio. In an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of diverse learning styles and methods, and an awareness of how social identities produce systemic hierarchies in the classroom to their own discipline-focused art and design instruction. Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Partial requirement for Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design Conferred with Teaching Experience.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective

This seminar is for graduate students who are preparing their written thesis. Within the context of this writing-intensive course, we examine the thesis form as an expressive opportunity to negotiate a meaningful integration of our visual work, how we think about it, and how we wish to communicate it to others. In support of this exploration, weekly thematic writing sessions are offered to open the imaginative process and to stimulate creative thinking as a means of discovering the underlying intelligence of our work. In addition, we also engage in individual studio visits to identify and form a coherent 'voice' for the thesis, one that parallels our actual art involvement. Literary communications generated out of artists' and designers' processes are also examined. The outcome of this intensive study is the completion of a draft of the thesis.

Elective

This course will focus on the graduate level inquiry of wood-based construction designs and commensurate skills. Lighting and upholstery techniques, as well as outside vendor protocols, may also be employed pursuant to the graduate student's design needs. Graduate students will develop a multi-lateral skill set applicable to their area of study. Thesis concepts are often explored within this class. Students concentrate, in sequence, six weeks of Studio Based Learning of techniques and skills followed by six weeks of dedicated, full scale, designed and executed piece. Located in the Center for Integrated Technologies, CIT Bldg, the Graduate Studies Wood Studio will focus on contemporary and traditional: joinery, shaping, and vacuum lamination construction techniques. In addition, metal (cold working) techniques and manipulation are also covered. Surface treatments and finishing methods for metal and wood will be covered throughout this class.

Elective

Join a community of thesis writers, whether as a first-year graduate seeking to unearth a direction for the Master’s written document or as a second-year graduate engaging the completion process. In an atmosphere that allows you to open up, “stretch out” in reflection, and dynamically gather in exchange, this writing-intensive seminar will enable you to explore relevant ideas, themes, core values, and conduct research in support of the inquiry process. Sessions involve scrutinizing various angles of your perspective as an artist/designer and to write from these angles to discover the emerging aspects of solutions that matter. Each class will suggest a specific theme or principle of inflection to precipitate what is needed for the work’s progress. Included will be several forms of writing: narrative essay, poetic formations, lists, annotation, review, extended caption, as well as several levels of research: bibliographic, archival, fieldwork, dialogue, interviews. Emphasis will be on maps of meaning that will be used as a way to further processes of ideation and understanding. At the conclusion of the seminar, you will have a conceptual focus for your thesis that is clearly formulated visually and verbally. The writings and insights from this time can then be used productively to further the breadth and depth of your ideas through open-ended exploration and self-generated work.

Elective

For this Professional Practices course, we will look at the practical possibilities for your life after art school. Emphasis will be on balancing your artistic practice with the financial demands of everyday life, on integrating your career path(s) with your artistic values and integrity, and on developing “branching paths” that open new possibilities. 

We will explore various avenues, such as exhibiting in galleries and museums, starting a business, working on commissions, art writing, social practice, and forming a collective, a publication, or an independent gallery. We will look at the current financial, practical, and ethical ramifications of each of these avenues. We will explore what matters when deciding where, geographically, to begin your career. 

We will learn such skills as developing proposals, presentations, artists’ statements, and resumes; and of obtaining grants, residencies, commissions, art-related employment, studio space, and representation. We will also touch on art law, copyright, budgeting, and taxes for artists.

We will meet RISD alumni who are currently developing their careers as artists and designers, hearing about their paths from graduation to living as artists. There will be guest speakers from galleries, public art agencies, and design businesses. There will some readings and course resources. 
 

Elective

The course aims to create sufficient awareness of what yields life on earth, and a complementary biocentric view of the world. New ethical and critical challenges are continually presented to human society with the growth of material science and its implications for design; the course introduces sources and research references to assist with our understanding of these challenges. We explore aspects of human knowledge of living systems, providing a research-based approach to such topics as BioDesign; biomimicry in materials, processes, and structures; functional morphology and the cognitive phenomena of Biophilia. The 'affinities and aversions' we as humans have regarding natural living systems are in everything: from the spaces we inhabit to the metaphors we employ in order to understand complexity in general, including issues connected with health, recuperation and resilience. Using the recently extended facilities and resources of the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, faculty and graduate students together create opportunities to experiment, observe, and learn about the networked aspects of living systems, materials, structures and processes. Theoretical frameworks associated with the biology of living systems, the growth and formation of natural materials including the contemporary revolutions in evolutionary theory are introduced and examples discussed with visiting specialists.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $30.00

Elective

The course aims to create sufficient awareness of what yields life on earth, and a complementary biocentric view of the world. New ethical and critical challenges are continually presented to human society with the growth of material science and its implications for design; the course introduces sources and research references to assist with our understanding of these challenges. We explore aspects of human knowledge of living systems, providing a research-based approach to such topics as BioDesign; biomimicry in materials, processes, and structures; functional morphology and the cognitive phenomena of Biophilia. The 'affinities and aversions' we as humans have regarding natural living systems are in everything: from the spaces we inhabit to the metaphors we employ in order to understand complexity in general, including issues connected with health, recuperation and resilience. Using the recently extended facilities and resources of the Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, faculty and graduate students together create opportunities to experiment, observe, and learn about the networked aspects of living systems, materials, structures and processes. Theoretical frameworks associated with the biology of living systems, the growth and formation of natural materials including the contemporary revolutions in evolutionary theory are introduced and examples discussed with visiting specialists.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $30.00

Elective

This course frames contemporary art as a set of conversations, arguments and counterarguments that have been proposed in key exhibitions, works of art, and critical writings produced across multiple continents over the past three decades. We will identify and critique the ideas that have shaped contemporary art, discuss their impetus, and examine their assumptions. Through such conversations, the course presents contemporary art as a form of processing a present and a past in which the artwork is indivisible from the dialogues and conversations that create, define and continue to change it. The title of the class alludes not only to the idea of making and reading contemporary art as cognitive, rhetorical and dialogic activities, but also to the art world as a series of geographically dispersed and temporally promiscuous processes, deeply resistant to modernist systems of order, periodization and mapping. The course combines lectures by the instructor, as well as by visiting critics and art historians, which outline some of the key issues and historical pressures of contemporary art, alongside seminar-type discussions where we process the lectures and select readings as a group.

Elective

The course offers graduate students a forum for exploring historical and theoretical foundations of contemporary design and craft arts. Readings, discussions, lectures, and writing projects address a range of contexts for the practice of design, from materials and making, to ways that objects are encountered, consumed, and lived with, to design's promises and limitations for dealing with global crises of climate, poverty, conflict, disease, and displacement. Weekly meetings are structured around critical themes selected through student input. Readings and case studies offer points of departure for discussion and writing. Guest lectures by designers, curators, and critics provide viewpoints on contemporary practice. Culminating with a final artist statement and presentation, the work undertaken throughout the term will be oriented toward developing historical and critical frameworks in which to situate students' own studio and research practices.

Elective

Cut through the hype and excitement surrounding generative AI by understanding for yourself what these tools can and cannot do. Through this course students will learn to understand, design, and build with generative AI. The class is a mix of theory and hands-on work. Students develop practical skills in designing, building, and testing with generative AI. Readings and discussions address key concepts in AI, their ethical implications, foundations in human computer interaction and human AI interaction, and design implications for creators. Students will experiment with bringing generative AI into their existing creative practice including writing, two-dimensional designs, illustrations, 3D, and product design. No previous experience with either the theory or use of AI is required but students will need to learn to use the tools through course tutorials and independent work.

Elective

The unscripted gap of the “betwixt and between” is a space of great curiosity and charge. This space has captured the imagination of many artists, designers, and writers throughout time. The main interest of this course is to investigate the nature of this space, how it is experienced, understood and given meaning from multiple viewpoints in art, design, and literature, and the ways it can become a space of significance for our practice as artists and designers. As background to our own research, we examine features of “the between” as it is evoked in theories of liminality,  philosophies of spatial poetics and the open work, and the aesthetics and practices of phenomenology, synesthesia, and dialogue. Specific works of artists and designers will also walk us to that space. Centrally we will seek and build upon complex ideas raised through the course as we open to qualities of human understanding necessary to meet this fragile world of shifting borders, ecologies, and identities.

This course is an overview of the basic principles of type design. The focus is on negative space, words, and readability. Students will gain a deeper understanding of typography and increased insight into existing typefaces.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (3yr)

This 3-credit studio course will teach design fundamentals to the elective non-GD major students entering the field of Graphic Design from other disciplines, and will feature in-class instruction which may include 2D and 3D form basic principles of color; image-making from photography, drawing, collage, etc. point and plane / figure and ground exercises; sequencing and exposure to various formats, etc.

Please contact the department for permission to register. 

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (3yr)

This 3-credit course will teach advanced design principles of formal structures, relations, and systems to the eclectic non-GD major students entering the field of Graphic Design from other disciplines.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (3yr)

This seminar will present a forum for discussion on critical issues in graphic design, including: design's context within culture and experience; theory and its relation to practice; and current practice and its models. The course will combine formats of lecture, discussion, small groups, and collaboration to explore the porous borders of graphic design thought and making.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design

The objective of this course is to assist students in the development of methodologies for exploration, investigation, and construction of a well-designed proposal of thesis work. This seminar provides students with a variety of discursive and exploratory means to identify, locate, reflect on, and develop areas of interest to pursue in the evolution of individual thesis planning, culminating in the presentation of the thesis proposal.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design