RISD Momentum Spring 2022

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Meet Crystal Williams

As you read this note, I will have been RISD’s 18th president for a little over a month. To date, my conversations with students, faculty, staff and members of the broader Providence and art and design communities have buoyed my excitement for this great institution. People have been so warm and welcoming. What a joy!

That strength also comes from you. I appreciate your commitment to RISD. Your financial support enables our students, faculty and staff to bring their ideas into the world in exciting ways, and your generosity enables us to open up much-needed opportunities for students from around the world. Your time and energy, too, on behalf of the Alumni Association and Families Association, strengthens our potent RISD network worldwide. We could not do any of this essential work without your contributions.

I look forward to meeting many of you as I begin to travel on behalf of RISD in the coming months, and perhaps sooner if you visit campus for Commencement + Reunion Weekend in June (please do!). I’ve quickly learned that your pride in this institution and your engagement, volunteerism, advocacy and philanthropic support are crucial to ensuring RISD’s vibrancy. Thank you for all of it—for everything you do on behalf of RISD.

“My goals for RISD are still taking shape.

Yet in my imagination, I picture the endeavor before us as a figure with feet spread wide, with one arm holding the past, honoring the institution’s history and decades of outstanding, ground-breaking work, and the other stretching and reaching for transformation.”

My goals for RISD are still taking shape. Yet in my imagination, I picture the endeavor before us as a figure with feet spread wide, with one arm holding the past, honoring the institution’s history and decades of outstanding, groundbreaking work, and the other stretching and reaching for transformation. RISD has always been a place of exploration for artists and designers who emerge as leaders, innovators and change-makers. That will never change. We will continue to push beyond our constraints and energize one another in the process.

And you—why do you love RISD? I have already heard so many wonderful stories: from a sitting US senator, from a multi-generation RISD family, from colleagues whose parents are RISD alumni or whose children aspire to join our community. So many endearing stories about transformation, dreams, lives defined in some part by this extraordinary place. I am eager to hear your memories as well. Your words and experiences will help inform our future and how we, the global RISD community, move forward.

That said, I do have some immediate priorities. They are to: 1.

2.

3.

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Support RISD students, faculty, staff, parents, museum patrons, and you our alumni and friends.

Strengthen our community through intellectual, social, creative and professional experiences.

Galvanize our imaginations to develop new strategic priorities and innovative programs and deepen existing ones, all in service of advancing RISD’s excellence.

Ensure that our world’s most promising creatives can find a home at RISD.

With great appreciation and anticipation,

CRYSTAL WILLIAMS PRESIDENT, RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Add to that list an orientation to help make RISD a place where all community members can thrive. I believe that our plurality as makers, thinkers and human beings is a source of our institutional strength.

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Taking Flight

Recipient of a Presidential Fellowship

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A Presidential Fellowship enables Dina Khorchid to explore, experiment and process years of trauma and loss.

Dina Khorchid MFA 23 TX was a quiet child who liked to draw and paint, the youngest of four siblings in a Palestinian family living in Kuwait City. In 1990, when she was 3, her father wrote a letter to a relative, saying, “Dina is growing up every day. Yesterday she made a picture of a pigeon.”

Khorchid graduated more than a decade ago from the American University of Sharjah with a Bachelor of Arts in visual communication, and worked as a graphic designer for a magazine, a design studio and an arts and culture organization. Meanwhile, she established her own practice in printmaking and textiles through a Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (SEAF) in Abu Dhabi—which included a two-week visit to RISD—and another fellowship with the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program in Beirut, Lebanon.

Today, that letter is a cornerstone of Khorchid’s practice as an artist. Shortly after writing it, her father, a doctor who ran a medical clinic, was abducted—this was during the Gulf War—and was never seen or heard from again. “We still don’t know the exact story of what happened, or why,” Khorchid says. She and her mother and siblings left Kuwait to live near family in Lebanon, then in the United Arab Emirates.

The relative who received that long-ago letter returned it to the family, and Khorchid discovered it when she was in high school. Ever since, she says, “I feel like I’ve used art as a way to connect back to my father, and to deal with loss and memory, trauma, the chaos of not having answers. I think it comes naturally to want to make art, something tangible— to talk through visuals.”

It was in Beirut, in the summer of 2020, that Khorchid’s childhood experience with trauma and loss suddenly deepened. Thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate exploded at the city’s port, and the impact of the blast destroyed homes miles away. One of the walls of Khorchid’s apartment building shattered all over her bed just minutes after she had gotten up. Unhurt, she stumbled out of the building, where “it felt like a scene from a movie,” she says. “There was dust everywhere, people bleeding, running, broken glass on the streets.”

Images of the letter have appeared in Khorchid’s work on paper and fabric, layered with linocut prints, stitching and pastel strokes. The pigeon she drew as a small child resurfaced, too. “Pigeons are known to be excellent messengers—to me, that means sending messages between past realities and present narratives of the mind. And rather than migrate, pigeons inhabit a safe location and identify it as home. I love that, because I’m always searching for what is home.”

Nearly two years later, Khorchid’s heart remains in Lebanon.

She is “processing things from a distance” at RISD as she immerses herself in new textile-making techniques with her professors, has conversations with mentor Denise Maroney MFA 15 TX and expands her art practice while also staying true to themes of loss, memory, healing and home. “Perhaps because of my Palestinian background, knowing I cannot access my homeland, it brings up a feeling of being an outsider,” Khorchid says. “But we, as humans, are always in search of a place of comfort and connection.”

Khorchid’s search brought her to RISD last fall, supported by a Presidential Fellowship that covers all the costs of her two-year master’s program. The Society of Presidential Fellows is RISD’s most prestigious graduate student financial aid program, with candidates nominated by faculty and approved by the deans, provost and the president. “It provides mentorship and great opportunities, which I find really amazing,” Khorchid says.

If you would like more information about how you can support graduate students through the Society of Presidential Fellows, please contact O’Neil Outar, vice president of Institutional Advancement at ooutar@risd.edu or 401 454-6532.

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Taking Up Space

Recipient of the Florence Hewitt Memorial Scholarship, the Emily R. Spaulding Scholarship, the Jeanne StahlWebber Sculpture Fund and the Materials Fund

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Sculptor and writer Brady Mathisen 23 SC sees artmaking at RISD as a constant and rewarding balance.

work, and when they took a spatial dynamics class their first semester at RISD, “that was it,” Mathisen says.

“I got really excited.”

Financial aid from the Florence Hewitt Memorial Scholarship, the Emily R. Spaulding Scholarship and the Jeanne Stahl-Webber Sculpture Fund covers part of Mathisen’s tuition, and the Materials Fund helps them pay for artmaking supplies. “Financial aid has been a really big deal, because RISD was a dream-school opportunity for me,” Mathisen says. “I wouldn’t be able to be here without this support.”

Among the photos and prints hanging on Brady Mathisen’s dorm room wall is one unusual decoration: a raccoon pelt, head and all. “It’s ethically sourced!” Mathisen says—from a second-hand store. Mathisen is a nature-lover, no matter what the form, and finds artistic inspiration in the balance between life and death, between the natural world and the human-built world.

Mathisen is equally grateful for the people and community at RISD. “I wasn’t out as trans before being here, so being part of a community that helped me work through a lot of things has been so rewarding,” they say. Mathisen reciprocates by helping develop programs for RISD’s Intercultural Student Engagement office and working as an orientation leader for new students. They will serve as one of two directors of orientation next year. “When I came in, having people who were my peers, but who also had some authority and could walk me through things really helped me feel comfortable.

I like being able to do that for other people.”

As a trans person who uses they/them pronouns, Mathisen thinks a great deal about in-between spaces in general. “A lot of my sculpture work is about nature, but it also relates to my personal experience with gender, as somebody who grew up gendered as a girl but had a strong desire to be masculine.”

One sculpture Mathisen made last fall highlights that dual creative approach. After encountering a pair of fishermen during a hike in a park, they created two hand-sewn fish tied together with blue ribbon and impaled on long metal hooks, facing each other, as if in conversation.

“Having people who were my peers, but who also had some authority and could walk me through things really helped me feel comfortable. I like being able to do that for other people.”

Over time, Mathisen has come to rely on creative writing— mostly poetry—as much as welding and other skills they’ve learned in the Sculpture department. “A lot of my work right now is based on the bodily experience of walking around and seeing things and stopping right there to write about them,” they say. “It helps me figure out what I’m thinking, and then I make an object. But there are also times when I make an object and then realize something new about it and then write something.”

Being part of a community is like artmaking, Mathisen says; it all comes back to the idea of physical space, whether a person is creating a sculpture to fill it or considering how sexual orientation, race and gender affect the way they move through it. For Mathisen, there are less weighty factors, too—like what the landscape feels like as they walk around every day. “I want to be in a place where I can pick random things up off the ground,” they say. “In Providence, I can walk around and pick up, say, a pine cone, and I’ll probably be fine.

In places like New York, I’m not so sure.”

Mathisen always imagined a creative future when they were growing up in Sacramento, California. “At first, I really wanted to be a fashion designer, because my mom and I watched Project Runway every week.” Then it was architecture that fascinated Mathisen, then graphic design.

While working as a studio assistant for a high school art teacher, they were introduced to sculpture and installation

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The Creative Pursuit of Advocacy and Accountability

Recipient of the Tomás Gonda Prize

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Alex Sarkissian wants to design with an audience rather than for an audience.

Serving as a student orientation leader in the fall is not unusual for someone beginning their final year at RISD, but Alex Sarkissian 22 GD may have been the only one who’d never set foot on campus before. What he lacked in familiarity he made up for with enthusiasm. “I wanted to hit the ground running and get involved right away,” he says.

“When you can find community at school, it’s a game changer.”

at RISD, with classes online, he went through a bout of imposter syndrome—“everyone else was so good!” he says.

But things clicked partway through a design studio class during a project that highlighted typography, and his teacher advised him that he had an eye for composition. “That was probably my most validating moment of the whole semester,” Sarkissian says.

Sarkissian knew this because he already had three years of college under his belt. He transferred to RISD in 2020 from Pasadena City College, where he had earned associate’s degrees in Communication Studies, Social and Behavioral Science, and Sociology, as well as a certificate in Graphic Design. The pandemic forced his first year at RISD to be completely remote, but when he arrived on campus in 2021, his orientation duties got him up to speed quickly. “All the people I met, giving tours even though it felt like I didn’t know what I was doing—it made the whole transition better and calmer.”

“When you can find community at school, it’s a game changer.”

Another favorite project was an abstract digital color study he created this year. It started with a childhood photo taken during a long car ride from Seattle, where Sarkissian was born, to LA, where he grew up. He used JavaScript to develop code that he left running for most of a day, then printed the resulting material and played with it in Photoshop. The image that evolved was something completely new and unexpected, resembling both an intricate weaving and an old-school video game: a blending of muted grays and greens that seemed to represent Seattle, and brighter, more contrasting colors that Sarkissian associates with Southern California.

At RISD, Sarkissian has received scholarship funding for summer coursework and an internship stipend, and one of his assignments last fall was awarded the Tomás Gonda Prize, which recognizes work by graphic design students that focuses on solutions to social justice problems.

Prizewinners receive funding to print and produce their project. Sarkissian’s image, titled “Half the Story,” highlights Critical Race Theory*; it’s a stark, type-based illustration that suggests that when students learn about slavery in US history but not about the systemic racism that has endured, they are not getting complete information. “To me, it’s about accountability,” Sarkissian says. “I’m Armenian, and part of Armenia’s history is the genocide”—mass killings of Armenians in the late 1800s and early 1900s at the hands of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which Turkey, today, refuses to acknowledge. Sarkissian says that the principles of CRT “feel personal to me, even though my family is not from the US.”

Despite the complexity of that project, Sarkissian considers simplicity and clarity his main traits as a designer. He often thinks of old friends back in California when he’s embarking on a project—one of them is in med school, another is doing a PhD in biochemistry. “They’re not in my world,” Sarkissian says. “I design around that idea—how can I work with an audience that isn’t from my background to help them understand what I’m doing? I welcome ideas from people who aren’t on the same page as me. It helps me not design in a box.”

Sarkissian discovered design when he was in middle school, doing layouts and photography for the student newspaper and yearbook. He kept at it through high school and community college. Stuck at home for his first year

* The American Bar Association defines Critical Race Theory, or CRT, as the academic and legal practice of critiquing “how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers.”

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The Explorer Hao Hoang pursued one creative idea after another without hesitation. His legacy will enable future students to do the same.

Late one night in April 1979, 13-year-old

Five years later, Hao was, incredibly, enrolling at RISD, supported by a substantial scholarship. He served as an undergraduate teaching assistant in the Department of Architecture and was known for his meticulous designs, unparalleled work ethic, voracious creative appetite and generous mentorship of younger students. Hao died of cancer in 2018 at the age of 53, and gave much of his estate to RISD to establish the endowed Hao Hoang BArch 88 Scholarship. “Hao got an opportunity to start his career” at RISD, says his sister Linh. “He always thought a lot about what he could do for other people, and he wanted to help students learn and explore the way he did in his day.”

Hao Hoang BArch 88 and his family snuck out of their home in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and escaped the country with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.

Hoang’s father had been placed under house arrest—like many Vietnamese citizens of Chinese ancestry who owned land or worked in international business, he was viewed

Hao’s road from Vietnam to RISD included a perilous 21-day boat ride to Hong Kong with hundreds of other passengers, a stay in a refugee camp, and then a new life on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where the family settled in the fall of 1979. As he and his three siblings learned English,

with suspicion by the new Communist government. He saw a bleak future ahead for his family. So they fled.

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studied and tried to assimilate into the culture of the United States, Hao excelled. He competed on the school’s track and field team and was always drawing and sketching, says Linh.

“He was into different aspects of art—painting, photography, filmmaking, furniture design. For him, it was about being creative, always thinking outside the box.”

And a risk-taker, Linh adds. When Hao was in high school, he didn’t know how to swim, yet when he faced a required swim test in gym class, “he just jumpedinto the pool,” Linh says. “The teacher had to dive in and save him. But after that, swimming became one of his favorite hobbies.”

That pool jump is akin to what Hao might say to RISD students today. “Go out and explore the world, be adventurous, and have a blast doing it,” says Linh. “And work hard,” adds Keith. “Hao came here with almost nothing and became someone who—anything he wanted to do, he could do. He put his mind to it all.”

At RISD, Hao shared an apartment with Johnny Li BArch 89, who describes his former roommate as soft-spoken and caring. “Because of his role as a teaching assistant, he tried to inspire people, pushing them without forcing his opinion on them,” Li says. Hao guided students beyond RISD, too.

He worked in Spain and Vienna after graduation, and urged Li to do the same, sending him detailed maps and notes about where to travel and even helping him get a job at an architecture firm in Vienna.

He served as an undergraduate teaching assistant in the Department of Architecture and was known for his meticulous designs, unparalleled work ethic, . . . and generous mentorship of younger students.

Deborah Torres BArch 89 was another classmate whom Hao advised to work internationally after RISD. “Hao was always willing to share what he knew,” she says. Their connection continued in Los Angeles, where they each began to build careers as architects. When the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake rocked greater Los Angeles in 1994, Hao and Torres drove all over the city and photographed collapsed overpasses and freeways and buildings, then sent the photos to their structures professor at RISD, to show to students and use in class discussions.

Even as Hao worked for decades as an architect on a range of residential and commercial projects, he took time to coach Los Angeles-area high school students who were applying to RISD, volunteer with the Sierra Club and continue experimenting with other media, just as he’d done as a student. He wrote a screenplay that won a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and was a semi-finalist candidate for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab. He developed software and mobile apps, and was “very much an idea-generation person,” says his brother Keith.

Hao in a studio in the 1980s.

If you are interested in learning more about gift planning at RISD, please contact Rebecca Dupras, senior planned giving officer at rdupras@risd.edu or 401 427-3151 or Chad Nelson, senior planned giving officer at cnelson@risd.edu or 401 454-6189.

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A Champion for Change Designer and retired NFL player Michael Bennett wants more opportunities for students of color to shape their communities.

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Famous football players may not be the

other work rooted in “the beauty and function of the African diaspora,” he says. “We look at materials and craft and tradition, and think about how those things contribute to different moments in history and society.”

first people who come to mind as likely supporters of art and design education.

But Michael Bennett, who played in the

O’Neil Outar, vice president of Institutional Advancement, sees Bennett as an exciting partner for RISD. “We hold matching values around art and design and issues related to diversity, equity and inclusion,” Outar says. “Michael is very much a systems thinker, and he understands the necessity of building the academic pipeline and training the next generation of industry leaders.”

NFL for 11 years, appeared in three Pro Bowls and won a Super Bowl Championship with the Seattle Seahawks, is now partnering with RISD to help diversify its student body.

Fighting for equity and opportunity has long been part of Bennett’s agenda, even when he was immersed in the grind of pro football. For several years as a player, he sat or stayed in the locker room when the national anthem was sung at NFL games as a protest against racial injustice. The philanthropic foundation he started with his wife has helped launch a school for girls in Senegal focused on math, science and technology; a gardening program at Seattle’s King County Juvenile Detention Center; and sports and nutrition programs for kids living on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota.

He’s written a book about his activism titled Things That Make White People Uncomfortable, and he was an early member of Athletes for Impact, an organization of sports leaders that advocates for a range of social justice issues.

In 2021, Bennett and his wife, Pele, established the Michael and Pele Bennett Scholarship, a $250,000 endowed fund aimed at enabling “more people of color to be in the best place for hands-on learning and creating,” he says. Helping RISD attract and support students from communities that have been historically underrepresented in art and design industries means giving them, Bennett says, “an opportunity to become a part of a culture of thinking and building, and to begin changing the world they see around them.”

Bennett was inspired to reach out to RISD at the height of the pandemic, after leaving the NFL to spend more time with his family and to return to college at the University of Hawaii. As a high school and college football player in Texas in the early and mid-2000’s, he’d always been familiar with the inequities that exist in education. But at the University of Hawaii, immersed in studying architecture and design, he gained a deeper understanding of the oppression that is built into our environments—seeing how neighborhoods, buildings and society are intertwined in negative and long-lasting ways.

“There are so many places that don’t have the infrastructure they need to exist, places that have been totally rejected,” Bennett says. “The people who live in a neighborhood should have the opportunity to make the changes needed in that neighborhood. Why can’t they be equipped to design the buildings and the landscape?”

“Michael is very much a systems thinker, and he understands the necessity of building the academic pipeline and training the next generation of industry leaders.”

With a RISD education, they can be, Bennett says. And he’s not just interested in supporting architecture students.

“Multimedia, industrial design, fashion, it doesn’t matter—it’s about students of color getting the chance to be creative and grow,” he says. Bennett hopes to eventually welcome RISD students as interns at his design studio, which is based in New York and Hawaii and creates furniture, art installations and

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“Football allowed me to do a lot of great things,” he acknowledges. But his athleticism was, and is, he says, “a talent and a skill, not a purpose.” In his book, he writes, “Whether I die tomorrow or in 60 years, if the only things about me that people talk about are the Pro Bowls and the Super Bowl appearances, I will have failed.” His purpose— “having more people get the opportunity to grow and give back to each other”—now includes helping to bring greater equity into the RISD student body. He says, “The only expectation I have is that more people get the chance to be a part of the system and learn, because knowledge is everything.”

Loyalty Matters What inspires donors to give year after year?

Mitchell P. Benjamin BArch 86 Recently I was cleaning my garage, and I dug up some architectural drawings I did at RISD. My first reaction was how novice they were. My next reaction was, I haven’t

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changed that much. I could see the seeds of what I’m doing now in those drawings from 35 years ago. They were so simple, but the design sense was there, the logic was

year s

there. At RISD, you really start to understand what works

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and what doesn’t.

I’ve been extremely fortunate: I was able to figure out

iving

Jane Chung 06 GD

what I like to do in this world and pursue it, and go to a school that I wanted to go to and not have to worry about tuition. Giving to RISD is a way of acknowledging that.

RISD has had a huge influence in my life. My professors

In Hebrew, there’s a saying, tikkun olam, which means

never placed much importance on how our portfolios

“to heal the world.” To heal the world, you do good things.

looked, or what the latest technology was. They focused

Part of doing good things is giving to others. I figured out

on how to ask the right questions and how to be curious.

that financially, I had it easy at RISD. I give so the next

This developed our critical thinking skills—and the ideas

person can have it a little easier, too.

always came first. Expression and execution need to be there, of course, but they follow the idea. This is even how

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of years

design in my workplace functions today.

RISD provided me with a scholarship and work opportunities on campus that naturally involved me

g

givin

with the RISD community. When I got my first job after college, I wasn’t making much money, but I knew I wanted to contribute. I reflected on how much the school had given me and felt gratitude. People often have the mentality that if you donate, you have to donate a significant amount.

But I say, start with a little. It’s like what I always tell my team at work: Progress over perfection.

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The Centennial Society is the cornerstone of RISD’s philanthropic community. Named for the gift that founded RISD—from the Rhode Island Women’s Centennial Commission— this society recognizes donors who have given to RISD in any amount for three consecutive years or more. Whether it’s $20 or $20,000, these gifts provide the steady, reliable foundation that enables RISD to support students and build its future. We asked a few Centennial Society members why they give, and what RISD continues to give them.

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Stuart J. Murphy 64 IL P 96 Trustee Emeritus

s year

Without question, my RISD education set the pace and sent

iving

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me in the direction I needed to go. To suddenly be thrown into that first foundation year was magical, outrageously demanding, sometimes frightening, but incredible. It equalizes everybody. You learn who you are, who you might want to be; you see a path forward in the arts. And from day one, you’re involved in the critique process. That concept and

Angela Boswell 95 TX

mentality of critique, of not only being willing to have your own work discussed publicly by your professors and your peers, but also being willing to speak about other people’s

My big takeaway from RISD was learning how to sit through

works in a respectful, productive manner. That’s a life lesson.

a crit: taking in good, bad and indifferent attitudes about your work. That and problem solving are what drove my

There are so many people who deserve that experience

career. You don’t have time to stress about little details or

at RISD and can’t afford it. And when they’re not there, it

get hung up on negative criticism. Besides, negative criticism

changes the makeup of the classes, the dynamic between

at RISD wasn’t always negative. It was more like: try it this

students; it changes all the creative possibilities that could

way. Try it that way. Everything was problem solving. You

happen. There’s a real need for financial support, and not

make a decision, go with it, and if it’s wrong, you change

everyone understands that. But all of us were students once,

your path. It’s not like the world is going to end.

so we can understand what’s at stake.

I was one of those students who made phone calls to alumni, asking them to give to RISD. I enjoyed talking to people,

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but I remember how disheartening it was if they said no. So when I started getting those calls, I was only two years out of college, but I could afford $25. Every year, I would try to

years of gi

give a little more. RISD was such a unique experience, and

ving

I feel like I need to support this institution that gave me so many opportunities. My education got me my first job and it got me to where I am today. We all need to help take care of each other in whatever way makes sense to us, and for me, it’s giving back to RISD.

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THE CENTENNIAL SOCIETY

“I am proud of my ongoing support for RISD, and I do it for two reasons: appreciation for the school’s impact on my life and to help continue the outstanding education of future architects and artists.”

Yasuyo Iguchi 83 GD Going to RISD was one of the best things I’ve ever

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years

done because it gave me the necessary foundation for things to come. I had friends outside of RISD questioning whether they were going to the right college, but I never felt that way. It was like my world

of giv

ing

unfolded. All of my classmates inspired me; I enjoyed seeing their ideas developed and brought forth. During my first Wintersession, I took pottery, and threw pots from morning to night. My hands were raw, but I didn’t care; I loved it. I was working with architects, graphic designers, painters and illustrators, and relished that

Tony C. Belluschi BArch 66 P 95 Trustee Emeritus

we all had a different take on the class.

When the first letter came, asking if I would donate,

I have got a long history with RISD, and a lot of loyalty,

I thought, why not? It was a way of giving my support

which started the moment I set foot on campus. The

even if it was only $10 or $20. I still donate small

Freshman Foundation program [now called Experimental

amounts, and sometimes I think that my gift is not

and Foundation Studies] was the most inspiring thing I

enough to make a difference. But someone told me

had ever done in my life up to that point. I started to see

once that if everyone gave a small amount, it would

everything differently—light, color, form, texture, scale. It

add up to something substantial. Think about how

probably was the most defining moment of my career in

many people have gone through the doors at RISD.

the arts. When I became an architect, I was able to bring

A lot of people.

all the arts to the table.

I am proud of my ongoing support for RISD, and I do it

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for two reasons: appreciation for the school’s impact on my life and to help continue the outstanding education of future architects and artists. I know many alumni may not yet have the financial resources necessary to give every

s year

year, but I also know that most of them, as artists, love what they do, and can see the benefit that RISD provided them early in their career. Not just creatively. RISD is a calling card. There’s a sense of appreciation and value.

The minute you say, “Oh, that person went to RISD,” it puts them in a different category.

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iving

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Betsy Taylor-Kennedy BArch 83

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I give to acknowledge the benefit I received from scholarships and work-study opportunities when I was a student. When I was interviewed by the director of Student Activities to see if I would be a good fit for

years of gi

ving

a work-study position they were looking to fill, it was a moment that made me feel I was being treated as an adult—that what I had to offer was of value. I got that job and went on to become active in student government and the activities committee, which

Dana M. Newbrook 63 AR Trustee Emeritus

broadened my connection to the RISD community.

Helping today’s students learn and thrive at RISD,

When I got to RISD, I probably did not look like I was

regardless of their background or financial situation, is

going to fit in as an artist. I had started at Brown, with a

an investment in future artists and designers. You don’t

Navy ROTC scholarship, studying engineering. I decided to

have to be a wealthy philanthropist. You give what you

make a jump and see what I could do, and RISD gave me

can. A modest annual gift adds up over the years.

a scholarship. Coming from Brown, I was pretty stuffed up on all of the mathematics necessary for architecture, and I picked up the structural ideas pretty easily. Some of my

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friends did not, so I started holding classes. I was working at a gas station near campus to make some extra money, and my friends would come down and lay their math

years o

problems out on the table, and we’d work together while

f givin

I pumped gas.

g

I would not have been able to be at RISD without financial support. After living on somebody else's money while I was there, I thought it was best to give some of it back. I appreciate the work that goes into trying to give scholarships to students, getting as much diversity as possible on the campus. RISD is really at the top. We have a lot to be proud of.

“Helping today’s students learn and thrive at RISD, regardless of their background or financial situation, is an investment in future artists and designers. You don’t have to be a wealthy philanthropist. You give what you can.

A modest annual gift adds up over the years.”

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THE CENTENNIAL SOCIETY

Will L. McLoughlin BArch 09 My entire approach to life has been informed by my experiences at RISD. I think RISD alumni speak a

12

shared language that comes from a deep interest in process—taking things apart to rebuild them differently, and understanding that an idea develops and evolves

ing

giv rs of

yea

through asking questions and understanding constraints.

The school instills in us a critique culture that is composed of different voices and perspectives, which makes a better, richer conversation and provides a wider lens.

Giving to RISD and supporting the school’s greatest

Vanessa Pyne 05 FAV

needs and scholarships is, for me, a natural exchange. It is a way to continue fostering the kind of conversations

RISD is a place that teaches you how to think. I learn

that have sustained me and build a diverse and inclusive

by getting inspired by some idea and then figuring out

creative atmosphere at the school.

what I need to know in order to accomplish that idea and make it happen. I’m a software engineer now, but

So many alumni sacrificed a lot—because of student

seven years ago, I made the decision to go to a coding

loans—to be part of RISD. I hope they know that even

boot camp for two months because I wanted to learn

a few dollars a month, or a few dollars a year, will help

those new skills. What I got at RISD—the ability to

continue the conversation for others.

think for yourself, to not go after grades, to not try to please other people, to learn how to follow your passion

12

and believe in yourself—I think if I had gone to a more traditional school, it would have been much more difficult for me to believe that I could learn to code.

years

I feel a sense of camaraderie with RISD and the community that’s there now, so it’s easy to want to support that. Why wouldn’t you want to give back to people who are sharing the same kind of experiences that you had? It’s almost like giving money to family, taking care of your own.

“Giving to RISD and supporting the school’s greatest needs and scholarships is, for me, a natural exchange. It is a way to continue fostering the kind of conversations that have sustained me and build a diverse and inclusive creative atmosphere at the school.”

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of giv

ing

An Immediate Bond For volunteer Sol Armada de la Cruz, bringing alumni together across generations “feeds the soul.”

Sol Armada de la Cruz 92 AP took the helm of RISD’s Alumni Club of Los Angeles right before the pandemic hit. She hosted one gathering at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “and it was great!” she says. “But then the world ended.”

Today, Armada de la Cruz manages licensing and brand partnerships for WarnerMedia, which means that when you walk into Saks Fifth Avenue and see merchandise from the new Batman movie, it’s because Armada de la Cruz made that deal happen more than a year ago. The work is a long way from her beginnings at RISD in the late 1980s. “I was 17, born and raised in the Caribbean, 12 years of Catholic school.

Going to RISD was like landing on the surface of the moon,” Armada de la Cruz recalls. “But RISD made me the person I am today, professionally—being exposed to different cultures and ways of thinking and being part of a creative community.”

Despite the disheartening timing, and the less-than-ideal online events Armada de la Cruz organized when in-person gatherings were deemed too risky, she is excited to gear up again. Yes to RISD happy hours, family picnics, panel discussions and studio visits; yes to “bringing everybody back to that feeling of connection after being so scattered,” she says. But her main objective is to facilitate networking, especially for recent graduates. “They’re coming out of school at a very uncertain time, probably with a lot of debt,” Armada de la Cruz notes. And she knows from experience that the RISD alumni community can help. “I got my first internship through a RISD grad, somebody who was a few years older than me and gave me a chance,” she says.

“It doesn’t matter if a RISD person is 20 years older than you or 20 years younger. There’s an immediate bond because of what you both experienced.”

Armada de la Cruz’s drive to volunteer for the Alumni Club of Los Angeles comes from her younger self, too. Partway through her time at RISD, her mother died unexpectedly.

Her family’s financial situation became more precarious, and she worried that she might have to withdraw from school.

Her department chair, and even the college president, stepped in and found extra financial aid to ensure that didn’t happen. Armada de la Cruz says, “I’m very conscious that if I hadn’t been able to stay, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

Besides, volunteering for RISD, while often challenging, brings Armada de la Cruz specific kinds of joy. She says, “It makes me happy to do outreach with a student. It makes me happy to do a portfolio review. It makes me happy to help anyone who has questions about design careers. And it’s so satisfying to see different generations of alumni come together. Giving back feeds a part of your soul.”

For Armada de la Cruz, that experience translated into “problem-solving in its purest form” and “a well-rounded knowledge of the arts,” she says. That became clear as she launched her career in fashion at Tommy Hilfiger in New York, where she worked with peers who had graduated from Parsons or FIT. “They knew where to get the best zippers in the city, but I had an understanding of art history and design in general,” she says. “The key to having a professional creative career is seeing how you’re part of a bigger picture.

You have to be elastic, and RISD helps your mind be elastic.”

To learn more about RISD Alumni Clubs, visit alumni.risd.edu

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A Decade of Impact RISD celebrates 10 years of the Maharam STEAM Fellowship.

When RISD launched a partnership with the textile company Maharam to integrate art and design into a broad range of professional fields—including the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math—the goal was to help students use their creative skills outside of traditional art-world ventures.

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Today, after a decade of the Maharam STEAM Fellowship in Applied Art and Design, RISD students are bringing their training as visual and innovative thinkers to dozens of government agencies, medical and scientific research institutions and nonprofit advocacy groups, among other organizations.

both patients and staff. She says the fellowship “opened her eyes” and showed her a potential she didn’t know existed.

“I hadn’t realized that I had the kind of skills that were needed in a complex system like healthcare,” she says.

“The fellowship shaped the designer I am today and gave me the confidence to speak up in rooms where no one expected to hear my voice.”

“Maharam is proud to support RISD students—the next generation of creative leaders. As artists and designers, they can affect real social and environmental change in culture, policy and practice,” says Maharam Senior Vice President and Director of Design Mary Murphy MAE 86. “We have been particularly inspired by the Fellows’ recent focus on social justice and sustainability, and we look forward to following the work and impact of the Maharam STEAM Fellows in the years to come.”

Adam Chuong MID 19 interned with Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), a Providence housing advocacy organization that organizes low-income families living in communities of color. Driven partly by the understanding that RISD is a contributing factor in Providence’s affordable-housing crisis, Chuong designed questionnaires and promotional materials, built props for street theater protests, ran workshops to engage tenants all over the city, and secured a city grant for DARE to host a documentary-film screening and panel discussion with Fred Hampton Jr., leader of the Black Panther Party Cubs.

Chuong says, “The Maharam Fellowship expands the perceptions of art and design not only for recipients, but also for the host organizations. Fellows learn to apply their skills and creative thinking into new contexts, while the host organizations learn how art and design can change the way they approach problems.” Chuong now works as education manager at The Steel Yard, a nonprofit industrial art center and studio in Providence.

The fellowship supports up to 10 RISD students every summer with a $5,000 stipend, which allows them to pursue internships that they design themselves, in partnership with companies and organizations they choose.

Past fellowship recipients have interned with organizations as large as the Mayo Clinic and the World Economic Forum and as regionally focused as the Wasatch Community Garden in Salt Lake City, Utah and the St. John’s Vocational Training Centre in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Student work has focused on prisoners’ rights, immigrant and refugee services and children’s mental health treatments, among dozens of other issues. As of this summer, the Maharam Fellowship will have supported just over 100 RISD students working across the US and in 23 countries.

“In many professions, people can get very focused on the tasks at hand and miss valuable tangents and intersections,” says Kevin Jankowski 88 IL, director of RISD’s Career Center and an advisor to Maharam Fellows. “That’s what these RISD students can do; they can see a bigger picture and propose ideas that hadn’t been considered before.” And the fellowship is an empowering experience for students even before their actual internships begin, Jankowski adds. “When they receive funding from Maharam, they see their ideas being valued. That gives them the confidence to go out and create impact—to be changemakers in a community.”

Samantha Dempsey 13 IL is now the lead experience designer at Zwift, a fitness training app, but a decade ago, she was among the first cohort of Maharam Fellows.

She interned at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, conducting research with patients and clinicians, designing a toolkit for collecting visual stories from patients and mapping clinical conversations and creating a series of comics and animations to share critical information with

The fellowship shaped the designer I am today and gave me the confidence to speak up in rooms where no one expected to hear my voice.

—SAMANTHA DEMPSEY 13 IL 21

Seeing Courage in Creativity Since he bought his first piece of art nearly 40 years ago, Dr. Joseph Chazan has championed the RISD Museum and hundreds of RISD artists.

22

When Joe Chazan was growing up in

special building projects at the museum. In 2019, President Emerita Rosanne Somerson 76 awarded him the RISD President’s Medal of Honor for his generosity and support of local artists.

Buffalo, New York, he never stepped foot inside a museum. His parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who

“He practices true philanthropy, supporting people so they can be creative in the world,” says Sarah Ganz Blythe P 22, interim director of the RISD Museum. In recent years, Chazan and the museum’s curators have focused on buying artwork by young and emerging artists. Ganz Blythe says, “It’s often the first time their work is acquired by a museum, and that is a crucial step in an artist’s career, both financially and in terms of expanding the audience for their work.”

For Chazan, the art is almost secondary. When he started out as a collector, buying art his friends had made, he says that “people would ask me, ‘Do you like the artwork?’ I’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter. I like them. And if I can help them succeed, that's good.’”

went to work instead of high school; they were “too poor to be discriminated against,” Chazan says. But their son made it to pharmacy school, then medical school, and eventually became a nephrologist and entrepreneur with a network of dialysis clinics throughout Rhode Island.

Along the way, after settling in Providence, Chazan happened to meet Frank Robinson, director of the RISD Museum, who started introducing him to artists. Chazan claims to possess no art skills—“I have hands of stone,” he says—yet he felt a kinship with these new acquaintances.

“They were swimming upstream,” he says, just as he had done when he was trying to set up his first dialysis clinic, which was the first of its kind in the state. He says, “These artists were working alone in their studios, putting themselves out there, never knowing what the critics were going to say. They were uncompromising, and they were trying to do things that maybe had never been done before.”

Impressed, Chazan started buying their work.

Chazan’s own art collection amounts to approximately 1,000 pieces, most of which are by Rhode Island artists. His philanthropy extends beyond RISD to museums, nonprofits and colleges and universities around the country. With great amusement, he played a purple-suited superhero in Chazan!

Unfiltered, a graphic novel about his life that was published in 2020, and a more serious book, published by the RISD Museum in 2016, celebrated his four decades of gifts to the museum’s collections. Yet he still describes himself as “a country doc from Buffalo,” and views a discussion of why he committed so deeply to supporting artists as “almost absurd.” He says, “There was no grand plan. I did what I did because I wanted to do it. That’s how I approach everything.

I find people I can trust, and who are creative and interested in education, and who are ready to go from A to B to C to D. ‘No’ is not on the list. I am only interested in ‘Yes.’”

Nearly four decades later, he has become one of the RISD Museum’s most loyal benefactors. As he and his late wife, Helene, purchased art to display in their home and then in Chazan’s dialysis clinics, they also helped the museum acquire more than 650 works, many by RISD alumni and faculty. Those artists range from well-known glass artists Dale Chihuly MFA 68 CR HD 86 and Howard Ben Tré MFA 80 SC to longtime Rhode Island painter Bob Dilworth 73 PT to, more recently, younger artists like jewelry-maker and metalsmith Luci Jockel MFA 16 JM and painter and community organizer Jordan Seaberry 14 PT. Today, Chazan continues to serve on the RISD Museum’s Board of Governors and Fine Arts Committee and supports the Chazan Acquisitions Fund, the Museum Annual Fund and

If you would like more information about how you can support the RISD Museum, please contact Amee Spondike, senior executive director, Museum Development at aspondik@risd.edu or 401 454-6316.

Photo credit: Salvatore Mancini 23

Refreshing the Quad RISD recently completed renovations to its Homer, South and Nickerson Halls, marking the end of phase three of the multiyear Quad block enhancement project, which includes multiple residence halls and the Metcalf Refectory dining facility.

Renovations, including sustainability measures and additional common space, also include elevators in the renovated buildings to make the Quad accessible. The Quad block’s recently built North Hall opened in 2019 as part of the project’s initial phase.

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North Hall Completed in 2019 and designed by Nader Tehrani BArch 86, North Hall is the college’s first newly constructed residential facility to open in 34 years. North Hall, providing 148 beds, is the first crosslaminated timber (CLT)-steel hybrid residence hall in New England, the building is an innovative model for reducing energy use and limiting environmental impact while providing a customized space designed to allow students to thrive.

QUAD TRIVIA: Alumni-owned firm, Rich Brilliant Willing, donated the chandelier, Palindrome 8, which hangs in North Hall.

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Homer Hall Originally built in 1957, Homer Hall now provides 171 beds for students, and common spaces for socializing and making have been incorporated throughout the building. As part of the renovation, a new Homer South facade forms a more public front to the quad.

Eco-friendly features include Energy Recovery Ventilation attic units and an upgrade to the building’s exterior, which will improve thermal performance.

QUAD TRIVIA: Homer’s lobby benches are cut-offs from North Hall’s cross-laminated timber flooring.

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Nickerson Hall Originally built in 1957, Nickerson Hall now provides 117 beds for students, and common spaces for socializing and making have been incorporated within the building. As part of the renovation, a new Nickerson East facade forms a public front to the new Nickerson Green. Eco-friendly features include Energy Recovery Ventilation attic units and an upgrade to the building’s exterior, which will improve thermal performance.

QUAD TRIVIA: Nickerson Hall is named in honor of Lyra Brown Nickerson, an early RISD benefactor.

South Hall Originally built in 1985, South Hall now provides 63 beds for students, one resident apartment, an upgraded kitchen and common spaces for socializing and making within the building. The mechanical equipment was upgraded for greater energy efficiency.

QUAD TRIVIA: As part of the renovation, a new lobby entry off Waterman Street was added and dedicated offices for RISD Public Safety were incorporated.

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Celebrating Milestones and Memories Commencement + Reunion Weekend brings together the graduating Class of 2022 and reunion alumni in a campus-wide community celebration from June 2–5, 2022.

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RISD is planning several campus-wide activities to deepen the connections between the Class of 2022 and alumni in a relaxing and celebratory atmosphere.

New traditions such as the Friday night Lantern Lighting followed by the All Campus Dance: The Artists’ Party bring the community together for a fun evening of laughter, live music, dancing, food and drink under the tent by the Van Leesten Memorial Bridge. RISD Latin+ (más), RISD Queer Alumni, RISD Black Alumni and RISD Asian Diaspora will also host receptions for graduates and alumni to discuss their shared experiences and how graduates can stay connected with the alumni community.

attend events that can only happen at RISD, such as Building with Bread, presented by Ciril Hitz 91 ID. Commencement + Reunion Weekend is designed to be family-friendly, with events planned to engage all ages.

Families of our alumni are invited to attend many activities, including a Chalk Walk art-making event around campus, Paint by Numbers with Peter Tigler 75 PT, Boats and Floats on RISD Beach with Ricky Katowicz 05 AP and a beach day at Tillinghast Farm.

The 2022 Commencement takes place on Saturday, June 4, at 9 am at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. As part of the expanded commencement festivities, this year’s ceremony will include an Alumni Processional leading the graduates onto the floor. After two years of disruption and delay, this year’s Commencement + Reunion Weekend also provides the opportunity to invite the Class of 2020 back to campus for a long-awaited Commencement ceremony and a special two-year class reunion.

The weekend also includes events open to the entire RISD community, including Turning Pages: A Talk with Writer and Illustrator Brian Selznick 88 IL, co-presented by the Fleet Library and the Alumni Association on Thursday, June 2. Events on Saturday, June 4 include RISD Craft from 10 am–4 pm, as well as a community celebration of the graduates in Market Square at 1 pm and a special WaterFire along the Providence River that evening.

The four-day weekend includes a wide range of reunion activities for alumni. Alumni are invited to attend their class dinners, spend an afternoon sketching in the RISD Museum and catch up with members of their departments over breakfast. There will be opportunities to honor retiring faculty and staff, tour campus and visit the Design Diploma Exhibit at the Fleet Library. Alumni are encouraged to

Questions? Please contact alumni@risd.edu.

Attending Commencement + Reunion Weekend 2022? Register for your reunion events today by visiting alumni.risd.edu/reunions.

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Recognizing RISD’s Volunteers Leadership volunteers from across the college, museum, alumni and family communities are advocating for RISD around the world.

While it is impossible to include every individual who is contributing time and expertise, we are pleased to recognize leaders who are strengthening RISD, developing new programs and encouraging others to become involved. In addition to those listed here, there are thousands more who are mentoring RISD students and recent graduates through the RISD Network, speaking at events, serving as critics in studio classes, taking part in RISD Serves events and more.

RISD is deeply grateful to each and every person who is making a difference in the lives of others through service.

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Board of Trustees Officers Michael Spalter, Chair Hillary Blumberg 92 FAV, Vice Chair Karen Hammond, Vice Chair Jon Kamen P 09, Vice Chair Tavares Strachan 03 GL, Vice Chair Margaret A. Williams, Vice Chair Term Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Ashleigh Axios 08 GD David C. Barclay P 10 Caroline Baumann Gabrielle Bullock BArch 84 J. Scott Burns Ilene Chaiken 79 GD P 18 Norman Chan BArch 85 Donald Choi BArch 82 P 07 Erica Gerard Di Bona P 11 Robert A. DiMuccio Michelle Ebanks Shepard Fairey 92 IL HD 21 Fabian Fondriest P 16 Kim Gassett-Schiller P 14 Joe Gebbia 05 GD/ID HD 17 Robert W. Glass P 11 Vikram Kirloskar P 12 David Lee 00 GD Mary Lovejoy Nicole J. Miller 73 AP Stacey Nicholas P 21 Michael Rock MFA 84 GD William Schweizer P 19 Shahzia Sikander MFA 95 PR/PT Todd Waterbury

Ex Officio Shefali Khushalani P 22, Chair, Families Association Stephen A. Metcalf, Chair, Emeriti Trustees Crystal Williams, President, RISD Rex Wong BArch 03, President, Alumni Association Emeriti Anthony C. Belluschi BArch 66 P 95 John H. Beug P 05 Vincent J. Buonanno Jamie F. Carpenter 72 IL Jane Chace Carroll HD 06 Clara M. Dale BArch 75, Chair Emerita Susan Dryfoos P 01 Bayard C. Ewing Anne B. Fordyce 67 SC Katherine Freygang 80 IA/MFA 81 GD A. Corwin Frost 59 AR P 97 Wilfrid L. Gates, Jr. 65 LA Cathy Barancik Graham 76 PT Paula Koffler Granoff HD 10 William R. Hammer BArch 65 Ronne Hartfield Dorothy A. Hebden-Heath 57 PT Se-Ung Lee P 91 David A. Macaulay BArch 69 HD 04 Pauline C. Metcalf Stephen A. Metcalf, Chair Stuart J. Murphy 64 IL P 96 J. Terrence Murray Dana M. Newbrook 63 AR Joan Ress Reeves Kate Rittmann P 95 Merrill W. Sherman, Chair Emerita Philip E. Tobey BArch 66 William Watkins P 83 Patricia A. White 64 IL P 96

Museum Board of Governors Officers J. Scott Burns T, Chair Andrew Green, Vice Chair Karen Hammond T, Vice Chair Governors Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Alma Guerrero Bready, MD Helen M. Burnham PhD Norman Chan BArch 85 T Joseph A. Chazan, MD Glenn M. Creamer Allison Dessel Erica Gerard Di Bona P 11 T Robert A. DiMuccio T Robert W. Glass P 11 T Paula Koffler Granoff HD 10 T Mara Hermano Doris Licht Melissa Long, JD Judy Mann Ann Metcalf Pauline C. Metcalf ET Stephen A. Metcalf T, ET Zesty Meyers Meghan Reilly Michaud 01 GD Helene J. Miller Nicole J. Miller 73 AP T Robert P. Mitchell Alan Nathan Jessica Nathan Seth Price Gloria Spivak Reza Taleghani Toots Zynsky 73 SC P 10 Ex Officio Sarah Ganz Blythe P 22, RISD Museum Interim Director Kent Kleinman, RISD Provost Michael Spalter T, RISD Board of Trustees Chair Crystal Williams T, RISD President Honorary Jane Chace Carroll HD 10 T Kathryn Parsons

KEY

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Trustee

T

Emeriti Trustee

ET

Families Association Leadership Council

Museum Fine Arts Committee

Museum Associates (cont.)

Chair Shefali Khushalani P 22 T, Chair

Matthew D. Bird 89 ID David Borgonjon 14 PT J. Scott Burns T Joseph A. Chazan, M.D. John A. Glasson Paula Koffler Granoff HD 10 T Andrew Green, M.D., Chair Maria Hambourg Juana I. Horton Judy Mann Pauline C. Metcalf ET Stephen A. Metcalf T, ET Frances P. Middendorf IL 82 Rebecca S. More Alfred T. Morris, Jr. Susan Morris Allison S. Roberts MFA 09 PR William G. Tsiaras George H. Waterman

Elizabeth Goldberg Zoe Hart Heidi Holland Mary N. Indeglia Kate Jackson Carol S. Jones Kirsten LaMotte Ann Lombardi Julie Mahoney Wendy S. Marcus Elizabeth R. Mauran Ann Metcalf Jill Millard Madeleine Mullen Jessica Nathan Pamela Robertson Jessica Ruiz Cynthia Ventre-Hewitt Marie Weiss

Ex Officio Sarah Ganz Blythe P 22, Ex Officio Member Kent Kleinman, Ex Officio Member David Proulx T, Ex Officio Member

Museum Docents

Social and Communications Committee Aly Bangoura P 25 Tavé Fascé Drake P 24 Catherine Jones P 23 Charles Miller P 22, Committee Co-Chair Class of 2022 Kirthiga Reddy P 24 Gwen Watford-Miller P 22, Committee Co-Chair Class of 2022 International Families Committee Shanming Shi P 22, Committee Co-Chair Mingyuan Song P 22, Committee Co-Chair FAMILY AMBASSADORS Ambassador Committee Amy Held P 24 Eileen Keane P 25 Kevin Keane P 25 Patricia Quan Yee BArch 89 P 21 Ambassadors Therese Blanks-Butler P 22 Sherry Byrand P 21 Sandra Enterline 83 JM P 22 Tavé Fascé Drake P 24 Ann Florance P 22 Amy Held P 24 Linda Hughes P 20 Catherine Jones P 23 Billie Lara P 23 Sandra Levcovici P 24 Patricia Quan Yee BArch 89 P 21 Pam Russell P 22 Purvi Shah P 21 Lei Su P 24 Sharon Tatro P 23 Elizabeth Wiggs Cooper P 24 Kim Williams P 23

Museum Associates Cheryl Andreozzi Elisabeth B. Ballou Tyler BArch 85 Hadley Bazarsky Jennifer Boland Monica Boss Jason Cahill Judith Cleaveland Ruth A. Clegg Nancy R. Compton Majoros Kristen Connell Ashley Cullion Carole Davidson Allison Dessel Bonnie S. Flűck Mary Gilbane

To learn more about volunteer opportunities for families, please visit families.risd.edu/volunteer

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Patricia Blake Carol Gibson-Prugh Gwen Guillet Elizabeth A. Holochwost Jane W. Koster Steven Levine Janice W. Libby Cynthia C. Mason Elizabeth K. Morse Kathleen Munro Rita Quevedo Caroline R. Ricci Nancy G. Rowett Jane E. Sharfstein Sally Shwartz Evelyn A. Sweeney Dora R. Truong Karen Usas Charlann Walker Beth Weiss

RISD Fund Steering Committee

RISD Alumni Association PRESIDENT Rex Wong BArch 03 T

RISD ALUMNI REGIONAL CLUBS

AT LARGE COMMITTEE Sol Armada de la Cruz 92 AP Carly Ayres 13 ID Charles Brill 06 FD Tino Chow 09 ID Michael Gabellini BFA 80/BArch 81 Jill Greenberg 89 PH Kristin Murphy MAT 96

Austin

TRADITIONS COMMITTEE Angela Ricci Boswell 95 TX Becky A. Fong Hughes 05 GD Mindy Home 99 IL Patricia Quan Yee BArch 89 P 21, Chair MENTORSHIP COMMITTEE Ryan E. Cunningham 02 FAV, Co-Chair Michael Gabellini BFA 80/BArch 81 Krista Ninivaggi BArch 02, Co-Chair NOMINATION COMMITTEE Terry Beaty 84 GL Lucas Lefler BArch 12 Grace Glass 11 IL AWARDS COMMITTEE Melinda Beck 89 GD Aimee Dixon Anthony 90 AP Anjali Mody 09 ID Georgie Stout 89 GD P 24 RISD SERVES COMMITTEE Amy Cohen 76 TX, Chair STUDENT ALUMNI COMMITTEE Li June Choi 24 GD, Chair Nayderson Fallon 23 AP Yavya Jain 23 ID RECENT ALUMNI COMMITTEE Maia Conlon 15 GD Quintin Harris 18 FAV Jarrett Key MFA 20 PT Leah Marchant 20 ID, Co-Chair Nicholas Oh MFA 18 CR Nelson Saavedra, Jr. 16 FAV, Co-Chair Emma Werowinski 18 TX CLUBS COMMITTEE Sol Armada de la Cruz 92 AP, Co-Chair Amy Gregg 92 GD, Co-Chair AFFINITY GROUPS COMMITTEE Greg Kanaan 02 FAV, Chair

Co-chairs Ryan E. Cunningham 02 FAV Deborah Mankiw P 23

Domestic Clubs

Jonas Criscoe MFA 08 PT, Co-Chair Sarah Greene Reed 94 PH, Co-Chair Laura Worrick 08 IL, Co-Chair

Members Becky A. Fong Hughes 05 GD Michael O'Donnell P 22 Sonja O'Donnell P 22 Jennifer W. White 01 PH James R. Wynn 98 GD

Boston Jenarmi Contreras BArch 15, Volunteer Becky A. Fong Hughes 05 GD, Vice Chair Mindy Home 99 IL, Chair Charlotte

Jesse + Helen Rowe Metcalf Society

Claire Geary 12 GD, Co-Chair Claudia O'Steen MFA 15 DM, Co-Leader Chicago

Chair Jutta A. Page PhD MAE 86

Marc Choi MFA 11 GD, Co-Chair Tracy Davis 94 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Gabriel Romero-Anaya 17 FAV, Recent Alumni Chair Ilivia Yudkin Rozelle 99 GD, Co-Chair Colorado

Maine

Patrick Marold 97 ID, Chair

Louisa Donelson 06 PT, Volunteer Committee Member Karen Sigler 01 ID, Volunteer Committee Member Elizabeth Whelan 91 TX, Volunteer Committee Member Patricia A. White 64 IL P 96 ET, Volunteer Committee Member

Houston Felice Cleveland MA 08 AE, Volunteer Committee Member Erin Kim 17 IL, Volunteer Committee Member Falon Mihalic MLA 12, Co-Chair Katharine Schon 05 ID, Co-Chair Annie Shen 99 FAV, Volunteer Committee Member Juan Vera 04 IL, Volunteer Committee Member Los Angeles Sol Armada de la Cruz 92 AP, Chair Aaron Chang 03 FD/MAT 04, Volunteer Committee Member David Clayton 98 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Donna deSoto 71 TX, Volunteer Committee Member Dante Gamache MLA 16, Volunteer Committee Member Tom Lamb MFA 80 PH, Volunteer Committee Member Cristina Sirbu MFA 14 TX, Vice Chair Brandon Tyson 14 FAV, Volunteer Committee Member Polina Zakharova 19 FAV, Volunteer Committee Member

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Minnesota Allison Baker MFA 15 SC, Volunteer Committee Member Katherine Blum MArch 12, Volunteer Committee Member Michelle Butterfield 04 ID, Volunteer Committee Member Chad Echols MIA 11, Volunteer Committee Member Kai Salmela 07 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Stephen Shaskan 92 IL, Volunteer Committee Member Catherine Thompson 13 TX, Volunteer Committee Member Ahti Westphal BArch 08, Volunteer Committee Member Andrew Wise MArch 12, Volunteer Committee Member

RISD Alumni Association (cont.)

New Hampshire

Rhode Island (cont.)

Seattle

Mary Codd 75 AE, Co-Chair Annie Friedman Xavier 71 AE, Co-Chair Olivia Janna Genereaux 86 PT, Co-Chair

Marjorie Powning 84 IA, Volunteer Committee Member Pamela Rohland 89 PT, Volunteer Committee Member Alane Spinney 78 PH, Volunteer Committee Member Dina Zaccagnini Vincent BGD 93, Co-Vice Chair Laura Zakroff 00 PR, Co-Vice Chair

Atulya Chaganty MID 17, Recent Alumni Chair Ling Chun MFA 16 CR, Volunteer Committee Member Tiffany Iacolucci 07 IL, Volunteer Committee Member Levi Jette MArch 12, Chair David Kendall MFA 96 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Peter Sgouros 94 FAV, Volunteer Committee Member Roger Zhu MID 12, Volunteer Committee Member

New Jersey Melanie Grossberg 93 GD, Chair Lynn Mullins 87 PT, Vice Chair Jason Rice 91 PH, Volunteer Committee Member New York John Bai 14 ID, Co-Chair Hillary Blumberg 92 FAV T, Co-Chair Dana Davis 11 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Sama El Saket BArch 15, Co-Chair Jill Groeber 96 GD, Co-Chair Jane Huang BArch 11, Co-Chair Gian Villarruel MArch 18, Co-Chair Philadelphia Rosemary Bock 10 ID, Communications Chair Barbara Macaulay BArch 77, Co-Chair Michael Martella BArch 91, Co-Chair Anna Mogilevsky 02 PT, Volunteer Committee Member Marcy Soronson BIA 74, Vice Chair Pittsburgh Alaina Bernstein MDes 16, Recent Alumni Chair Christine Holtz 00 PH, Co-Chair Paula Klein 75 PT/MAT 76, Volunteer Committee Member Kathy Whitney 81 GD P 09, Co-Chair Portland Jessica Hartman 75 PT, Volunteer Committee Member Jane Savage 91 ID, Chair Rhode Island Carl Henschel 01 IA, Chair MJ Kook MArch 20, Volunteer Committee Member Lauren Lake 91 ID, Volunteer Committee Member Frederick Murphy 73 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Scott Noh 13 ID, Volunteer Committee Member

San Diego Rebecca Bourgeois 01 AP, Volunteer Committee Member Sarah Delahanty 06 FAV, Volunteer Committee Member Tom Lamb MFA 80 PH, Volunteer Committee Member Amy White 87 JM, Volunteer Committee Member San Francisco Alec Babala 14 ID, Recent Alumni Chair Shannon Badiee 06 PR, Volunteer Committee Member Amy Gregg 92 GD, Chair Jennifer Hale 93 PH, Co-Vice Chair Elizabeth Scheidl 90 ID, Volunteer Committee Member Stephania Serena 89 PH, Volunteer Committee Member Ramon Solis MLA 19, Co-Vice Chair Lizzie Wright 18 ID, Volunteer Committee Member Jared Zimmerman BGD 06, Volunteer Committee Member SE Michigan Sina Almassi MArch 15, Volunteer Committee Member Lee Fearnside MFA 02 PH, Volunteer Committee Member Sally Gilreath 92 IL, Volunteer Committee Member Tohru Kanayama 95 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Fran Mason MA 97 AE, Volunteer Committee Member Christian Mueller 05 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Jameson Staneluis 04 ID, Chair Addie Stone-Richards 98 AR, Volunteer Committee Member Gail Von Staden BArch 91, Volunteer Committee Member

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Silicon Valley Lee Lippert BArch 79, Co-Chair Perry Meigs 93 FAV, Co-Chair South Florida Bryce Bounds BArch 05, Volunteer Committee Member Geraldo Dannemann MArch 05, Volunteer Committee Member Danny Diaz BArch 12, Co-Vice Chair Kathleen Finch 13 TX, Co-Vice Chair Rhia Hunter 00 FAV, Chair Luke Jenkins 04 FD, Volunteer Committee Member Isabel Kim 91 IL, Volunteer Committee Member Esther Luz 17 AP, Communications Chair Maritza Molina 98 PH, Volunteer Committee Member Gabriela Pradas 94 GD, Volunteer Committee Member Logan Rackear 17 PT, Recent Alumni Chair Elena Tepavac MDes 18 INST, Volunteer Committee Member Vermont Miriam Block 94 TX, Co-Chair Valerie Hird 78 PT, Co–Chair Vernon Shipway 21 IL, Recent Alumni Chair Washington D.C. Anthony Dihle 04 GD, Vice Chair Sean Dudley 93 PT, Volunteer Committee Member Cindy Qi MLA 14, Volunteer Committee Member Barbara Sarkisian Werfel BArch 89, Chair Catherine Sheehan BArch 83, Volunteer Committee Member Bruce Werfel BArch 89, Volunteer Committee Member

Architecture Advisory Council International Clubs

Established in 2021, the Architecture Advisory Council informs the

Beijing

future vision of the Architecture department by providing valuable

Jennifer Chung 07 TX, Club Leader

feedback and advice. It is made up of leaders in their respective arenas who help build connections with community partners, create mentoring

Canada

and career opportunities for students, and forge relationships across

Jessie Ning 13 GD, Club Leader William Sun BArch 20, Club Leader

the fields and industries into which RISD students seek access.

Gulf Region (Qatar/UAE/Saudi Arabia)

Deborah L. Berke BArch 77 HD 05 Andrea Brue BArch 88 Gabrielle Bullock BArch 84 T Sean M. P. Cannon MArch 01 Donald Choi BArch 82 P 07 T Rafael de Cárdenas 96 AP Stephen Dynia BArch 83 Gretta Eckhardt BArch 75 Gerry Fandetti BArch 68 P 05 Michael Gabellini BFA 80/BArch 81 Thayer Hopkins, Jr. BArch 75 Patti Intrieri BArch 82 Lauren Kogod BArch 85

Saba Qizilbash MA 04 AE, Club Leader Hong Kong Donald Choi BArch 82 P 07 T, President Frank Chow BLA 92, Secretary Rex Wong BArch 03 T, Treasurer India Akshat Raghava 09 ID, Delhi Leader Ananya Tantia 11 ID, Kolkata Leader Malvika Vaswani 11 ID, Mumbai Leader Italy Patricia Fleck Edwards 86 IL, Club Leader Korea Sang Un Jeon MFA 13 DM, President Na Ree Kim MID 11, Club Leader Jiwon Park MFA 13 GD, Club Leader London Alexander Dale BArch 14, Club Leader Paris Nicole Stulman 86 AP, Club Leader Shanghai Brendan Kellogg 06 FD, Club Leader Danning Niu 20 INST, Club Leader Lawrence Wu 07 ID, Club Leader Singapore Priscilla Tey 15 IL, Club Leader Spain Mercan Denizci 17 ID, Club Leader

Volunteer lists include involvement as of March 15, 2022.

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Byron Kuth BArch 86 Ken Lewis BArch 83 Michael T. Maltzan BArch 85 P 24 Irwin S. Miller BArch 94 P 24 Amy L. Murphy BArch 87 P 24 Liz Ranieri BArch 86 Lisa C. Sachs BArch 80 Leslie Saul BArch 77 Raymond N. Shick BArch 83 Allan Shope BArch 78 Tom Sieniewicz BArch 83 Rex Wong BArch 03 T

RISD Alumni Affinity Groups RISD Alumni for Social Impact Stacey Ascher 07 IL, Group Leader RISD Alumni in Animation Moriah Benton 16 IL, Co-Leader Jacob Reeves 15 IL, Co-Leader RISD Alumni in Fashion Susan Becker 90 AP, Co-Leader Lucas Lefler BArch 12, Co-Leader Vanessa Pang 95 AP, Co-Leader RISD Alumni in Film and Television Ilene Chaiken 79 GD P 18 T, Group Leader Ryan E. Cunningham 02 FAV, Group Leader RISD Alumni in Immersive Experience [AR/VR] Zachary Deocadiz-Smith 17 GD, Co-Leader Joshua Inch 16 GD, Co-Leader Jesse Lehrhoff 03 FAV, Co-Leader RISD Alumni in Jewelry + Metalsmithing Sandra Enterline 83 JM P 22, Group Leader

RISD Alumni in Painting Marisa Murrow 00 IL, Group Leader Mark Pack MFA 04 PT, Group Leader Robert Wright 76 PT P 08, Group Leader RISD Alumni in Photography Gisel Florez 03 IL, Co-Leader Julia Parris 05 PH, Co-Leader Jason Rice 91 PH, Volunteer Committee Member RISD Alumni in UI/UX Lily Fan 16 ID, Facilitator + People Connector Anqi Xiao MID 16, Leader RISD Architects Jenarmi Contreras BArch 15, Volunteer Committee Member Dante Gamache MLA 16, Co-Leader Jeff Jacobson BArch 78, Co-Leader Ritzo Law BArch 21, Volunteer Committee Member Yingjing Qu MDes 19 IA, Volunteer Committee Member Xuan Wang MArch 19, Co-Leader RISD Art + Design Educators Kimberly Olson 92 IL/MAT 93, Co-Leader Barbara Voccola 86 GD/MAT 94, Co-Leader

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RISD Asian Alumni Yu-Ting Huang MFA 19 DM, Co-leader Boyoung Lee BGD 96, Co-leader RISD Black Alumni Vincent Brathwaite 05 ID, Group Leader Tiffany Cooper 12 FAV, Volunteer Committee Member Karen Harris 86 IL P 13 P 18, Volunteer Committee Member RISD Footwear Daphne Board 98 TX, Co-Leader Sarah Guerin BArch 99, Co-Leader RISD Founders and Entrepreneurs Yu Cao (Hina) MArch 17, Co-Chair, Venture Committee John Chidiac 94 IL, Leader Rebecca Rueth 01 IL, Co-chair, Venture Committee RISD in Tech Jonathan Arena 09 GD, Co-Leader Michael Neff 04 PH, Co-Leader RISD Latin+ (más) Ashley Kochiss BArch 15, Co-Leader Kasey Ramirez 08 IL, Co-Leader Lucy Silva-Santisteban MLA 17, Co-Leader Yaniv Waisman 94 FAV, Co-Leader

RISD Lawyers Greg Kanaan 02 FAV, Leader RISD Queer Alumni Leslie Bostrom MFA 85 PT, Co-Leader Richard Bradley 84 JM, Co-Leader David Carroll BLA 70, Co-Leader Joseph Cato 15 FAV, Volunteer Adeline Diamond 16 ID/MA 17 AE, Volunteer John Fazzino 86 CR, Co-Leader Kimberly Libby 06 GD, Volunteer Elinor Sapp BID 79, Volunteer RISD READS Patricia Childers 86 GD, Co-Leader Alexandra Gadawski MArch 15, Co-Leader Ruth-Anne Siegel 86 GD, Co-Leader RISD Women in Business Erin Cantwell 08 GD, Co-Leader Jennifer Farris 02 ID, Co-Leader Tracy Hazzard 92 TX, Co-Leader Rebecca Rueth 01 IL, Co-Leader RISD Zero Waste Alumni Aaro Ainsley MDes 16, Chair, Circular + Sustainable Fashion Committee Callie Clayton 17 TX, Co-Leader Anne Keating 17 TX, Co-Leader Juliana Sohn 92 PH, Co-Leader

RISD Class Reunion Committee Neethi Abraham MA 17 IA Christine Arakelian 96 GD Tod Babick 92 ID Susanna Baker 81 PT Kristen Bannister 91 GD Eric Beare 00 IL Daniel Borelli 95 PR Doug Campbell 02 ID James Chae 06 GD/MFA 16 GD Joseph Cipro 71 PT Christy Colebank 70 IL P 89 Nicole DePolo 91 IL Eric DeWitt 01 FD Kristen Dietrich 81 GD Francis DiGregorio BArch 66 Elizabeth Dillon 70 IA Shonna Dowers 95 GD Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD Ecem Elci 01 ID Jennifer Farris 02 ID Happy Farrow MFA 06 TX Becky A. Fong Hughes 05 GD Alan Foreman 00 FAV Tami Gaines 02 GD Christina George 91 TX Mark Goodkin 87 PT Bill Guy 95 ID Gilman Hanson 76 IL Jack Hazard 97 ID LeeAnn Herreid 91 JM

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Andre Herrero BArch 12 Saarin Keck 91 SC Francesca Koss 90 IL Ruth LaGue 86 GD Tana Llinas 02 GD Wheaton Mahoney 93 PH Leah Marchant 20 ID Patrick Marold 97 ID Meghan Reilly Michaud 01 GD Kenneth Molina BArch 15 Robert Olson 82 PH Stephen Raymond 87 AR Peter D. Reid 85 GD Jason Rice 91 PH Johil Ross 07 TX Mary Rosseland 90 GD Jane Savage 91 ID Nicholas Scappaticci 00 ID Kirsten Sims 97 ID Jennifer Spence 91 AP Dan Springer 91 IL Sarah Stabenfeldt Roche 60 AE David Ten Eyck 93 IL Robert Tiffany III 62 ID Brandon Tyson 14 FAV Christopher Villalta MArch 20 Barbara Voccola 86 GD/MAT 94 Erika Walters 02 PR Jean Winslow 60* IL

RISD Exists Because of You On March 22, RISD celebrated the 145th anniversary of its founding. Think back for a moment to 1877, to the incredible and enduring legacy that our founders—all women—envisioned. The determination to create, the desire to collaborate with partners and mentors, the ambition to educate artmakers and craftspeople no matter who they are—that is what founder Helen Rowe Metcalf and her fellow organizers valued 145 years ago, and it is what we value today.

As we commemorate RISD’s long institutional life, we also welcome a new president, the poet, scholar and longtime academic leader Crystal Williams, who will help us set a course for a future full of opportunity and challenge.

RISD holds a unique power in this world. As an institution, we carry extraordinary expertise and a singular capacity to stimulate ideas and bring people together. But with power comes responsibility, and ours is to include every perspective and use every tool at our disposal as we do our work. With your help, we are succeeding. You can see it in these pages— in the story about the late Hao Hoang BArch 88, who established an endowed scholarship to help students explore and take risks just as he did at RISD and throughout his life.

Or in the story about designer and retired NFL star Michael Bennett, who has endowed a scholarship to support and equip future artists and designers of color.

years combined. This year, even more of you are stepping forward. Clearly, your relationship with RISD has inspired you to advance the institution in ways that not only are meaningful to you but also powerful for our students.

RISD’s power exists because of you. You are the foundation of our excellence, our innovation and our amazing global reputation. That foundation gets stronger each time a student arrives on campus and is able to unleash their creativity and be valued for it. I hear from so many of you that you want others to experience the same awakening and thriving that you did at RISD, and that desire has translated into decisive action. You’ve helped us create nearly 50 new financial aid funds in the past five years. Last year, almost twice as many of you volunteered on behalf of RISD than in the previous three

All of this effort is an essential part of RISD. With your financial donations, you make students, faculty and staff feel valued and inspired. With your time and energy, you carry RISD’s institutional knowledge and memory into the future.

You are the throughline—the heirs to Helen Metcalf’s legacy of innovation and excellence. Thank you!

O’NEIL OUTAR VICE PRESIDENT OF INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT

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Institutional Advancement at RISD The Institutional Advancement team is dedicated to advancing RISD’s mission by strategically fostering lifelong relationships with alumni, parents, friends and organizations to strengthen goodwill and philanthropy.

WEB alumni.risd.edu families.risd.edu risd.edu/giving risdnetwork.risd.edu EMAIL

giving@risd.edu

PHONE 4 01 454-6403

toll-free: 844 454-1877

Momentum

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is a magazine about donor

Institutional Advancement

and volunteer impact from Institutional Advancement,

Photos by Jo Sittenfeld

Rhode Island School of Design

MFA 08 PH, with additional

© 2022

images from John Horner Design by Studio Rainwater

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