The topic covered in this class may change each semester. Topics range from technically oriented subjects, for example, non-silver processes, to thematic ones, for example, “the figure in the landscape”.

This course combines an overview of the history, theory, political influences, trends of expression and a survey of past and contemporary artists working in the field, with the opportunity for students to put theoretical study into practice through assignments that aid in the development of one's own project. In weekly critiques of student documentary work including journals that record one's process and self reflection, we will explore the process, grapple with ideological issues that arise, and challenge each other to push our understanding and the development of a documentary language further.

Elective

This course combines an overview of the history, theory, political influences, trends of expression and a survey of past and contemporary artists working in the field, with the opportunity for students to put theoretical study into practice through assignments that aid in the development of one's own project. In weekly critiques of student documentary work including journals that record one's process and self reflection, we will explore the process, grapple with ideological issues that arise, and challenge each other to push our understanding and the development of a documentary language further.

Elective

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

The Undergraduate Seminar works in complement with Senior Studio to provide a forum in which students assemble in discussion, analysis and reflection around a set of ideas, practices and histories that are of substantial relevance to photography, its history and its contemporary forms. The content of the seminar will vary from year to year, but students will be expected to read, research, discuss, write about and/or present on the material addressed in class. The seminar will interact with the department's Visiting Artist lecture series, with the SEI Lecture Series, and with MCM events at Brown. Attendance at those lectures is highly encouraged.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Photography

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

This six-credit course is designed to provide the necessary production time for the realization of the Degree Project, culminating in a well-organized and installed public exhibition of a project or body of work in the department's Red Eye Gallery. The Degree Project must be approved by photography faculty and accompanied by a written Degree Project Thesis. Attendance at all departmental visiting artist lectures is required.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Photography

A Graduate Thesis is to be determined in consultation with faculty advisor by the beginning of the first semester of the second year.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

This period is dedicated to the development and presentation of a body of work supported by a written thesis in consultation with the student's Thesis Committee. The final exhibition and written thesis will be evaluated by the Thesis Committee which will submit a final grade to the Graduate Coordinator.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

The Graduate Seminar works in complement with Graduate Critique to provide a forum in which students assemble in discussion, analysis and reflection around a set of ideas, practices and histories that are of substantial relevance to photography, its history and its contemporary forms. The content of the seminar will vary from year to year, but students will be expected to read, research, discuss, write about and/or present on the material addressed in class. The seminar will interact with the department's Visiting Artist lecture series, with the SEI Lecture Series, and with MCM events at Brown. Attendance at those lectures is highly recommended.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

In this RISD Global Summer Session course, students will experience the typographic culture (both ancient and contemporary) of the city of Rome, Italy, as a source for inspiration, understanding, and explorations in their creative practice using contemporary letterpress printing. The course consists of guided walks through the city with its vast typographic resources and archives, combined with studio work in letterpress printing taking place at Betterpress Lab, in the active Roman neighborhood of Trastevere.

The course will begin by using the inscriptions and typography in the streets of Rome as a source material in understanding the development of the Latin alphabet and its evolution into the always changing contemporary letterforms we use today. The technological, political, and social forces pushing these developments and changes will be analyzed, as will the always present resistance to established forms and uses, and how all of these factors shape our present visual typographic culture. Studio work will be based out of Betterpress Lab, an independent letterpress printmaking studio founded in 2014 by Francesca Colonia and Giulia Nicolai, with a focus on creative uses of historical handset type as a form of cultural, social, and political resistance.

Students will have the opportunity to design and create typographic compositions using original movable type from the Betterpress Lab collection, learning hand-set letterpress printing, developing print projects to establish and improve basic letterpress printing skills, culminating with the production of a collective group print portfolio based on the individual students investigations.  No previous letterpress printing, printmaking, or typographic design experience is required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Registration is not available in Workday. Students must complete an application through RISD Global Summer Studies. A minimum GPA of 2.5 is required for all RISD students. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Additional information including deadlines and travel costs can be found on the Global Summer Studies website.

Ekphrasis, which translates simply to description from the Greek, refers to poetry which expounds on a visual work through vivid description and narrative. Regarding ekphrasis as a two-way street, this course aims to explore the ways in which literature and visual art intertwine. Poems based on painting are the most classic example, but ekphrasis can just as easily be paintings based on poems, photographs that become indices for paintings, paintings that appear in novels, etc. Consider art works that derive much of their thematic and formal substance from literary works, such as Millais’ Ophelia, Kentridge’s Ubu Tells The Truth, or Albright’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Our course will be an investigation of ekphrastic practices and will include not only engaging ekphrastic poetry, prose, and visual works on paper, but the production of them. In doing this we will explore the validations and critique of concepts of imitation and derivativeness latent in so much Academic art and institutional art.

We will explore and celebrate the potential in the ekphrastic mode as we attempt to join the contemporary interpretations of ekphrasis that are pushing disciplinary boundaries today.

Students will learn to design, expose, and print editions of silkscreen prints, to handset type and print on the Vandercook print, and to fold and stitch various book structures. These techniques will be unified in the exploration of literary/art relations through the completion of an edition of ekphrastic prints and three artist books. In addition to their own works, each student will contribute to a collaborative artist book.

Students will consider poetry and prose that examines visual art, which may include the works of Ocean Vuong, Donna Tartt, Ben Lerner, Nyla Matuk, Oscar Wilde, Keith Wilson, W. H. Auden, Maggie Nelson, and Mary Oliver. Visits to the RISD museum and Special Collections will allow for hands-on study of artist books and ekphrastic works.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00 - $200.00

Elective

This course addresses RISD’s Mission through a stunning exhibition from the Museum’s permanent collection, deep learning for students across design and fine arts and engagement with the public through a ground-breaking museum education program that embeds the classroom in the museum.

The RISD Museum has an extraordinary collection of historic French wallpapers that will be on view from November 2024 through May 2025. Students from Printmaking,

Textiles, Interior Architecture, Furniture and other disciplines will interact with the exhibition, other wallpapers at the museum and in archives and interiors in Providence. Skills will be shared at every step and a broad view of pattern and ornament will draw from printed art, textiles and sculptural/architectural ornament from many cultures. Students will develop new designs to be realized using reconstructed historical and innovative contemporary printing methods.

The RISD Museum Education Department is integral to the curriculum. Drawing on the expertise of our museum educators, students will participate in ongoing education programs under their supervision. Our classroom, the highly visible Museum Common Room on the first floor of the Chace Center, willed be filled with work in progress and students will install completed wallpapers around the RISD campus.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $175.00

Elective

The Sculptural Print looks to the multiple as a material (rather than a form) for the construction of one-of-a-kind works. The primary technical focuses will be in photo-emulsion based screenprinting, polymer-plate etching/intaglio, and basic relief printing. Students will be asked to design unique image vocabularies, transform and translate them to various matrices, and then to alter, manipulate, reimagine, and finally to build structural pieces using the printed matter. In the first half of the term, class sessions will begin with a presentation of artist precedents and technical demonstrations. In the second half, classes will still begin with a short presentation, and will then focus largely on in-progress critique and technical troubleshooting/consultation. Works completed for midterm will be based on provided prompts with detailed parameters and require students to work in series and at a large-scale. The final will be fully self-directed.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00

Please contact the instructor for permission to register. Preference is given to Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

Intaglio: Alternative Practices builds bridges from experience in the medium of intaglio by presenting advanced and innovative platemaking and printing processes using copper, plexiglass, and polymer plate types. Coursework will cover topics such as: custom stop-outs, extended etches, ink interfacing, toner transfers, and extensions into the digital realm utilizing the Benson Hall “Tech Lab” resources. Demonstrations and assignments will focus on the virtues of plating material, not solely as printable matrices, or carriers of transferrable visual information, but also as finished objects. The semester will be driven by demonstration, guided in-class work, independent work focused on experimentation, and conversation geared toward alternatives to substrate (paper), matrix (copper, polymer, plexi), and medium (ink). The semester will culminate in a self-directed final project that requires students to generate a grouping of works that successfully combine a selection of the processes covered which includes a substantial set of proofs, studies, plating tests, and pertinent supplementary visual/technical research.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00

Elective

Printmaking and The Politics of Protest examines the role of prints and printed matter in the context of political protest, the power of images, and how artists as well as non-artists have asserted and supported social justice and sustainability issues through art. While exploring the historical and structural basis of inequality, students will learn different theoretical paradigms and techniques for visual analysis in order to understand how visual media can inscribe and dismantle power and be a catalyst for change while mediating numerous social, economic, cultural and political differences. More importantly students will form recognition of their positions in an increasingly pluralistic world while fostering an understanding of social and cultural differences. This will be investigated through some of the following methods: lectures, exhibitions, guest lectures, video, historical art and media, group research initiatives, and the discussion of and creation of images that define and explore issues impacting our lives.

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

Technical fundamentals related to each of the basic intaglio processes will be demonstrated throughout the semester. Traditional and contemporary intaglio applications will also be presented and experimentation will be encouraged. A series of monotypes, small editions in each process and a larger technical combination plate will comprise the final portfolio assignment. Imagery, concept and content will represent a primary course element as technical facility is mastered. Individual critiques will be the standard throughout and two group critiques at the midpoint and end of the semester will also be scheduled.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

This course is not available to Sophomore Printmaking Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

Technical fundamentals related to each of the basic intaglio processes will be demonstrated throughout the semester. Traditional and contemporary intaglio applications will also be presented and experimentation will be encouraged. A series of monotypes, small editions in each process and a larger technical combination plate will comprise the final portfolio assignment. Imagery, concept and content will represent a primary course element as technical facility is mastered. Individual critiques will be the standard throughout and two group critiques at the midpoint and end of the semester will also be scheduled.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

This course offers basic black and white lithographic technical applications on lithostone and lithoplate to those students who are at the beginning level. Contemporary techniques, and technical short-cuts will elaborate on traditional processing. Experimentation is encouraged throughout the semester while emphasis is placed on the development of personally innovative imagery and concept. Informal group and individual critiques are conducted in conjunction with group mid-semester and final critiques. A professionally portfolio of assigned prints is due at the end of the course.

Course may be repeated for credit.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking