Anne Tait

In addition to teaching at RISD, Anne Tait is full professor in the Visual Arts Program at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, where she teaches painting, drawing and printmaking core studios and professional seminars. She holds a BA in literature (Bowling Green State University), a BFA (RISD) and an MFA (American University). She has also taught at the University of Connecticut and Rhode Island College. She completed the collegiate teaching certification from the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University and has a certificate in technical embroidery from the Royal School of Needlework in London.

Tait has extensively studied lettering and embroidery over her 30 years of making artwork and bridges material arts and crafts knowledge and making. In her prints, glass pieces and the accompanying images from her research, she presents traditional images of death and remembrance, considering the ways people attempt to remember through memorials. Her research on cemetery imagery and traditions of 19th-century print technology addresses the culmination of earthly life. Tait contends with this framework and asks how we remember a life. Her work in Vermont resulted in an exhibition in Rutland, VT, in which she exhibited designs and prints from the Vermont Marble Company in an exhibition entitled Enduring Traditions: The Art of Memorials from the Marble Valley.

Tait has been supported in her work through residencies and grants from the Rhode Island Council for the Arts, the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the Vermont Council for the Humanities and  Roger Williams University and has been in residence at I-Park, Vermont Studio Center, Gettysburg National Park and the Keeper’s House, Grace Cemetery. She has received awards for her efforts to preserve urban cemeteries in Providence. Her community service is extensive, and she serves on the boards of the Association for Gravestone Studies, Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island, Trinity Gateway Historical Improvement Association, Society for Industrial Archeology and the Massachusetts Bay Maritime Commission.