RISD XYZ Fall 2011 by Rhode Island School of Design

D E PA R T M E N T S

F E AT U R E S

Conversations online, incoming, ongoing

Drawing Inspiration Author/illustrators David Wiesner 78 IL, Brian Selznick 88 IL and Jarrett Krosoczka 99 IL have distinctly unique sensibilities, yet are essentially interested in the same thing: captivating their audiences through amazing visual storytelling.

06 Listen reflections, opinions, points of view

08 Look at books and book arts

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Impact why people give to risd

52 Where We Were a blast from the past

54 Where We Are class notes and profiles

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From Crap to Queer, Teens Read with Zest

Books in Translation

A lifelong love of books led Hallie Warshaw 89 IL to start a business that fills a perfect niche in the publishing industry.

38 Six Degrees alumni network news

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› 42

45 Two College Street campus community newsbits

› 75

80 Sketchbook sketches, doodles, ideas in progress

In light of the digitization of entire libraries, Ben Shaykin MFA 11 GD has been exploring the ramifications of our changing relationship to books.

thoughts from the editor

The Beauty of Books O pen a book an d you enter so meplace e ntirely ne w— creating a joint production between

your own mind and the ideas you find between the covers. It doesn’t matter if those covers are real or virtual. You just need to be curious enough to pick up your Kindle or the dog-eared paperback your friends are passing around and allow yourself to be captivated by someone else’s way of viewing the world. To me the beauty of books is that they allow me to explore, try on ideas, feel like I’ve been transported someplace else—and even transformed. The best books are enormously inventive, powerful, enlightening, instructive, entertaining and often life-altering. Historically, they wouldn’t have been banned and burned if they didn’t hold such power. I also love that books are as different from each other as the individuals who make them. And despite their inanimate and unassuming presence—after all, as objects they’re small and silent—the best ones open our minds to ways of thinking in distant reaches of the globe and throughout human history. Like art, books help us to grapple with the mysteries of life and human nature, and better make sense of the world. And while art isn’t something you can learn to make from books, you can learn a lot about it—and about virtually everything else that piques your curiosity—through books. Although new media and new technologies have begun to shift our focus away from books as the Let us know what you think about this issue: risdxyz@risd.edu.

ultimate medium for conveying knowledge—at least in the Western world—this ancient and elegant form of communication is still very much with us today, and for good reason. Almost 5,000 years after people began pictographic writing on tablets, books are still a compelling technology used all over the world as the basic means of teaching people to read. Even the rise in popularity of e-readers doesn’t negate the ultimate value of books; it simply shows that people are still hungry for the way books communicate—and the more a device mimics the experience of reading a paper book, the more successful it is. This issue of RISD XYZ explores the lingering lure of paper and print in the digital age by focusing on alumni involved in all aspects of bookmaking, from writing, illustrating and shooting photos for books to publishing them and making one-off works of art. The stories in the feature section (pp 16–37) and the alumni profiles towards the back of the magazine are true RISD stories—about a handful of alumni whose lifelong love of books has inspired them to make a living through books. But like most RISD stories, there’s nothing linear or predictable about how each alum’s story unfolds. And there’s no happy-everafter storybook ending, either, because for each of the alumni mentioned in this issue, making ever better work is an ongoing challenge, with no guarantees other than that they love what they do.

editor’s message by

Liisa Silander

photo illustration by

Sarah Sandman MFA 09 GD

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Becky Bermont EDITOR

Liisa Silander lsilande@risd.edu 401 454 6349 P R O D U C T I O N C O O R D I N AT O R

Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD DESIGNERS

Kate Blackwell Kaleb Durocher Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD Sarah Rainwater WRITERS

Anna Cousins Francie Latour Liisa Silander CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

cover (+ page 12) | Illustrator, letter-

Start Here illustration (page 1)

press printer and book artist Chandler O’Leary 03 IL played with the medieval illuminated manuscript tradition in creating the intricate hand-drawn cover she produced for this issue. As the proprietor of Anagram Press (anagrampress.com), she happily draws pictures for a living, insisting on lettering any and all text by hand, and in general doing everything the hard way. She lives in Tacoma, WA and makes way too many field trips to Powells Books in Portland.

Based in Brooklyn, Sarah Sandman MFA 09 GD (sarahsandman.com) is an assistant professor at CUNY Hostos in the South Bronx and has been a visiting critic at Parsons, MCAD, FIT and Syracuse University. In thinking about illustrating the word ‘open’ for this issue, she was excited when she glanced up at the sky and literally saw the word skywritten above her. Sarah is active in Hit Factorie, an art collective that runs a microgranting effort called FEAST (Funding Emerging Arts with Sustainable Tactics).

Listen (pages 6–7) | Illustrator, author and pattern designer Julia Rothman 02 IL (juliarothman.com) likes books so much that she actually writes a great blog about some of her favorites. Of course, that’s on top of the books she writes and edits herself, such as The Exquisite Book, Drawn In and her latest, Farm Anatomy— The Curious Parts & Pieces of Country Life, just published this fall. Um, and then there’s Also (also-online.com), the design studio she runs with two fellow RISD grads, and…. Sleep? It’s definitely overrated.

Carly Ayers 13 ID Susan Curran Michael Fink Rachel Glaser 05 PT Grace Lin 96 IL Paula Martiesian 76 PT D I R E C T O R O F A L U M N I R E L AT I O N S

Christina Hartley 74 IL PRINTING

Lane Press Burlington, VT printed on 70# Sterling Matte, a recycled stock FONTS

Quiosco + Antenna by Cyrus Highsmith 97 GD typography consultant this issue: Bethany Johns MFA 83 GD RISD XYZ

Two College Street Providence, Rhode Island 02903-2784 USA risd.edu/xyz Published two times a year by RISD’s Media group, in conjunction with Alumni Relations. I N I T I A L C R E AT I V E D I R E C T I O N

WellNow Design O N T H E C OV E R

Original hand-lettered illustration by Chandler O’Leary 03 IL; digitally enhanced by Elizabeth Eddins 00 GD

faculty column (page 49) | Professor Robert Brinkerhoff (robertbrinkerhoff. com) is an illustrator and painter who has taught at RISD since 1997. He’s now head of the Illustration department, returning to a post he held from 2005–07. “In most of my classes media and technique are not prescribed,” he says, “since my chief concern is with the dynamic conveyance of ideas and information, not the use of materials.”

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Sketchbook (page 80–81) |

Artist Christian DeFilippo 02 PT (christiandefilippo.com) is based in Brooklyn, where he always keeps a sketchbook going as “a way of experimenting with new ideas and new materials”—without the pressure of needing to produce a “really nice” finished drawing or painting. He’s one of several RISD artists whose sketchbooks are featured in Drawn In (2011, Quarry Books), by his classmate Julia Rothman 02 IL (see above).

cartoon (back cover) | New Yorker readers recognize Roz Chast 77 PT (rozchast.com) as a consistently topquality contributor to the magazine’s weekly collection of satisfying cartoons. She began drawing cartoons as a kid growing up in Brooklyn, and though she attempted to quit the habit by majoring in Painting at RISD, she quickly reverted to cartooning after graduation and has been happily commenting on contemporary life ever since.

A D D R E S S U P D AT E S

Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Advancement Services RISD, Two College Street Providence, RI 02903 USA Or email gduarte@risd.edu

online, incoming, ongoing

“Monday, August 8, 2011, 12 noon: Somewhere on this earth the sun is setting, somewhere on this earth the sun is rising.” Professor Bill Newkirk 68 GD, interim dean of Architecture + Design [image shown at RISD’s 2011 Convocation ceremony on 9.12.11]

What Do Printmakers Do? RISD Touches Our Everyday Lives I just finished reading the latest edition of RISD XYZ and want to thank you for putting together an alumni magazine I actually want to look through. Between my husband and I, we receive at least four alumni magazines, most of which are tossed in the recycling bin as fast as we get them. The articles in RISD XYZ are interesting to read whether I know the people in them or not, and I am continuously surprised at how much RISD touches our everyday lives—from my kids’ favorite movies to the tea I drink. My only “complaint” is that I really would like one of those silkscreened t-shirts on page 38 made for the Japan earthquake benefit. You can’t show something that wonderful without a link or info on how to purchase it! Keep up the excellent work. Dawn Wilson-Low MA 00 Mansfield, MA Editor’s note: Good point. But we didn’t include instructions because the organizers weren’t actually prepared to process payments and fulfill mail orders. Sorry for the temptation.

I LOVE the magazine and read every page. I am so heartened by the stories of so many different talented people who are using their gifts to give out to others, which is why we’re here (in my opinion). My son is a Printmaking major (2013) and I’ve noticed that there seem to be few “PRs” after the names of the folks in the magazine. That makes me even more curious about what RISD printmakers go on to do. Can you interview a few printmakers so you can inform your readers (who aren’t necessarily alums) about the folks who graduate w/ this major? What do they do that’s typical? (This might be a bad Q… Does any RISD graduate ever do anything that’s “typical”?) What opportunities and challenges might be unique to printmakers after graduation? What advice do established printmakers have for the printmakers who will be graduating in the next year or so? Laura Ricard 13 PR parent Amherst, MA Editor’s note: Thanks for the good questions and story suggestion, which we’ll try to act on soon. In the meantime, please remember that we also regularly post stories about RISD people at risd.edu/news—like the Desert Datascapes article on Mitch Marti 96 PR that also appears on the Printmaking landing page (risd.edu/Printmaking).

Keep up with RISD tidbits @ twitter.com/risd and facebook.com/risd1877.

Like It (but not the survey) I love the new format of RISD XYZ. Very imaginative, creative and inspiring—a visual treat! Also, I appreciate the success stories of RISD grads and other RISD news. Now, I look forward to every issue. Also like the RISD XYZmail. Started to take your survey but found it too laborious. Andrew Kramer BArch 65 (+EHP) Ivins, UT

Happy Find Can you imagine my surprise when a friend and I viewed the Cocktail Culture exhibit at the RISD Museum of Art [the spring/ summer show exploring American fashion through the lens of the classic cocktail hour], only to find an ensemble I designed on display! I was aware that my harem pant ensemble—#120 in the catalogue— was placed in the museum’s costume and textile archive back in June of 1965. What a thrill to see it on exhibit with the likes of my idols—Balenciaga, Dior and Chanel. Wendy Hertz Caputo 65 AP Riverside, RI

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XYZ Crit Thanks to the 763 readers who responded to our XYZ survey in the last issue (Spring/Summer 2011), we have a clearer sense of what at least a small percentage of alumni do and don’t like about this magazine. Here are some of the most telling responses.

The top two reasons alumni look at RISD XYZ: out of intellectual curiosity to keep informed about RISD

What type of content interests you most? images of work alumni profiles feature articles class notes

92% 83% 78% 71%

What type of content interests you least? wedding pictures fundraising news

83% 80% 76%

say NO to running pictures of alumni on the cover instead of artwork

25% favor thematically focused issues (like this one, or the Winter 2011 ‘food’ issue)

90% of Respondents

baby pictures

67%

LESS POPULAR THAN

56% recommend alternating between non-themed and themed issues

of the options presented

save an article or issue visit the risd.edu website discuss/forward an article/copy of the magazine

53% 45% 41%

76% would be likely to look at more XYZ content online

Alumni rated the quality of XYZ as: cover imagery design/layout

excellent

overall content

good

writing

fair

feature stories

poor

4 04

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Xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx: risdxyz@risd.edu.

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

XYZ most often inspires readers to:

What do you like least about XYZ? The print fonts are a little small for “mature” readers.

I think it’s too slick overall. It looks and feels like it is very costly to produce…

Sorry, the new name of the magazine doesn’t resonate with me.

The possibility for content is pretty exceptional, but the magazine seems a bit boring.

Sometimes overwhelming and hard to read (amount of info on one page).

Exclusivity. Notice the same names and groups reappearing in issues.

I don’t like it when the articles make me feel like XYZ is trying to sell RISD to me... the more promotional-sounding stuff. It feels tacky. And it’s terrible, but I also dislike being asked for money.

Hate the baby and wedding stuff.

It sometimes reads like propaganda. Also, there is a certain undercurrent of smugness that I could live without.

It feels like a magazine for wealthy people.

People complaining about it.

What do you like most about XYZ? Colorful, interesting and easy to navigate.

The enthusiasm of the staff and that it doesn’t feel like a promo piece for the school, but an actual source of information and entertainment for alumni.

I like the reshaped content, refocusing to a more serious intellectual focus on design.

Good design and writing.

It shows that RISD is finally at least trying to talk to alumni in a real way. Previous efforts sucked.

It feels like a sophisticated, intelligent magazine. Well designed, well written, well conceived. Its quality is just plain impressive.

When I read it, I still feel a part of the RISD community and an art/design community in general. Being thousands of miles away from Providence, it is comforting.

It’s such a good read. It reminds me of how inspiring a place RISD is. It’s like walking around the campus, absorbing the atmosphere.

It is 3-dimensional paper. It can be held, read, ripped, posted, loaned and circulated.

With XYZ, RISD finally has a publication worthy of the school, faculty, students and alumni.

P.S. Remember that 32GB iPod Touch we dangled out there as a bit of incentive to get you to respond to the survey? Sue Nguyen MFA 07 GD of Redmond, WA was the lucky winner chosen at random (literally... by Random Integer Generator). If you have more opinions to share, email risdxyz@risd.edu.

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reflections, opinions, points of view

A Growing Library Labeled “Friends” I r e m e mb er si tting b et we en

the shelves of the RISD library with a stack of books at my side. I used to do the same thing at the RISD bookstore, annoyed when I had to move for someone trying to get by. My love of art books grew when I took a handmade books and zines class senior year. Each of us made an edition to give to every other student in the class. That was the beginning of my collection, which has now grown to fill my tiny Brooklyn apartment.

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In 2007 I started a blog called Book By Its Cover because I wanted to share my growing collection. Now artists and authors from all over the world send me books, which is a dream come true. Since my RISD classmates and I have been out of school for nearly 10 years, we’ve all seemed to find our direction. I read about college friends in the newspaper and run into their furniture designs at major chain stores. But for me, the most exciting thing is seeing a book with a classmate’s name on the cover. The Class of 2002 has produced quite a few books in the last couple of years. From artist’s monographs to comics to children’s books, it’s impressive to see a section of my personal library labeled “friends.” Here are just a few recent favorites:

Check out Julia’s book blog at book-by-its-cover.com.

Julia Rothman 02 IL

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new and notable

Mournful Fairytale In Hurricane Story (2011, Chin Music Press) Jennifer Shaw 94 PH offers a compelling memoir that’s both haunting and humorous. Through her surreal photographs (taken with a Holga camera) and understated prose she tells the story of the birth of her first son on the day Katrina made landfall and how she and her husband struggled with depression and rage before returning to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras. “Like a mournful fairytale, Jennifer Shaw’s beautifully staged tableaux are alternately sweet and menacing, filled with emotion but never spilling over into sentimentality,” notes Josh Neufeld, author of the bestseller A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. “The poetic marriage of words and photos makes Hurricane Story a children’s book for grown-ups.” hurricanestory.com jennifershaw.net

Jon Ascher 99 IL

Dark Matter NeIL (2011, Cackling Imp Press), the first full-length graphic novel by Jon Ascher 99 IL, demonstrates just how far comics have come since the advent of men in capes. The title character of the cerebral tale is “an anti-hero sifting through the maelstrom of his troubled life,” the author explains—and engaged, unwittingly (at first), in an existential tug-of-war with a mysterious foe. The story unfolds in gorgeous acrylic panels, making for an experience “like walking through an art show while reading a comic book [in] perfect synchronicity,” writes Joshua Jones for the Nashville Comic Books Examiner. Ascher cites fellow graphic novelist David Mazzucchelli 83 PT (winner of several top prizes for his 2009 opus Asterios Polyp) as a major influence, along with other expressionistic masters of the medium. jonascher.com

AND THERE’S

MORE 08

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Henry Horenstein 71/MFA 73 PH henryhorenstein.com In Digital Photography: A Basic Manual (2011; Little, Brown and Company), this RISD professor and prolific author invites readers into a private class, using the same pedagogical approach that has made his Black and White Photography textbook a classic.

Daniel Cavicchi wesleyan.edu/wespress Once again Dan Cavicchi, associate professor and head of HPSS, brings us an “impeccably researched” look at the cultural phenomenon of music fandom in Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum, due out in December from Wesleyan University Press.

¡Nuevo Edición en Español! As creator of the popular MathStart and I See I Learn series for kids, Stuart J. Murphy 64 IL knows a thing or two about visual learning. In fact, he’s widely known as an expert, having built a career around the basic fact that “long before children can read—or even speak many words—they… understand illustrations and photographs with ease.” In 1996 he launched MathStart (HarperCollins), a series of picture books—63 so far—that “make math fun” by making it comprehensible to kids. Just last year he branched out with I See I Learn, a series about basic life skills “for happier, healthier, more confident kids.” And this fall the first four books in the series were released in Spanish, too. Between RISD trustees’ meetings (he’s been active on the Board

Jennifer Shaw 94 PH

since 1993), Murphy is likely to be speaking about visual learning, visiting schools, talking to teachers or enjoying a good book with one of his three grandchildren. stuartjmurphy.com

Nan (Parson) Rossiter 86 IL

Stuart J. Murphy

Growing Up

64 IL

After writing and illustrating several children’s books (Rugby & Rosie, The Way Home, Sugar on Snow), Nan (Parson) Rossiter 86 IL is marking her 25th year post-RISD with the publication of her first novel for adults. The Gin & Chowder Club (2011, Kensington) is a “nostaligic and tender” story set on the Cape in the 1960s. A review for Chick Lit+ notes that the “writing is beautiful,” while Book Chatter warns not to “dismiss it as pure chick lit,” especially since it’s told from the POV of a male protagonist. Rossiter’s second novel, Words Get In the Way, focuses on a single mom with an autistic son and is due out in early spring, as is her latest children’s book, The Fo’c’sle: Henry Beston’s Outermost House. nanrossiter.com

Krystina Castella 89 ID crazyaboutcookiesbook.com It’s tough to keep a good cook out of the kitchen, especially when she’s as crazy about cookbooks as baking. Krystina’s enthusiasm bubbles over again in Crazy About Cakes, which hits bookstores in November and crowns her many previous cookbook successes.

David Chaim Smith 86 PT davidchaimsmith.com Following the release of The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis, a radical reinterpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis, David has just completed The Sacrificial Universe, a three-volume set of drawings and writings due out in 2012 from Fulgur Press (London).

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bibliomania

Once Upon a Time In dreaming up his fabulous Fabled gown, Ryan Novelline 12 IL created a recycled-rags-to-riches tale that attracted national attention. A childhood affection for Golden Books inspired him to construct this fanciful standout for a RISD Apparel Design project. Working nearly round the clock for days, he collected hundreds of discarded books, separated and sorted pages by color, sewed them into a full skirt with golden thread and topped it all with a bodice fashioned from the books’ foil spines. The result is playfully over the top, and when word got out, glowing reviews poured in from the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, the New York Public Library and the TODAY show, which featured Fabled on air last spring. ryannovelline.com

Katie Herzog 01 PT

Bookworms on Wheels Where would Dewey file this item? Last spring Katie Herzog 01 PT, a reference assistant and artist in residence at the Whittier [CA] Public Library, joined 80 librarians in northern Europe for the first ever “library conference on wheels.” The 400-mile Cycling for Libraries ride from Copenhagen to Berlin was peppered with daily seminars on the future of libraries and the relationship between art and information— not to mention lots of cross-cultural camaraderie, culminating in the German Library Conference. Herzog represented the Molesworth Institute, a “mysterious organization that has supported disjunctive librarianship and vocational absurdity since 1956,” she, uh, cryptically explains. In her new role as director of the Institute, she’s working to create an art travel grant for public librarians. katieherzog.net

Ryan Novelline 12 IL Jim DiMarcantonio 86 PT hopebindery.com Just find your great grandmother’s fragile old diary in your attic? Talk to Jim, an expert in restoring old, valuable and rare volumes. He can also create deluxe editions and produce short runs of your latest opus.

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Mary Jane Begin 85 IL lovelinda.com Buy kids’ t-shirts and onesies with Mary Jane’s anthropomorphic animal illustrations at Love, Linda—The Art of Reading, which produces wearables featuring artwork by selected children’s books illustrators.

Isaac Tobin 02 GD

Trucking Culture When the Library of Congress decided to take some of its best treasures on the road for a year-long tour, it turned to William Jacobs BArch/MID 80, chief of its Interpretive Programs Office, for help. As project manager for the Gateway to Knowledge exhibition, Jacobs packed a specially outfitted 18-wheeler full of facsimiles of the Gutenberg Bible, the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, Walt Whitman’s poem Leaves of Grass and drawings for the first Spider-Man comic book, among other cultural gems. Although packing for a significant national road trip proved to be a challenge, Jacobs was relieved that the truck expanded to three times its road width, allowing for museum-style exhibitions and inviting multimedia displays. loc.gov/gateway

Under Cover An intrinsic part of the beauty of books is their design—the size, shape, paper stock and most importantly, the cover. “I love how every book I design is about something new, with an author’s specific point of view and focus,” notes Isaac Tobin 02 GD, a senior designer at the University of Chicago Press. What distinguishes his work (beyond his great use of typography) is that each cover is so conceptually satisfying—a singular, carefully considered reflection of the contents. “I don’t need to look hard for inspiration,” he says, “because I am constantly reacting to the content of the books I’m designing.” Tobin’s passion— “I love typography, I love working within constraints and limitations”—has been duly recognized by AIGA, the Art Directors Club, the Type Director’s Club, Print magazine and many others. isaactobin.com

William Jacobs BArch/MID 80

Warm + Fuzzy Since publishing her first book in 1988, Salley Mavor 78 IL has built a career making the kind of books you really want to touch.

Salley Mavor 78 IL

She spends about a month per page actually embroidering and crocheting her illustrations, embellishing them with buttons, bells, shells and bits of driftwood. “I have always liked forming and manipulating small materials with my hands,” she says. “Paper and pencil were never enough.” As an Illustration major at RISD, she loved having the “freedom to create in any medium as long the work was narrative in nature,” which meant she experimented wildly with assemblages and 3D techniques. Her latest book, Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes (2010, Houghton Mifflin), was produced by Studio GoodwinSturges (run by Mavor’s former teacher and current Professor Judy Sue Goodwin-Sturges 66 IL). Warm and fuzzy to the max, Posies won the 2011 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for best picture book and the 2011 Golden Kite Award for illustration. weefolkstudio.com

Kelly Booth 91 GD As a creative director at Weldon Owen Publishing in San Francisco, Kelly gets to work on an eclectic range of visually driven books like the handy how-to phenom Show Me How, which is sold at MoMA and has been translated into more than 25 languages (with a multilingual

weldonowen.com spin-off iPhone app, too). “We’ve recently found ourselves right on the cutting edge of technology,” she says, “working directly with Apple and Amazon to bring engaging book experiences to e-books and apps.”

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artists’ and altered books

Blue Boxed Mountain Though the original may have taken a tad longer to make, Chandler O’Leary’s over-the-top artist’s book version of Mt. Rainier is clearly a labor of love. Based in Tacoma, WA, the illustrator and letterpress artist has been obsessed with the landmark for years and painstakingly collected information and views of the northwestern peak before transforming her visual data into an irresistible, interactive tome. Local Conditions includes 120 hand-colored letterpress prints, along with a viewing box; by combining and layering different views of the mountain and its environment, readers can create “literally millions of scenes,” she says. If the limited run of 26 has sold out (or the $2,600 price tag is too steep), you can find Local Conditions at the Fleet Library at RISD next spring, when it will be added to RISD’s stellar Artists’ Books Collection. anagram-press.com

Benjamin Verhoeven 05 IL

Branching Out

When Benjamin Verhoeven 05 IL took an internship with fine press artist Gaylord Schanilec right after graduation, he didn’t quite realize that he’d end up as co-author, -designer and -printer for an extraordinary book about and made from trees. Sylvæ explores 24 species found on 20 acres of forest in western Wisconsin by presenting 53 relief prints pulled directly from end-grain and long-grain wood samples. To complement Schanilec’s narrative about the laborious process of collecting, cutting and printing the specimens, Verhoeven spent countless hours in local archives compiling historical anecdotes and scientific observations about each species. The achievement earned them the Fine Press Book Association’s 2009 Gregynog Prize for the finest book printed using traditional letterpress. Though the run of 120 has sold out, you can still leaf through the gorgeous object in the RISD library’s Artists’ Books Collection. midnightpapersales.com

Roni Horn 75 SC hauserwirth.com In Haraldsdóttir, Part II, the 10th artist’s book in her To Place series, the multimedia artist explores identity and location. Her sequence of 100 portraits of a model sitting in hot-spring pools in Iceland reflects daily changes in the weather.

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Kara Walker MFA 94 PT/PR risdmuseum.org Freedom, a Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times, now housed at the RISD Museum, almost looks like an enticing children’s pop-up—until you realize that the miniature silhouettes reveal the disturbing disappointments of life after emancipation.

Trees of Knowledge For Wendy Wahl MAE 85 the pages of a book can be read in many

Wendy Wahl

ways, particularly when they’re used to make art. With an eye on

MAE 85

sustainability, she finds that the most natural way to connect the cyclical tree of life with the ever-growing tree of knowledge is to recycle old volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For expansive pieces like Branches Unbound #1 (2011, 30x20x12’) she uses thousands of pages held together with stainless steel to create dense, sculptural trees literally bursting with symbolism. Her installations make for a potent statement— one made earlier this fall at the Grand Rapids [MI] Art Museum as part of ArtPrize, one of the world’s largest international art competitions. wendywahl.com

Chandler O’Leary 03 IL

Adventures in Bookmaking Building on her lifelong love of collage, assemblage and mixed media work, artist Sherrill Hunnibell 64 AE is drawn to books as intriguing source material for making paintings and sculpture. In Book of Hours, an ongoing series of “altered and alternative books,” she expands the notion of books as objects imbued with endless meaning—by combining hard-cover books with acrylic, gold leaf, nails, brads, wire, leather and more. “Quite simply, I enjoy the physical process and appreciate the intuitive discoveries” that working with books entails, she says. “Overall, my work builds upon strong aesthetic principles, and abstract concepts in nature, theology, science and mythology.” Several of Hunnibell’s book-inspired pieces are included in Altered Books, Collaborative Journals and Other Adventures in Bookmaking.

Sherrill Hunnibell 64 AE

Gretchen Hooker MID 08 gretchenhooker.com Good Eats, a beautifully packaged collection of screenprinted recipe cards that Gretchen created at the Women’s Studio Workshop, is included in the artist’s book collections at the New York Public Library, Penn State, RISD and Vassar, among other places.

Laurie Whitehill Chong 70 IL library.risd.edu As longtime Special Collections Librarian at the Fleet Library at RISD, Laurie has largely shaped RISD’s strong Artists’ Books Collection. During her sabbatical this year, she’s making an artist’s book of her own.

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artful books

Whatever Any Ever (Skira Rizzoli+Elizabeth Dee), the freshly released first monograph accompanying Ryan Trecartin’s show by the same name, captures the spirit of his outrageous videos and sculptural theater through illustrated sections on his seven-part video with Lizzie Fitch, along with his earlier works I-Be Area and A Family Finds Entertainment. There’s also an interview with Trecartin by artist Cindy Sherman and a trio of thoughtful essays by critics and curators Lauren Cornell, Kevin McGarry and Linda Norden. All in all, it’s 160 pages of visual stimulation peppered with interesting insights on the work of an artist being hailed by critics as one of the most promising young talents to emerge since the 1980s. elizabethdeegallery.com

Breathtaking Eric Hopkins 76 GL has been making breathtaking work for decades—meaning

Ryan Trecartin

it’s high time that his work has been bundled into a book. Written by Carl Little,

04 FAV

From his earliest work with glass to his evocative paintings of coastal Maine,

author of more than a dozen art books, Eric Hopkins: Above and Beyond (2011, Down East Books) makes for a lovely package, presenting 136 pages of the artist’s stunning panoramas of spruce-topped archipelagos and Down East beauty. Hopkins developed his signature style when he took to the air in the 1980s, flying over the coast where he grew up and absorbing a bird’s-eye view that he translates onto canvas in his studio in North Haven Island. erichopkins.com

Eric Hopkins 76 GL Christopher Benson 84/05 PT thefisherpress.com Through The Fisher Press, a digital print shop specializing in limitededition bound books and folios for artists, Benson brings his Santa Fe gallery to the rest of the world. The press produces books about the gallery’s artists and also accepts commissions.

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Curatorial contributors yalebooks.co.uk RISD Museum curators Judith Tannenbaum and Jan Howard each contributed to Get There First, Decide Promptly: The Richard Brown Baker Collection of Postwar Art, a new book by Jennifer Farrell due out at the end of November.

Investigative Living At A-Z West, her home base in the Mojave desert, Andrea Zittel MFA 90 SC is a guinea pig for her own experiments in living—shelter, furniture and clothing designed to reduce the demands of daily life to the elegant bare bones. Curator Richard Julin has produced a new monograph called Andrea Zittel: Lay of My Land (2011, Prestel) to accompany an exhibition by the same name on view through December 11 at Magasin 3 in Stockholm. The book features 120 dramatic new photographs of A-Z West interspersed with Julin’s conversations with the artist. Though Zittel herself believes that “you learn about the world by having experiences, not by being told things,” this substantial new book may be the next best thing to experiencing her desert utopia. zittel.org

Chris Sergio 00 GD

Haavard Homstvedt 00 IL

Andrea Zittel MFA 90 SC

Parallel Paths

Paths started to converge for award-winning book designer Chris Sergio 00 GD and painter/sculptor Haavard Homstvedt 00 IL in 1997, when the two became fast friends during RISD’s summer transfer program. A few years after graduation, they found themselves working in adjoining studios in New York City. So it was a no-brainer that a decade later Sergio, who had been working as an art director at Random House and Penguin, would design the first monograph for the up-and-coming fine artist. The design process behind You Will Hardly Know (2008, Galleri Riis, Oslo) was “collaborative and intense,” he recalls. And the results were rewarding: the book won several design awards and was picked up for broad distribution. Ripple Sole (Galleri Riis) followed this year—a lush and vibrant presentation of Homstvedt’s evocative new work, which has gained an international audience through solo shows in Paris, Oslo, Naples and New York. csergiodesign.com haavardhomstvedt.com

Anne West annewest.net If GPS fails, in Mapping the Intelligence of Artistic Work (2011, Moth Press) this longtime RISD faculty member presents a flexible, non-linear approach to writing that works especially well for helping visual artists to articulate their thoughts about their work.

Michael Maltzan BArch mmaltzan.com In his photo-rific new book No More Play: Conversations on Urban Speculation in Los Angeles and Beyond, this LA-based architect looks at the changing face – and shifting identity – of a mega-city traditionally known for its sense of optimism and possibility.

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Opening a book is like stepping into someone else’s mind. Books hold amazing knowledge, ideas, surprises—and an irresistible grip on the lives of these five alumni.

DRAWING INSPIRATION

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“ The rejections all sounded really nice, and I was like ‘Wow, how thoughtful!’”

“ Fortunately, my editor didn’t tell me that what I wanted to do was something that wasn’t in the commercial mainstream.”

Jarrett J. Krosoczka 99 IL

David Wiesner 78 IL

“ I kept thinking, ‘Who the hell wants to walk up these hills all the time? … There’s no way I’m going to this school.’” Brian Selznik 88 IL

Ben Shaykin MFA 11 GD

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bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

Hallie Warshaw 89 GD

BOOKS IN TRANSLATION

FROM CRAP TO QUEER

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“ I had not a clue what I was doing… But I felt very confident about my ability to execute something that was strong conceptually and looked really good.”

“ Our relationship to books— both as objects and as texts— is changing.”

Xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx: risdxyz@risd.edu.

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ILLUSTRATION

Brian Selznick BFA 88

wonderstruckthebook.com theinventionofhugocabret.com

D R AW I N G I N S P I R AT I O N by Francie Latour

Th e st o r y I a m a bo u t t o sh a r e w i t h yo u ta k e s p l ac e i n

It’s here that you will meet David Wiesner 78 IL , Brian Selznick 88 IL and J arrett J. Krosoczka 99 IL , three young students—each a decade apart—moving through the Illustration department at Rhode Island School of Design. Picture their paths—to RISD and beyond—taking wildly different turns. Follow them, and you will discover one opening countless rejection letters from publishers; another failing a test for an entry-level job in a bookstore; and a third with such laser focus on making a wordless picture book that winning a Caldecott Honor for his debut effort seems like destiny. This is a story about fantastical worlds made real through lyrical text and convincing illustrations: frogs flying on lily pads at night, a Parisian orphan obsessed with the dawn of silent movies and lunch ladies who fight crime. It’s a story about how Wiesner, Selznick and Krosoczka transport readers to those worlds by combining words and pictures—at times using traditional forms to amazing effect, at others by breaking traditional storytelling norms wide open.

P r ov i d e n c e , RI .

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“I just made a point of trying not to get in his way. [David Wiesner] was that very rare student who had such a clear sense of where he was going.” David Macaulay BArch 69

“In the end, the goal is for everything to feel inevitable, as if there were no other way the story could have fit together or unfolded, even though you’re making a million different choices along the way and you don’t know if they’re right or wrong,” says Selznick, whose genre-defying kids’ novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, will be released in December as a feature film directed by Martin Scorsese. His new novel, Wonderstruck, just came out in September and pushes the entire notion of illustrated books even further, with two separate narratives of deaf children: one entirely in words, the other entirely in pictures. “Being a good storyteller,” Selznick says, “means wanting it to feel like there’s nothing else that story ever could have been.” The paths of these three author/illustrators offer lessons about struggle and success, about knowing or not knowing exactly what you want to be in life. But ultimately, the stories of Selznick, Wiesner and Krosoczka are stories about story, revealing how a tale can lie dormant for years in the back of a storyteller’s mind, how it can surface by embracing or rejecting a mentor’s advice, and how, when it works, it compels readers to do the one thing authors spend untold amounts of time thinking about: turn the page.

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ILLUSTRATION

David Wiesner BFA 78

Clarity and drive

When Wiesner was in third grade, his teacher sent a note home telling his parents that little David would obviously rather draw than do his schoolwork. By 15 he had a thing for painting stuff that was flying. In one piece that shows his fascination with René Magritte, he painted eerily realistic refrigerators floating through a blue sky with perfect puffy clouds. “I thought appliances in the air looked pretty cool,” says the artist, whose books conjure up surreal, dream-like worlds. Wiesner lived for the hand-me-down supplies he inherited from his siblings, who were also artistically inclined. Unbeknownst to him, his father had begun looking into art schools early, and he still remembers the RISD grad who came to speak to his high school class. “When he left I was like, ‘Take me with you. I’m ready to go now!’” he recalls. But talking to Wiesner, you get the feeling that even if he had grown up with nothing more than pencils and paper, he’d still be right where he is now, making some of the most acclaimed picture books published in recent years. David Macaulay BArch 69, the Macarthur “genius” who taught at RISD for many years and had Wiesner as a student, noticed his clarity and drive immediately. “I just made a point

hmhbooks.com/wiesner

In Flotsam David Wiesner 78 IL was so successful at creating a wordless picture book—his longtime goal—that he collected his third Caldecott Medal for the effort.

below: Though his award-winning Lunch Lady series has really hit a chord with the elementary school crowd, Jarrett J. Krosoczka 99 IL still loves making picture books for younger readers, too. His latest, Ollie the Purple Elephant, just came out this fall.

of trying not to get in his way. He was that very rare student who had such a clear sense of where he was going,” says Macaulay, best known for such groundbreaking classics as Cathedral, Castle, Pyramid, Mosque and The Way Things Work. “RISD is a place where I don’t expect people to necessarily see clearly where they’re going, because that’s not really what the school is about. It’s more about being perfectly trained and prepared to do whatever it is you ultimately recognize to be your path. To see David already beginning to blossom at that level before he even left school, that was a gift for me.” Single-mindedness was something Krosoczka also had in abundance—and something he needed: How else do you convince grandparents who lived through the Depression that you should go to art school? “My grandparents raised me, and my grandfather ran a factory. He was a self-made man in the truest sense,” says Krosoczka, who grew up in Worcester, MA. “I’m sure he thought to himself, ‘How is this kid going to support himself drawing pictures for a living?’ But he always believed in me.” His grandfather continued believing in him even after the rejection letter arrived from RISD, relegating his devastated grandson to the University of Hartford [CT] instead.

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Jarrett J. Krosoczka 99 IL has almost as much fun reading his books to crowds of kids as they do listening to him. His wild and woolly picture book Punk Farm is now being made into a feature film, as is the Lunch Lady series.

“The editors were passing on my books, but offering critiques of my stories…. It was an invitation to revise and resubmit.” Jarrett J. Krosoczka 99 IL

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ILLUSTRATION

Jarrett J. Krosoczka BFA 99

Not surprisingly for an artist who’s as high-energy as his now signature style, Krosoczka quickly got bored at his fallback school. The idea of reapplying to RISD as a transfer student lingered in the back of his mind, which is where it stayed until he ran into a former high school teacher who urged him to try again. Shortly thereafter, Krosoczka was in—a RISD transfer student who just couldn’t fathom the complaints of overworked freshmen. Instead, he relished every assignment and crit, and soon became obsessed with the art of the children’s book. Illustration faculty member Mary Jane Begin 85 IL, an accomplished children’s book illustrator in her own right, remembers watching her former student’s style evolve. “He really discovered that style of thickly applied acrylic in my Color Works class,” she explains. “It’s a really intense palette that’s solid and happy with a vibrant energy, like candy. I knew he had found something—but more importantly, he knew he had found something—and it was click-click-boom. As a teacher, when you see them find it and run with it like that, it’s incredibly exciting.” The projects Krosoczka completed at RISD didn’t just go into his portfolio; starting in his junior year, he began a methodical process of submitting the two picture books he made on assignment to publishers. And he got rejected dozens of times. “I’d always been told most authors or illustrators get rejected for a few years before getting published,” Krosoczka says. “So I did the math and figured, ‘If I start sending them out now, I’ll get all that rejection out of the way by the time I graduate.’” Though he was devastated each time he got rejected, years later he realized that “the rejections all sounded really nice, and I was like, ‘Wow, how thoughtful! The editors were passing on my books, but offering critiques of my stories.’ That showed that they had actually read my books! Not everyone gets that. It was an invitation to revise and resubmit.”

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Krosoczka’s plan worked brilliantly: Having already amassed a pile of rejection letters, he landed his first book contract six months after graduation. And he has been incredibly prolific ever since, with two new titles, Ollie the Purple Elephant and Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco, just out this fall alone. But for a young artist trying to prove himself to a factory man and father figure, those six months seemed interminable. “My grandfather would call and ask, ‘Do you have a job?’ And I would say, ‘Yes. I write and illustrate children’s books. No one is paying me just yet for that, but that’s my job.’” REBELLING AT RISD

By the time Selznick got to RISD, people had been telling him for years that his future lay in children’s books. That’s what happens when you start sculpting dinosaurs from your grandmother’s tin foil as a toddler, and mesmerizing your kindergarten friends just by drawing a seal balancing a ball on its nose. But unlike Wiesner and Krosoczka, the inevitability of picture books sent Selznick running in the opposite direction. “The effect it had was to make me really, really hate children’s books and to never want to illustrate them,” he says. After a guidance counselor advised he get a liberal arts education rather than risk becoming an artist, he was on the verge of attending Syracuse. And visiting RISD didn’t help matters. “I kept thinking, ‘Who the hell wants to walk up these hills all the time? Syracuse is nice and flat. There’s no way I’m

going to this school,’” Selznick says. “That was my mindset, believe it or not—choosing a college based on which campus would be easier to walk around for four years.” Still, Selznick opted for RISD despite the hills. As a student, he devoured anything that pushed him conceptually and can still remember the blood and sweat he poured into building a violin from one continuous piece of cardboard. But although some of the biggest luminaries in children’s literature surrounded him—Macaulay was teaching in Illustration then and Maurice Sendak came to RISD as a visiting artist—the Illustration major studiously avoided them. Instead, he spent the majority of his time at Brown as the resident set designer for student theater productions. “Set design encapsulated everything I loved to do—it was art, theater, painting, drawing,” Selznick says. “All of a sudden, I had a goal.” Selznick had his sights set on moving on to Yale School of Drama after RISD, but he got rejected from the graduate program. After bumming around Europe for a few months, he landed in Manhattan and found himself in front of Eeyore’s, the iconic children’s bookstore. But even entry-level jobs there required extensive knowledge of children’s literature, and his didn’t go much past Green Eggs and Ham. “Of course, I failed their test,” Selznick says. “I realized then that I was supposed to be a children’s book illustrator, and I had just squandered four years of what could arguably have been the best opportunity in the world to learn about children’s books.”

â&#x20AC;&#x153;I remember sitting there and it was like the sky parted and the light came shining down.â&#x20AC;? David Wiesner 78 IL

Show, don ’ t tell

In Art & Max Wiesner created two charismatic lizards to tell a story about the creative process itself. The book won more than half a dozen ‘best of 2010’ awards and earned him the Illustrator of the Year award in the Children’s Choice Book Awards.

For Wiesner, the idea of marrying pictures and narrative kept getting clearer and clearer while he was at RISD. He had explored filmmaking and loved it. But it was the book itself— an object with pages to turn—that kept calling him. One day when he was visiting his RISD roommate in Pittsburgh, he went to the library at Carnegie Mellon University. In a climate-controlled room, a librarian brought him Six Novels in Woodcuts, a two-volume boxed set of wordless images by pioneering illustrator Lynd Ward. “I remember sitting there and it was like the sky parted and the light came shining down,” Wiesner says. “I’m not sure there were any trumpets sounding, but it was close.” After graduating from RISD, he began getting steady work illustrating textbooks, chapter books, anything he could find. But Wiesner wanted to tell his own stories and he wanted to do it without using words. “Fortunately, my editor didn’t tell me that what I wanted to do was something that wasn’t in the commercial mainstream,” he says. “She actually wanted to see if I could pull this off.” It took a few years, but in 1988 Wiesner’s book Free Fall finally emerged and won a Caldecott Honor award. It’s the story of a nameless boy who falls asleep and enters a surreal world of giant chessboards, castle mazes and a bedspread that transforms into an aerial map of earth. Publisher’s Weekly called it “an unbroken dreamscape … blending ancient and modern motifs.” This debut effort as an author-illustrator earned Wiesner a Caldecott Honor, an achievement he has since far surpassed: Of the eight books he has published to date, two have won Caldecott Honors and three have won Caldecott Medals, including Tuesday in 1991, The Three Pigs in 2001 and Flotsam in 2006. The most recent is a wordless tale about an underwater camera that washes ashore to reveal deep-sea wonders: a puffer fish floating as a hot-air balloon, an octopus clan chilling out in a family room of upholstered chairs and a chain of beachcomber kids who discover the camera before tossing it back into the deep. Dinah Stevenson, Wiesner’s editor and publisher at Clarion, says the reason kids lose themselves in his fantastical worlds is because they are as fully realized emotionally as they are technically. “He is scrupulous about getting as much reality

into his fantasy as is humanly possible,” she says, noting that Wiesner builds 3D models of his characters so that he can capture their expressions from multiple angles. “I think in part it’s the solidity of the visuals that allows the fantasy to play out so fully, because you feel you’re in a real place and everything makes sense, even though it’s impossible.” Wiesner likens his creative process to a plane circling an airport. “I have to draw it first. I have to wallow in all those visual pieces lying around, and then I find the story behind it,” he says. “But the story has to coalesce too, because the story is the thing on which it all hangs. A good picture book can’t just be about, ‘Look at how cool my art is.’ It has to be about, ‘Are kids going to want to read this?’” Courageous experiment

In 1991, the year that Wiesner won his first Caldecott, Selznick won the sympathy of the manager at Eeyore’s. Despite not knowing much more than when he had first applied, he returned and got hired, intent on becoming the student of children’s books he hadn’t been at RISD. He read the speeches of illustrators he admired and burned book covers into his memory banks. “People would come in and say, ‘There’s this book with a red cover, and I think it has a house on it,’ so I got really good at knowing what every book was,” Selznick says. Within a few years, he had actually started the career he thought had passed him by—illustrating children’s books written by others. They included the kids’ cult classic Frindle and standout biographies about Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson. But Selznick wasn’t satisfied. “I just didn’t want to spend the rest of my life doing picturebook biographies,” he says. And then, after ignoring him when he visited RISD, Selznick met Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, and was struck by his sage advice. “You have to make the book you want to make,” Selznick recalls him saying. He wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, but it brought him back to something he had had in the back of his mind—a historical fiction book about Georges Méliès, a pioneer of French film. He loved the idea himself, but wondered: What kid would want to read about the silent-movie era in France? fall/winter 2011/ 12

“The father of film fantasy, the mechanics of automatons, museum history—these are things that on the surface are not going to be interesting to children,” says Tracy Mack, an executive editor at Scholastic Press who has worked with Selznick for years. “Except Brian is so passionate about them, he makes them interesting.” Despite the risky subject matter, Selznick began taking huge risks with form, too. He thought about the comic book format, with small panels moving the narrative forward. What if he blew up those panels so each drawing filled an entire page, building wordless sequences that were the length of chapters? He had a highly nuanced vision for how the frames would unfold—more tightly sequenced than a graphic novel, less tightly sequenced than a flip book, with cinematic movement that would pan wide in some frames and zoom in for others. “I would take out one line—‘The boy followed the old man home’—and I’d have to draw 12 pages of pictures to replace that text,” Selznick says. “Because if you’re going to see the boy following him home, you’ve got to make them go through the streets, around corners, into the graveyard, to the front door. Suddenly what had been a 100-page novel blew up into this gigantic 500-page thing.” The book proved to be gigantic in more ways than one: The Invention of Hugo Cabret won the 2008 Caldecott Medal and became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Moreover, it dramatically reinvented the entire notion of a children’s book. Macaulay, the professor Selznick never had, calls Hugo Cabret one of the few books he’s truly jealous he didn’t create himself. “It was a book about magic, but the book itself was a box of magic,” he says. “It was sheer courage to construct a novel where entire chunks of the story were verbal and others were visual.” Selznick points to two distinct moments when he fully felt the impact of his book. One was the day he found himself walking through the 1930s Parisian world that had previously lived only in his mind, with hundreds of period-dressed extras and a larger-than-life, operatic train station on the London movie set of Hugo Cabret. “It was artistry on a scale I’d never seen before,” he says. “At first, I felt like an interloper.” The other moment was the very first day of his book tour, when Selznick walked into a school auditorium and he saw a student holding Hugo Cabret like a treasured possession. As Harry Potter geeks and chronically reluctant readers all told him how much they loved the book, Selznick thought, “Brian, whatever you do, don’t cry. It’s pathetic to cry in front of children.” T he joy of fishstick nuNchucks

As picture-book makers, Krosoczka and Selznick share similar worlds: the solitary work of sketching and storytelling, the relentless book tours visiting schools and libraries, and the surreal rollercoaster ride of selling the film rights to their books. Two of Krosoczka’s prize-winning books are now in active development for the big screen—Punk Farm as a computer-animated feature directed by David Silverman (The Simpsons and Monsters, Inc.) and the Lunch Lady series as a live-action movie, with A-list comedienne Amy Poehler signed on as its star.

“Suddenly what had been a 100-page novel blew up into this gigantic 500-page thing.” Brian Selznick 88 IL

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INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Name Namexxxxx BFA 89

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The silly, nonstop action in the Lunch Lady series has earned so much adoration from elementary school readers that Krosoczka is already finishing up number seven in the series and is moving on to number eight, which is due out next fall. facing page: The story told in Selznick’s Caldecott Medal-winning tome, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, piqued the interest of film director Martin Scorsese, who has brought the book to the big screen in a film due out in December.

But if Selznick’s densely crosshatched characters move mysteriously in storyboard frames, Krosoczka’s super-saturated acrylic characters pop like jellybeans in a penny candy store. His genius doesn’t have to do so much with shattering formal conventions or building surreal worlds of make-believe. It has to do with finding the ordinary touchstones of kids’ everyday lives—the lunch lady, the barnyard animals at the petting zoo, the rituals of Halloween or bath time—and then turning them into visually rich, wild narratives. In 2003, just two years after publishing his first book, Print magazine named him one of the top new visual artists under 30. “He is so good at creating this joyous feel,” says Robin Adelson, executive director at the Children’s Book Council. The organization has twice honored Krosoczka with the Children’s Choice Book Award, the only national award of its kind selected entirely by young readers. “There’s a really accessible sense of humor and earnestness, and a lot of action. But there’s an intelligence to [his books], too. He never writes down to kids. He takes real situations and plays with them brilliantly. Why shouldn’t the school lunch lady be fighting crime and saving the world with fishstick nunchucks in her spare time?” Mary Jane Begin, his former professor, says the contagious, kid-centered energy of Krosoczka’s characters is an extension of the author himself. “Like Jarrett and a lot of other children’s book illustrators, I go to schools and do presentations. But he takes it to a completely different level,” she says. “He genuinely enjoys the kids’ company and gets ideas from them and is just completely jazzed about what they bring to the table. Not every illustrator feels that way.” Krosoczka was at his own elementary school in 2001 when he got the idea that catapulted him into Hollywood. “I was

there to talk about Monkey Boy when I ran into my old lunch lady from when I was a kid,” he recalls. “She starts telling me about her grandkids and being the family matriarch. And what was amazing is that up until that moment, I hadn’t thought about her as a real human being with a life outside of serving us fishsticks.” Krosoczka became fixated with the idea of a lunch lady serving up justice as a crime fighter, but struggled for four years just drafting ideas. It wasn’t a story he could tell as a 32-page picture book. To have something go terribly wrong and have the lunch lady investigate it, stop the villain and save the day, he’d need at least 90 pages. He was on the way to his first graphic novel. “It was a huge learning curve, because I had never taken a book to 96 pages,” Krosoczka says. “If you look at when the first Lunch Lady came out, in 2009, that was eight years after the encounter with my lunch lady. But now, I have a rhythm to it.” As in his RISD days, it’s a rhythm that’s steady and methodical; the sixth book in the series came out in September, a seventh is due out in March and an eighth in fall 2012. But Krosoczka doesn’t know how far Lunch Lady will take him, and like Wiesner and Selznick, he’s already much more interested in the next challenge. Though he doesn’t yet know where that next challenge will lead, he knows that it will revolve around platypuses. This idea came to him during a school visit, too, though he initially envisioned a penguin police squad and had to switch gears after the recent deluge of penguin movies. “It was such a blessing, actually,” Krosoczka admits. “With the platypus, it’s fun and it’s got the same alliterative quality. But it’s just way, way more bizarre.”

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Zest Books has carved out a welcomed niche in the teen market through its smart choice of subject matter and a writing style that tells it like it is. Cover designs by Zestâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Director Tanya Napier and others help further strengthen the brand.

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from to Teens Read with Zest A lifelong love of books led Hallie Warshaw to start a business that fills a perfect niche in the publishing industry.

by Francie Latour

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Hallie Warshaw BFA 89

You kn ow how, i n th e i nsecu r e ro l l e rcoast e r wor ld of pub li sh i n g, the titles and jackets and design of books can get market-tested almost into the ground? Well, they do that differently at Zest Books, the indie teen-tween publishing company Hallie Warshaw 89 GD runs in San Francisco. In 2009 Warshaw published a book with a plain brown cover and called it Crap. Granted, she and her Zest cohorts explained themselves with the subtitle: How To Deal With Annoying Teachers, Bosses, Backstabbers and Other Stuff That Stinks. (You might be wondering where this handbook was when you were 14, trying to get out of high school alive). And granted, the designcentric group thought a lot about the title and stool-colored covers that grace the 96-page gem of a book, with musings by Machiavelli, Kurt Vonnegut and Homer Simpson on how to deal with vindictive teachers, clueless parents and shallow friends. In a spontaneous wave of critical success no hype machine could manufacture, Crap caused a sensation at the 2009 American Library Association Conference; in 2010 it grabbed a coveted spot on the ALA’s list of picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Crap won the hearts of teens with a simple message: We’re not here to tell you everything’s going to get better. We’re here to tell you things will probably get worse before they get better. Given that fact, let’s talk about some ways to avoid the needless crap, and other ways to cope with the crap that’s inevitable.

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“Their whole approach to design and packaging—the use of interesting fonts, the way they use white space, the writing and language—they just nail that teen voice, and the kids recognize it right away.” Dodie Owens, editor, SLJ Teen But even if you’re quoting Harry Truman (“Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day,” as the 33rd President of the United States once remarked), you can’t publish a book called Crap and not expect to deal with some. And so, in July 2009, as her nonfiction title rocketed to it-book status at the ALA conference, Warshaw found herself in front of an audience of librarians, talking about censorship, authenticity and creative freedom. “Our book distributor at the time was concerned that the book was a little too out there and that they couldn’t sell it,” Warshaw says. “But we just disagreed and published it anyway. In the end I just came down on the side of: We’re not changing the title of that book. It’s a book about crap. You can’t really put it any other way. You could call it The Little Things That Happen In Life And How To Get Over Them. But no one would have bought that.” T elling it like it is

As it turns out, Crap was a pivotal title for the young company, and for Warshaw’s own journey through the world of publishing. Zest, which grew out of her first publishing venture, Orange Avenue, bills itself as: “Teen reads with a twist.” It’s tangy, but it’s also a major understatement. In just five years, using a combination of moxie and uncanny foresight, Warshaw has built a thriving publishing firm at a time of unprecedented turmoil in the industry. She has done it by following three guiding principles: focus your niche, create design-driven content and treat the preachy condescension of adult-speak like a cardinal sin. The result is a book list that really speaks to young readers. Some have wordy titles like the bestselling 97 Things To Do Before You Finish High School, but more often Zest goes with a single word that gets straight to the point, like Kiss, Crush, Uncool and last year’s groundbreaking Queer, the first comprehensive guide to teen LGBTQ life since the dawn of Facebook, Glee and same-sex marriage. It’s a line-up that has librarians and booksellers in the US and abroad clamoring for Zest titles. “Their whole approach to design and packaging—the use of interesting fonts, the way they use white space, the writing and language—they just nail that teen voice, and the kids recognize it right away,” says Dodie Owens, editor of SLJ Teen. (School Library Journal, the world’s largest trade magazine focused on children’s books, publishes SLJ Teen, an online newsletter that reviews more books for teens than any other source.) How much can one tiny West Coast publisher separate itself from the pack in the exploding Young Adult market? “Put it this way: I was talking to a teen services librarian recently, and I asked her what kinds of books they’re looking for more of,” Owens says. “She gave me a whole list of general categories and then at the end she literally said, ‘And anything published by Zest. My kids love everything they put out.’” 30

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The larger world of publishing is also taking notice: In January Warshaw entered a partnership with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), one of the biggest names in children’s books. The deal allows her to retain editorial control while alleviating some of the biggest headaches she faced as head of a small firm: cash flow, inventory and distribution. As it turns out, Zest was the perfectly-shaped peg that fit one of the few holes in the HMH brand. “[Hallie] has such a clear focus on doing edgy titles for tweens and teens that it gave her company a very distinct reason for being,” says Amy Rhodes, a principal at the New York publishing consulting firm Market Partners International, which negotiated Warshaw’s deal with HMH. Lots of small publishers have niche markets, whether it’s New Age or crafts. “But Hallie sliced it even thinner than that… doing nonfiction, and she tapped into a niche where there really wasn’t that much out there,” Rhodes says. “In the book publishing world, if you can find something that doesn’t seem to be over-published, you are way ahead of the game.” Being ahead of the game in a turbulent industry counts for a lot. And with the security of HMH’s backing, Warshaw is branching out into new territory. In 2012 she will launch a new imprint, Zest Memoirs, to publish thoughtful and provocative first-person accounts of teen experiences. The first in the series— a memoir by a Norwegian teenager stricken with cancer— reflects another big leap for Zest: buying the rights to foreign titles. And this year Zest published its first-ever work of fiction, the graphic novel Freshman: Tales of 9th Grade Obsessions, Revelations and Other Nonsense, by fellow RISD alum Corinne Mucha 05 IL. If School Library Journal’s review is any indication, Warshaw has taken another big step in the right direction. “Zest Books obviously did some thinking before deciding what their first graphic novel should be,” the review says, “and that thought resulted in this very funny, very real title that fits in perfectly with their ‘tell it like it is’ publishing philosophy.” Challenging business

Despite the promise of Zest, don’t think for a minute that Warshaw has it all figured out. In a lot of ways, her balancing act perfectly embodies a classic dilemma shared by many RISD grads: When she worked as a designer and art director for other publishers, she had to live with the knowledge that she was giving away all of her best ideas; she didn’t own any of the work she produced. But now that she does, she’s also managing her own business, meaning the creative process itself can sometimes feel like a distant memory. While her freelancers get to write break-up haikus (in Dumped: A Girl’s Guide to Happiness After Heartbreak) or explain how PJ Harvey, Jay-Z and Elvis Presley were all influenced by the film Bonnie and Clyde (in Reel Culture: 50 Classic Movies You Should Know About So You Can Impress Your Friends), Warshaw is more often buried in paperwork.

In her homey San Francisco studio, Hallie Warshaw 89 GD (left) leads a small team of designers and editors in producing some of the most popular titles in the teen market today.

Yes, she has a bookkeeper to make sure the bills get paid, and a teen advisory board to keep her on track. She still gets to make the big editorial calls, like using an image of two silhouetted cows humping each other for the book Sex: A Book For Teens. But the single most important thing she has to do well is run—and expand—her business. In 2006 Warshaw was the one who had to figure out how her already strapped company would absorb the cost of providing health insurance to her employees. Lately, she has been inundated with forms from the Trade and Commerce Department. In fact, she is so intent on avoiding them that she has become the butt of office jokes for her ability to dodge bureaucratic tasks. But if she neglects these particular forms, she won’t get paid for the books Zest now sells in more than a dozen different countries around the world. As strange as it sounds, Warshaw says that it’s the rigors of her RISD education that steeled her for the daunting challenges of business, just as much as they freed her to create an intensely design-driven brand. “I’m not going to lie. Running a publishing company is really difficult. Sometimes I’m jealous that my art director gets to basically sit there and make covers,” Warshaw says. “But because we never have enough money to do what we want to do, we have to figure out how to accomplish things, and that’s what I learned at RISD: how to solve a problem—any kind of problem—in a creative way.”

“I don’t think I realized while I was at RISD the incredibly wide range of things you could do with the training and preparation I had.” Hallie Warshaw 89 GD

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“Honestly, I don’t recommend starting a company when you don’t know anything about business.” Hallie Warshaw 89 GD

A lifelong book bug

Navigating foreign distribution rights is a long way from making books on your own, something Warshaw has done since she was a kid. Her memories of summer camp are documented in handwritten, densely collaged books that show the makings of a future indie publisher. Back then she was also grateful for something no good publishing company can live without: a ruthless editor. “My dad would sit in this green chair in his bedroom, marking in red all over my papers,” she says. “Rewrite, revise, over and over again. When you’re a teenager you’re like, ‘Are you kidding me? You want me to rewrite this again?’ But of course now I can see how valuable it was.” It was Warshaw’s father who initially steered her away from RISD, reasoning that she needed a more “broad-based” liberal arts education. But after earning degrees in Philosophy and Fine Arts from Clark University, RISD kept beckoning. “I just remember having this bug about RISD from when I was really little, like younger than 10,” Warshaw says. So she went back to college to earn her second undergraduate degree— this time in Graphic Design. The lessons she learned from RISD—the value of healthy competition and honest crits, and more than anything, the essential survival skill of improvisation—became critical as she wound her way from a well-worn career path in graphic design to one she would have to carve out for herself, by herself. “Truthfully, I thought that graphic designers designed logos and posters and brochures,” Warshaw says. “I don’t think I realized the incredibly wide range of things you could do with the training and preparation I had.” There were lots of logos and posters in Warshaw’s post-RISD life as she bounced from graphic design firms in Hong Kong and Japan to New York designing financial reports. Then a wave of layoffs left her unemployed, just in time for the opportunity that would put her on the path to publishing: She got hired to design textbooks for Scholastic. Before long she had worked her way up from designing lesson-plan books to becoming a senior designer and then an art director. “It was the first time I really felt like, ‘OK. I’m totally good at this,’” she says. Then, just as she was up for another promotion, she got a job offer to work with visionary designer Clement Mok, which lured her to San Francisco. She distinctly recalls the expressions of jealousy when she told friends about the job. Yet within a year she was back to book designing—only now she was on the West Coast, starting a freelance career from scratch. “That’s when I decided I was going to become a book packager,” Warshaw says. There was just one problem: She didn’t actually know what that entailed. 32

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Start-up saga

Book packagers essentially produce books—particularly coffee table or novelty books—for publishers, often initiating their own concepts and ideas in-house to sell to a publisher, as Zest does now. So, after finding a tiny office space in San Francisco, Warshaw opened for business as a book packager. Her experiment began when she “figured out that everybody was going to this book show in Italy,” she explains. “I had no idea what happened there, but I knew book packagers and publishers were going. So I went, too.” The show turned out to be the Bologna Children’s Book Fair—the largest book show of its kind in the world. Today, as the head of Zest, Warshaw starts gearing up for Bologna months ahead of time, booking appointments with publishers. But as a freelancer looking for her first break, she didn’t know people even made appointments until a friend told her at the last minute. So she picked up the phone and got in the door with a few publishers. And then she tapped into the process she learned at RISD: She dreamed up 10 good ideas for kids’ books, designed mock-ups for each idea and brought them with her to Italy. “I had not a clue what I was doing. I didn’t know anything about the business of packaging,” Warshaw says. “But I looked at those projects like I was making 10 RISD projects. I felt very confident about my ability to execute something that was strong conceptually and looked really good, and I just made these books and showed them to publishers. And I got my first job.” A New York publisher asked Warshaw to put together a book about slumber parties and cooking. In 1998 she delivered the Sleepover Cookbook, which School Library Journal called “a cookbook with attitude.” But once she realized that book packaging meant she was still turning over her creative output to someone else, she convinced her parents to loan her money, took a 10-week business class and started her own publishing company focused on a market where she saw holes.

Book fairs are indispensable for small publishing firms like Zest. In October Warshaw spent an exhilarating but exhausting week in Frankfurt, Germany marketing her company’s latest titles to international buyers.

“Honestly, I don’t recommend starting a company when you don’t know anything about business,” Warshaw says. “But the idea that we needed to really, really focus—that was the one thing I knew about business. So I made the decision to concentrate on teens. Luckily for us, it happens to be the fastest-growing genre in the publishing industry now.” S ex sells

The book Sex, which Zest published in 2010, actually has two subtitles: A Book for Teens and An Uncensored Guide to Your Body, Sex and Safety, with a big emphasis on safety. Sex is the only Zest title Warshaw has labeled with an explicit age range. It was fact-checked to death, with both a leading Ob/Gyn and a panel of librarians reading parts of the book as it was being developed. As far as sex books for teens go, it was bulletproof. Then Warshaw got a look at the logo for the Midwest Teen Sex Show, a tongue-in-cheek podcast hosted by Nikol Hasler, who had written Zest’s book. The image of two cows humping each other in silhouette was perfect—even though it proved to be not quite so bulletproof. “The controversy about that book wasn’t the information in it,” Warshaw says. “The controversy about that book was the

cover. Librarians were Tweeting about it before it was even published. We actually thought it was hilarious. We had these long conversations at the office about: ‘Should they be humping cows? Humping dogs? What kind of animals do we want to have mounting each other here?’ ” Like Crap, Sex practically invited adult disapproval. At one trade show, a heated argument erupted inside Zest’s booth between a librarian from the deep South and a reporter over whether it should even be allowed in libraries. But in the past year, as the book has found its way onto library shelves, something intriguing has happened with Sex: “Every librarian tells us the same thing,” Warshaw says. “The book never gets checked out but they know everybody’s reading it because it gets completely tattered and worn, and they have to order new copies. “At the Boston show, a librarian came up to me and said, ‘I love this book.’ And that was really the reason,” she goes on. “At the end of the day he goes around to all the places where he knows kids hide books, and Sex is always one of those books. So yes, we knew we might be courting controversy when we put those cows on the cover. But we also knew that we were doing something right.”

The Zest crew was amused to discover that the cover image they chose for their 2010 book on sex stirred up more controversy than the content itself.

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BOOKS IN TRANSLATION “A book on screen is not a book. . It is a translation of a book.”

by Benjamin Shaykin MFA 11 GD A book is a ph ysi ca l th i n g. It has a shape. It has heft. Its form—a collection of pages bound on one edge between covers—is iconic, imbued with its own meaning. Proportioned for the human hand, it’s symmetrical across its spine— just like the human body. We are living in a period of massive transition as books shift from the printed page to the digital screen. The benefits of new technologies are hard to deny: Digital books are searchable, sortable and interactive. They are shiny and they are weightless. All this means that our relationship to books—both as objects and as texts— is changing. But there is much that we overlook by only looking forward. In my MFA thesis, I comment on the state of the book at this time of transition, presenting a series of experiments using books as both subject matter and form. I take notions of translation and transformation and turn them back on themselves, restoring the ephemeral to physical form, making abstract notions tactile. I play in the liminal spaces, the moments when the page turns.

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Special Collection includes a dozen hand-sewn books drawn from Google Books and reproduced at their original size, revealing disruptions and errors introduced during Google’s own scanning process: the scanner’s hand, illegible type and illustrations, pages obliterated or in the process of being turned. Some of these artifacts are beautiful and evocative—the found poetry of this new machine.

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“Books are symbols. We keep them around us because they tell a story—they’re a record of where we’ve been and where we hope to go.”

In his 1995 essay Books as Furniture, Nicholson Baker muses on the twin phenomena of books as decoration and books used as props in mail order catalogs. In my own book based on Baker’s essay, I make physical these phenomena and the notion of the books within books.

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GRAPHIC DESIGN

Benjamin Shaykin MFA 11

benjaminshaykin.com

Lo-Res Books interprets my own library, reducing the books in my memory and on my shelves to their smallest digital selves. Blown up to poster size, these icons are transformed into flags or beacons like this one, The Catcher in the Rye. While seemingly abstract, they act as a kind of semaphore, signaling a shared cultural connection between anyone who can decipher them.

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connecting through the Alumni Association

Paula Martiesian 76 PT

e n e rg e tic an d articulate,

Kristina Bell DiTullo 96 IL has

spent the last 15 years crisscrossing the country with her husband Michael DiTullo 98 ID in pursuit of educational and career opportunities. Each time the two RISD grads landed in a new city, they found themselves looking for avenues to connect with other creative people. And for them, the quickest and easiest way to do that was by tapping into the local chapter of the RISD network. “When you’re moving around all over the country, it’s really wonderful to connect with a community of like-minded creative people,” Kristina says. “By finding other RISD grads, you have an instant starting point—a way to immediately relate to one another.” The couple’s latest port of call is San Francisco, where Michael is now a creative director at frog design, a firm known internationally for its innovative design work. Shortly after they arrived 38

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in California, Kristina followed her tried-and-true method of finding interesting creative connections: She attended a barbecue hosted by RISD/Northern California, and within a few short months, had agreed to take on leadership of the well-established club. RISD/NorCal events tend to attract groups of 40 people or more and now run the gamut from happy hours at local restaurants to a potluck dinner in Golden Gate Park and a PechaKucha night (which, for anyone unfamiliar with the format, involves fast-paced presentations by individual artists or designers showing 20 slides of their work for 20 seconds each). “It’s a wonderful way to get to know the San Francisco area and help connect alumni,” she says. DiTullo grew up in the “exurbs” of New York City with a love of both science and the fine arts. While she majored in Illustration at RISD and has always painted, she also took psychology classes at Brown. Searching for the symbiosis between art and science, she went on to earn a master’s degree in art therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Art therapy is a field that appeals to her because, while “some people are skilled at talking, for others visual language can really help them to communicate what they’re going through.” After working in the field for several years, DiTullo is currently taking a break to concentrate on her own artwork. She likes “using culturally ubiquitous materials, such as bandages, erasers and satellite dishes in suburbia, [as a means of drawing] the viewer in to reflect on a shared human

Xxxxxxxxxx For more onxxxxxxxxx Kristina’s work, xxxxxx goxxxxxxxx to kristinabellditullo.com. xxxxxx: risdxyz@risd.edu.

“By finding other RISD grads, you have an instant starting point—a way to immediately relate to one another.” experience.” Many of the ideas she’s exploring originate from her art therapy work bearing witness to people in emotional pain. It’s a conceptual approach with a clinical twist—focusing on “trauma, connection, despair, transformation and isolation,” along with the healing process. In her life, her work, her art and her leadership of RISD/NorCal, DiTullo is focused on forging connections. She believes that at its core art itself is about connections—between the artist, the work, the viewer and society. “Searching for connections has helped me to focus in the studio, as well as to realize the work I need to do outside of the studio, building communities and helping people,” she says. “Essentially, that’s my way of making sense of the world and adding meaning to my life.”

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

Finding Creative Connections

Great Setting for Santa Fe Show From mid-August to mid-September, RISD/New Mexico hosted an alumni show at Scripps Fine Art in Santa Fe, a new gallery run by Suzanne Scripps 89 PT. The space was originally a horse stable built of adobe blocks and mud with peeled pine vigas for a roof. Inside, the plastered walls have an earthen patina, making for a quaint and unpretentious location for RISD’s 2011 Southwest show. The show didn’t have a theme but was curated from images submitted to club leader Nat Hesse 76 SC by New Mexico alumni—114 in all. Drawings, paintings, sculpture and conceptual works filled the space, and many caught my eye, especially a full-scale brain woven from brass wire by Laura Stanziola MFA 97 PH. The 34 works of art selected for the show attracted attention from a lot of non-RISD gallery-goers who were out “art walking” the night of the opening, making the Scripps gallery inaugural event a great success. — Michael Wright 84 ID

Celebrating Noni’s Crowd by Michael Fink , professor of English

I met “Noni” (nee Ellen J. Mills MAT 67, as she signs her paintings) at a group show at Hamilton House in Providence. She has a regal sort of carriage—an expression at once kindly and frank—and still has a great appreciation for her teachers at RISD, not only from her years studying here in the 1940s (during and after the war), but from more recent times as well. “I earned a Master of Arts in Teaching with Arnold Prince as my mentor, and he is still my role model,” she claims. And she’s still enjoying off-campus classes with Ida Schmulowitz 74/07 PT and Wendy Ingram 59 SC/MAE 77. “My teachers and fellow students are insightful, inspiring, helpful,” she says. Noni came to RISD from a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, but also traveled and studied abroad—in France and India—and spends her summers in Nova Scotia. She is very much of Providence, and also of the wider world beyond. Like the cleric in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “gladly would she teach and gladly learn.” Noni was a classmate of the late Lane Smith 50 PT and of Eugene Tonoff 49 IL and we reminisced about what RISD was like during the era of the G.I. Bill, which brought new ideas—and an influx of men—to the school’s studios, which had had mostly women students during the war.

This still life by Ellen “Noni” Mills MAT 67 was on view at The Art Connection Gallery in Providence over the summer.

Olive Ann Norton 50 PT from Glastonbury, CT was in that generation of painting majors. She came to my house as the fiancé of my uncle, the late Herbert L. Fink 48 PT, just returned from service in Patton’s Third Army and from a military hospital in Belgium. Polly, as she was nicknamed, became Mrs. Herbert L. Fink and continues to paint at her home in Rockport, ME. It was a time when the fine arts were restlessly stirring as Rhode Island—and indeed all America— looked to the arts for the very values that shape what Noni calls “the human condition.” For their generosity of spirit and their strong bond with RISD, I raise my glass in a toast to “the greatest generation.”

For club and contact information in your area, go to risd.edu/alumni.

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During her summer in NYC, Carly Ayres 13 ID made it her mission to meet with as many RISD alumni as she could—for informal conversation— in part simply to learn what’s in store for her once she graduates.

Learning About Being an Alum by Carly Ayres 13 ID

“One time, I had to confront a flasher.” That’s Marc Schwartz 99 ID telling me about his work-study jobs at RISD over arepas at a small Venezuelan restaurant in the East Village. As a student, he worked in the RISD library and had heard reports about a guy who had been exposing himself to students. One day, he suspected a guy who hesitated on his way into the library, so he followed him upstairs. When Schwartz heard a girl scream and laugh, he knew the flasher had struck. “I yelled, ‘Hey, you!’ and he took off.” But since there were only two stairwells in the old library, Schwartz ran down one and quickly locked the only exit, forcing the perpetrator into the periodicals room, which he then locked from the outside. As I met with half a dozen RISD alumni in NYC over the summer, I heard stories ranging from designing bioluminescent clothing to swinging on chandeliers in a Newport mansion. But Schwartz took the prize for most exciting work-study job. I doubt that students at many other colleges can tout alumni with such fascinating (and occasionally raunchy) stories. The bioluminescent story came from Diana Eng 05 AP, whose line of Fairytale Fashions also includes clothing that changes color and shape. She developed the line during an artist’s residency at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, where she designed a curriculum and made a series of videos using fashion as a way to get elementary school students interested in science and technology. “The idea was [to get kids to] design these ‘fairytale fashions’— clothing that can only exist in a fairy tale,” Eng explains. “So, using these principles from math and science, I made clothes that actually function [like machines].”

“ As I met with half a dozen RISD alumni in NYC over the summer, I heard stories ranging from designing bioluminescent clothing to swinging on chandeliers in a Newport mansion.” Eng is now focusing on her own line, Diana Eng (dianaeng.com), which incorporates inspiration from bioluminescent sea creatures, science and technology. When I met with her in August, she had just returned from New Zealand, where she taught workshops on deployable and 40

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inflatable structures, as well as general electronics. She took me through CoLab, the space she shares with other artisans and makers on the lower West Side. It’s a designer’s dream, fit with vinyl cutters, 3D printers, a wood shop and, of course, an espresso machine. She also showed me her newly launched line of laser-distressed tops, inspired by floral cell structure and for sale in her online shop. CoLab is a stark contrast to the studio run by interior designer Glenn Gissler BArch 84, which has floor-to-ceiling shelves holding a mix of antique and modern pottery and flatware, as well as books on the artists and designers who made the pieces. Through his successful practice, he has designed interiors for a diverse range of clients throughout the country, including fashion designer Michael Kors. A member of the RISD Museum’s Board of Governors, Gissler is an avid collector who donates objects to the museum. “I get great pleasure out of this,” he says, noting that his gifts to the museum are a way to “editorialize culture” and directly influence students. “I love giving things to the museum. It’s really my biggest thrill.” Gissler also told me this: “My life would not be the life I have if I didn’t go to RISD. There’s just no question.” Most current students and alumni would agree. I was grateful to meet a small segment of RISD’s strong alumni network over the summer because it’s clear that they care passionately about RISD and want to give back through their work and their interest in current students.

For more information on the alumni cited, go to: 33flatbush.com, dianaeng.com and glenngisslerdesign.com.

RISD Sweethearts (We got more than our degrees at RISD!)

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun Mark Berkowsky BArch 69 + Nadine Ingerman 67 TX

“It seems like yesterday that we were students at RISD.”

I worked at several art-related jobs before getting married and after marrying we moved to New Jersey, where I worked as a designer for Lenox China. In 1973 our baby girl was born and I left work to become a stay-at-home Mom. Our son was born three years later. During this time, Mark worked for a couple of architectural firms before establishing his own architecture and construction business (Berkowsky and Associates) in 1990. Through the years Mark and I have worked together owning and running a second business, erecting a modular house, renovating a historic house, designing and building two new houses, and raising two children. Mark is still happily working but trying to take time off as much as possible to play golf. For 25 years (and counting) he has also volunteered as the president of Cranbury Housing Associates, an organization that develops and manages affordable housing. He also gives his time and expertise to several other organizations and we have both been involved with our local historical society for 30 years. I keep busy with oil painting, gardening, volunteering and babysitting the grandkids (we have four of them!). I still use my sewing machine, although I have graduated to a modern computerized version, and we watch a beautiful flat-screen TV—together, in color. Time goes by so quickly! It seems like yesterday that we were students at RISD. We are truly fortunate that we are still happy to be together after all these years. We are blessed with love and good fortune. And on June 1, 2011 we celebrated our 42nd wedding anniversary! —Nadine (Ingerman) Berkowsky 67 TX

Mark and Nadine a few years after they first met at RISD in 1965… and almost half a century (!) later, after celebrating their 42nd anniversary.

In 1965 RISD didn’t provide housing for upperclass female students, so I moved to the top floor of an apartment house on Benefit Street with four of my closest friends. One day a RISD student who lived on the floor below came knocking on our door. He claimed that I was doing something that was causing static on his brand new black-and-white TV. I had a sewing machine in my room that I used for making class projects and clothes. It turned out that every time I used the machine it caused his TV to act up—and so, that’s how we met. I graduated in 1967 with a BFA in Textiles, but we wanted to wait until we were both out of school before we married. Mark is a year younger than I am and he was in the five-year Architecture program, so we didn’t wed until 1969—the day after he graduated. It was a very busy weekend! To submit your own Sweethearts story, email: risdxyz@risd.edu.

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RISD by Design 2011 The energy and good spirits were as palpable as ever when alumni came back to RISD in mid-October for a brisk, scintillating alumni, reunion and parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; weekend. Some had fun flexing their figure drawing muscles after a 25-year hiatus or participating in a wide range of other hands-on workshops. Others appreciated the thought-provoking panel discussions and presentations, along with the Museum and historic walking tours. And many with big reunions to celebrate partied â&#x20AC;&#x2122;til the wee hours. On Sunday, families brought their kids out to the Farm for a fun day of raku firing, Big Nazo antics and kite making and flying.

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1. A happy group of reuniting alumni pose at their Reunion Dinner on Saturday evening.

2. Heather Henson 95 IL and her Celebration of Flight team mounted a great kite extravaganza out at the RISD Farm.

3. The big smiles of this trio from the Class of 2001 sum up the fun alumni have getting together at RbD weekend.

4. Meghan Reilly Michaud 01 GD, new president of the Alumni Council, joined President Maeda and students, faculty and alumni for an interesting panel discussion on art and innovation.

5. Matching smiles mark a great mother/ daughter photo courtesy of portrait photographer Steven Rosen 81 PH.

6. Erminio Pinque 83 IL and his charismatic Big Nazo creatures kept the crowd smiling with their ridiculous antics.

7. Artist/educator Andrew Oesch 02 FD invited people to share their stories about learning from their mistakes in a pavilion set up on the RISD Beach.

8. People of all ages love the instant gratification of glazing and firing raku pieces out at the RISD Farm.

9. This mother and daughter had a blast together over the weekend, especially posing for this official portrait by Steven Rosen 81 PH.

10. The art sale on Benefit Street is

a perennial favorite.

What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)? Everyone wants a RISD Alumni Association card, right? Well, not necessarily. So, consider WIIFM:

and risd | works (risdworks.com) bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

photos by Steven Rosen 81 PH and Phillip Ahn 13 FAV

▸ access to the great Fleet Library at RISD (library.risd.edu) ▸ 10% off everything you buy at the risd:store (risdstore.com) ▸ discounts on selected Continuing Education classes (risd.com/cfm/conted.cfm?)

Of course, there’s also a lot more in it for you in simply being a RISD alum, including access to all regional club activities, a free subscription to this magazine and the open invitation to contribute to it, monthly updates via XYZ’s e-cousin, XYZmail, access to the ArtWorks job site and best of all, the ability to connect with so many other great people who know and love RISD.

Xxxxxxxxxx For more photos xxxxxxxxx from the xxxxxx weekend, xxxxxxxx go to xxxxxx: rbd.risd.edu. risdxyz@risd.edu.

For more information on how to get your very own Alumni Association card, swipe the QR code or email crobinso@risd.edu or pick up the phone and call Claire at 401 454-6379.

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The RISD Museum helped open the world of art and design to you when you were a student. It’s still here for you. 20% of your Alumni Membership is directed to the Phil Seibert [BFA ’67 IA] Alumni Acquisition Fund, which supports the purchase of works of art by RISD alumni. Join today! Call 401.454.6322 or visit us online at risdmuseum.org/join.

fall 2011 exhibition highlights Made in the UK: Contemporary Art from the Richard Brown Baker Collection Nancy Chunn: Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear Jacques Callot and the Baroque Print Japanese Buddhist Priest Robes from the Lucy T. Aldrich Collection

risdmuseum.org

pattern | patina | pixel There’s always something new at RISD|CE. Apparel Design Certificate Program Jewelry + Light Metals Certificate Program Teen Intensive Workshops Winter registration is happening right now.

risd.edu/ce

risd continuing education 345 south main street, 2nd floor providence, ri 02903 800 364-7473 (press 2) | 401 454-6200

campus community newsbits

Making a Mark All Over the World message by

John Maeda RISD’s President

In h is most rec e n t book, Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain Age, futurist Bob Johansen talks about how we’re living in a “VUCA world.” It’s one we all recognize as being the ‘new normal’: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. Think of the Arab spring, Libya, Congressional stalemate, high unemployment, the unpredictable stock market—all part of our VUCA world. As alumni, you have what Johansen identifies as the antidote to all this. It’s a different type of “VUCA”— based on your potential to bring Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility to the world. In the work you do and the way you live you exemplify this type of VUCA, which society needs of its citizens. You embody the values that have guided RISD for the past 134 years— the importance of art and design above all, the profound difference education makes and the value of valid critique. The world just needs more of you out there—more artists and designers and thinkers with the creative vision to lead and help tackle our toughest problems. Hilary Austen’s book Artistry Unleashed also explores the important role of artistic thinking. In it, she points out that artists are especially good problem solvers because they’re used to working with unknowns—and to creating something from nothing. At RISD we live and breathe creativity every day, but Hilary attempts to crystalize and explain what really makes the artist’s mind unique—and why our leaders would benefit from being able to think with the agility of artists. Books like Johansen’s and Austen’s don’t have all the answers or even necessarily the right prescriptions

Follow President Maeda at twitter.com/johnmaeda + our.risd.edu.

to solve all our ills. But I turn to them because they make me think and question assumptions—just as great art does. Of course, adding vision, clarity and agility is only part of the important role artists play in our world. In the US we have a long history of supporting art as a means of cultural diplomacy, something I recently discussed with Trustee Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn 83 TX, who has paintings on display at the US Embassy in Montenegro. Thanks to her, this Wintersession RISD students will work with artist Jim Drain 98 SC on a project for the US Embassy in Rabat, Morocco as part of the State Department’s Art in Embassies program.

“The world just needs more of you out there—more artists and designers and thinkers with the creative vision to lead.” Finally, I want to note that the untimely passing of Steve Jobs has inspired much discussion about how he made technology not only more usable, but also inviting and desirable. Advances in technology have certainly made cars and computers affordable, but what has made them desirable is good design. In a sense, Apple’s well-loved products represent how design, like art, can serve as a positive ambassador for America throughout the world. My hope is that Jobs’ legacy will live on not just in people walking down the street with white earbuds in their ears. I hope it will live on all over the world in the form of increased investment in the arts and design. fall/winter 2011/ 12

Sugary Shoes for Rockport

A pair of colorful candy pumps Sarah Richards 11 AP made from jelly beans, Banana Runts and Licorice Allsorts (above) took top prize in a candy shoe design contest sponsored by Rockport and Dylan’s Candy Bar. The 16 other pairs of shoes made by fellow RISD students were equally fun.

Taping Fleet In October students in a Foundation drawing studio taught by Assistant Professor Lori Esposito used the Fleet Library at RISD as a giant sketchpad in creating fleeting spatial drawings with tape. The goal was to “reinterpret the existing architecture and prioritize informational hierarchies in the library to show how

In September, as the biggest names in the industry convened in New York for Fashion Week, the fanciful candy shoes Apparel Design students created for Rockport stood out at a trendy Manhattan hot spot. The Massachusetts-based comfort-shoe company and Dylan’s Candy Bar invited RISD students to help introduce its fall line by competing in a shoe design competition. Called May Each Step You Take Be Sweet, the contest was co-hosted by Dylan’s founder and CEO Dylan Lauren, daughter of American fashion titan Ralph Lauren. Students designed colorful candy shoes based on one of two new Rockport styles—a women’s pump or a men’s wingtip—using items they selected from the candy store’s over-the-top inventory of 7,000 sweets. Their candy concoctions drew plenty of attention from pedestrians during the month they remained on view in the windows of Dylan’s flagship store on the Upper East Side. Based on pumps made from licorice and jelly beans, Sarah Richards 11 AP won the top prize—a $5,000 stipend from Rockport, a year’s supply of Rockport shoes and a one-year membership to Dylan’s Candy of the Month Club. “I was inspired by the Jazz Age and New York City checker cabs,” says Richards, who carefully built her candy pumps over a two-week span. For Richards, who works as a design assistant for New York fashion label Doo.Ri, Fashion Week was exhilarating. “Our fashion show for Doo.Ri was the

day after the event at Dylan’s,” she says, “and I was an hour late to the event because I was still running around town getting the collection finished. It was incredibly surreal to win the contest and watch the collection go down the runway within the same 24 hours!”

art can affect ordering systems,” Esposito explains.

The US State Department’s Fulbright Program, the country’s most competitive and prestigious merit-based awards for study abroad, has cited RISD as among the specialty schools producing the most Fulbright scholars for the second year in a row. This fall four recent graduates are continuing the RISD tradition of winning Fulbright grants to research individual art and design projects abroad. Reed Duecy-Gibbs MArch 11 is currently studying the role of historic architecture and adaptive reuse in the rapidly expanding city of Istanbul. Fellow Architecture alumnus Athanasiou Geolas BArch 11 is studying in the same region, exploring the architectural manifestations of culture and community that unify Greek cities, and looking at the similarities and differences in how urban and rural communities articulate space. 46

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Misha Kahn 11 FD is studying in Israel this year, where he intends to create and exhibit a small body of work that explores ideas of conceptual duality and synthesis and their relationship to Israeli culture, history and politics. During her year in Rome, Kellie Riggs 11 JM is exploring how traditional jewelry making practices meet contemporary art culture. Before going to Rome, she attended Hello Etsy in Berlin after winning a fellowship to participate in the international summit on small business and sustainability organized by the online marketplace Etsy.

top: photos by Jaime Marland and Rockport

Fulbright Cites RISD Again

Exhibitionists + More Thanks to The All-Nighter, the student news site now in its second year, you can keep tabs on what’s up on campus—and at EHP in Rome—from a distance. Read write-ups by and for students, find out about the RISD Exhibitionists’ First Annual 48-Hour Play Festival (“a mad two-and-a-half-day scramble powered by sheer force of imagination, tenacity and blind faith”) and get weekly posts from students studying in the European Honors Program this fall. For instance, after arriving in August and surviving the sweltering first few weeks, the EHP Crew reported: “It certainly takes time to get acquainted and comfortable (a city so old is something of a no-man’s land, after all), but one by one, it seems we’ve all fallen for Rome.” Sound familiar, anyone?

Critical Success Since it opened at the RISD Museum

Find more student news at all-nighter.com.

in September, Made in the UK: Contemporary Art from the Richard Brown Baker Collection has been creating a stir in and around Providence. It includes great pieces such as these two, Airscape (1961) by Peter Lanyon and Moonlight (1972) by Howard Hodgkin, along with works by Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Bridget Riley and many more—all given to the Museum by Providence native and contemporary art lover and collector Richard Brown Baker (1912–2002). The show

top: photos © Peter Lanyon & © Howard Hodgkin | courtesy Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

continues through January 8.

New Leadership for the RISD Museum This fall John W. Smith assumed leadership of the RISD Museum of Art, stepping into the director’s position after a year-long national search. He came to RISD from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, where he helped expand the Archives’ exhibitions and publications program by undertaking a major project to digitize the collections. “I’ve been a great admirer of Rhode Island School of Design and the City of Providence for

a very long time,” Smith said in an interview with the Providence Journal. He also told the Boston Globe that he looks forward to tapping into the intellectual and creative resources the Museum shares with RISD. “The breadth and quality of [the Museum’s] collections, gifted staff and connection to one of the world’s leading schools of art and design provide limitless opportunities for fresh and innovative programming,” he noted. Prior to his position at the Archives of American Art, Smith served for more than a decade at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, most recently as assistant director for collections, exhibitions and research. Earlier in his career, he also worked as chief archivist at the Art Institute of Chicago, as a visiting archivist at the Royal Opera House in London and as founding curator of special collections and archives at the Chicago Park District.

For more on these and other stories, go to risd.edu/news.

Walking + Working for the Homeless Students in an Interior Architecture studio taught by Professor Liliane Wong took part in a recent walk to help raise funds for the Woonsocket [RI] Family Shelter run by Family Resources Community Action (FRCA). Students are partnering with FRCA this semester to design and build interior elements to serve the needs of families living at the shelter.

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Taming Your Curiosity by Rosanne Somerson 76 ID, Interim Provost

The following excerpts are from the Convocation Address delivered to new students and faculty to mark the start of the academic year in September. In thinking about [this Convocation address] I tried to remember what it was like to be at the beginning of each of my years at RISD. Looking back I’ve come to believe that this environment is one that helps us to find a way to tame curiosity. Why do I say ‘tame’? Most of us artists, designers and scholars are individuals with an abundance of curiosity. I say ‘tame’ because the instincts that incite our work can be quite unruly. An education at RISD is a way to find a way to push that curiosity into the realm of incredible capability with discipline, focus and expansiveness. above: Associate Professor/ Head of Photography Steve Smith says, “I was scouting out a possible photograph. The view made me worry about the environment and the economy.” right: Brooks Hagan, assistant professor of Textiles/Graduate Program Director, wrote: “This fine fellow hit the scene on May 8 and has been my wife’s and my utter absorption—and source of infinite comic pleasure—all summer long.” Both were among the images shown at RISD’s September Convocation ceremony to give incoming students a hint of what faculty had been doing over the summer.

“We generate curiosity by working in realms that are… completely unknown, making things that we haven’t seen before but that only we can…author.” We generate curiosity by working in realms that are in many cases completely unknown, making things that we haven’t seen before but that only we can direct or author. Curiosity unbounded is still just curiosity. Curiosity shaped through the forms of practice becomes an expression, a work of art, an event, a piece of writing, a manifested idea. Manifested ideas beget other ideas. And so the process of iteration and commitment begins. The very act of making is a form of commitment. Before you sits the promise of time that will go so fast that you can’t imagine, but at times will feel painfully (and I mean excruciatingly) slow. It’s time that will forever mark who you are and who you will become. Throughout this unique pattern of velocity, you will be fighting the curiosity driver that teases you as it hides and then reappears and then ducks back out of sight. Somewhere along the way you will find the language and the tools to free the results of your curiosity so that it lives proudly and significantly in the world.

Gerald Immonen, 1936 – 2011 Gerald Immonen, a well-loved professor of Foundation Studies who taught at RISD for 48 years and profoundly influenced the lives of many RISD alumni, died on August 21, 2011 after an extended illness. Gerry was born in Detroit, MI, studied at The Cooper Union in NYC and completed both his BFA and MFA at Yale University. He joined the RISD faculty in 1963 as an instructor of design and was promoted to professor in 1991, after earning the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching the year before. An extraordinary painter, Gerry is best known for his beautiful interpretations of the Maine landscape that he loved so well. His work has been exhibited throughout the US, in Japan, Switzerland and Finland (he was of Finnish descent) and will continue to be celebrated in museum collections such as those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. 48

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The Magic Solitude (2007, watercolor on paper, 6 1/2 x 11 5/16")

Faculty Newsbites The Massachusetts Governor’s Office has appointed Assistant Professor of Architecture Hansy Luz Better to the Division of Capital Asset Management’s Designer Selection Board, the state agency responsible for major public building construction and real

What a Story We Will Tell

top: image by Michelle Mruk 13 IL

by Robert Brinkerhoff , Professor / Head of Illustration

A few months back someone with no ties to art or design asked me about my occupation. “I’m an illustrator,” I told him. “Oh,” he said. Big pause. “So. Oils?” he asked. “Well, sure,” I said. “Oil painting is one way of making illustrations, but that’s like saying a chef is someone who uses a spoon. A chef’s work isn’t about the spoon, right? It’s about the meal. In the same way a chef uses all the tools in a kitchen to create something of significance, an illustrator uses imaging tools to tell stories or communicate ideas.” Illustration as a discipline is defined by intention, not media—and for some reason this confuses people. While many disciplines are identified through materials, tools and techniques, illustrators utilize the media of painters, printmakers, graphic or textile designers, photographers, animators, digital artists—and yet they remain illustrators by virtue of the purposeful application of their work. RISD’s Illustration Department embraces this ambiguity, rejecting classification by materiality. But ambiguity sometimes begs for a bit of clarity. Articulating Illustration’s intellectual profile and identifying common ground among our eclectic range of 75 elective classes is at the core of recent conversations among faculty and students. Although they’re totally diverse, each of these elective experiences equips our students to think, make and contribute to a rapidly changing field. But what binds our broad-based curriculum together? The answer is narrative, in all its nuanced forms. From the most vague inference of story found in the figurative paintings of our sophomore students to the most instructive information graphic or interactive e-book, illustrators communicate concepts through narrative, and this common thread is key

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to understanding the relationships between a still life painting and a children’s book, between a silkscreened poster design and a photographic essay. Increasingly sophisticated media—ranging from all-pervasive internet connectivity to head-spinning interactive technologies—are shattering the artificial boundaries that limited illustrators to the role of “picture makers” in the mid-20th century. More than ever, RISD Illustration students and recent graduates are embracing entrepreneurship, scoffing at the arbitrary disciplinary boundaries of the century in which they were born. They’re contributing bold, commanding voices to a rapidly changing visual culture through their own unique synthesis of digital and traditional media. Given the ongoing changes in the field itself, RISD Illustration is preparing for something significant— a sea change precipitated by President John Maeda’s recent announcement that full renovation of the Illustration Studies Building (set to begin in summer 2012) is RISD’s top fundraising priority, and by related discussions about offering a possible MFA in Illus-

“Increasingly sophisticated media are shattering the artificial boundaries that limited illustrators to the role of ‘picture makers’ in the mid-20th century.” tration with an emphasis on Interactive Narrative— an exciting ideological direction that not only grows out of existing pedagogy, but will invigorate our undergraduate program and the practice of illustration beyond RISD. The profession needs the leadership RISD graduates can provide, and the Illustration Department is prepared to ensure their success by offering innovative pedagogy that embraces emerging technologies. This exquisite constellation of forces holds great promise for all of us at RISD, allowing us to tell a truly memorable story.

For more on faculty and campus developments, go to risd.edu/news.

Liz Collins 91 TX/MFA 99, assistant professor of Textiles, is presenting new iterations of her performance piece Knitting Nation at the ICA in Boston, where she and her army of machine knitters take the stage for Phase 8: Under Construction on November 25. Graphic Design Professor Lucy Hitchcock is participating in the national group exhibition We the Designers: Reframing Political Issues in the Obama Era, which continues through December 15 at Northeastern University’s International Village in Boston. A solo show of paintings by Foundation Studies Professor Thomas Lyon Mills continues through December 23 at the Luise Ross Gallery in NYC. This fall he has been invited to speak at Kansas State University, SUNY Purchase and Parsons. The Wall Still Stands, a solo show of work by Assistant Professor of Foundation Studies Norm Paris, was featured earlier this fall at The Proposition Gallery in NYC. Associate Professor of Sociology Damian White spoke at a colloquium on Design, Politics and Sustainability at the Design History annual conference in Barcelona; he also delivered a paper on the recent work of design theorist Tony Fry. An essay he co-wrote was published in the September issue of the French journal Écologie & Politique. Smart materials and nanotechnology projects by Associate Professor of Interior Architecture Peter Yeadon and his partner Martina Decker (deckeryeadon.com) are on exhibit at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture; the pair also led a smart materials workshop at Cornell earlier this fall.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

why people give to risd

Natural Reciprocity As a st ud e nt,

Jacinda Chew 99

IL used to wonder who the “alumni”

were behind her RISD Alumni Scholarship. A native of Los Angeles, she had applied to all the major art schools, but immediately fell in love with RISD when she visited as a high school senior. “I was so impressed—by the campus itself, by Providence, which I loved, and by the energy of the students,” says Chew, now the art director at Insomniac Games in Burbank, CA. “It was just electric and infectious. RISD was the place that really called me.” A merit scholarship got her through Foundation year, but for the remaining three, she received full funding thanks to an alumni scholarship. After graduating, she says, it only made sense to give back—and to keep it up, even though her very first gift to the RISD Annual Fund was for $20. “I felt the very least I could do is reciprocate and give back, because I got so much out of my RISD experience, and a RISD education is not cheap,” Chew says. “And then, whenever I could, I kept giving from there.” Now, a decade later, her impulse to give—and increase her giving each year—has become both a ritual and a kind of personal challenge. “I wasn’t making much money at all when I started working— but I also didn’t have student loans and for a long time I didn’t have a mortgage, so I just tried to make giving to RISD a priority as best 50

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“I felt the very least I could do is reciprocate and give back, because I got so much out of my RISD experience, and a RISD education is not cheap.” I could each year,” Chew says. By 2003, just four years out of RISD, she had ramped up her annual gift to $1,000 and she’s now giving three times that amount. At Insomniac Games, the maker of blockbuster video games like Ratchet & Clank, Chew has risen through the ranks from being one of a team of environment artists to a senior-level and then lead environment artist. As the company’s art director for the past two years, she is regularly reminded of the value of a RISD education—especially when it comes to reviewing résumés. “Because I do a lot of hiring of artists now, I can really tell the difference between a RISD grad and graduates of other art schools, because the biggest thing they teach you at RISD is how to think,” says Chew. “A lot of students from other art schools are very technique-oriented.

For more about Jacinda’s work, go to insomniacgames.com.

If they don’t already know how to do a certain thing, then they’re stuck.” And conversely, she credits her own RISD experience for giving her the skills and confidence to grow as a team member and leader. “I direct a wide variety of people working in different domains— character modelers, concept artists, environment artists, and so on,” Chew says. “But because I had such a broad and expansive education, I understand perspective. I understand color and anatomy and composition. So I’m able to art direct a really diverse group of creative people. Even though I’m managing, I still see the education RISD gave me as invaluable.” –Francie Latour

President John Maeda joined local leaders Saul Kaplan (to his left), founder/chief catalyst at the Business Innovation Factory (BIF), Congressman Jim Langevin (to his right) and Andrea Castañeda of the Rhode Island Department of Education at this fall’s STEM to STEAM event in Providence.

Big New Goal

top: photo by Scott Indermaur

Full STEAM Ahead Through its STEM to STEAM initiative, RISD continues to advocate for adding art and design to the national agenda for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and research. The idea is that STEM + Art = STEAM—a means of spurring economic progress and innovation. On June 22 RISD hosted a congressional briefing in Washington, DC to recognize the importance of STEAM. The discussion continued at an early fall event in Providence held in cooperation with Congressman Jim Langevin (RI-D). President John Maeda joined Langevin, Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, and a host of local civic and business leaders in speaking about the importance of pushing for STEAM, especially in light of the current economy. Langevin kicked things off by speaking about his work in Washington to educate colleagues about STEAM and to introduce a House resolution (H.RES. 319) that, if heard and passed, would create a STEM to STEAM council to encourage collaboration among Federal agencies that oversee STEM education. “America has real potential to gain from this discussion. It could be transformative for Rhode Island and the country,” he noted. Maeda spoke about the enduring power of art, and its ability to transform individuals as well as societies. Through tools such as data visualization and modeling, artists and designers are already working to help make

science, technology, health and other complex issues more understandable. By injecting art into the innovation dialogue STEAM will help the country stay competitive in the 21st century, he noted. Associate Professor of Industrial Design Charlie Cannon presented some of the STEAM research already taking place at RISD and its importance for producing new forms of knowledge. For example, through an EPSCoR grant from the National Science Foundation, RISD is working with Brown, the University of Rhode Island and nine other schools throughout the state to look at marine impacts of climate change and develop visual techniques and communication strategies for scientists to share their findings with a broader audience. Stephen Lane 85 ID, CEO of Ximedica, spoke about his medical device company’s grounding in fine art and design, and noted that although STEM technologies enable their work, design is the driver. As he brought the event to a conclusion, Maeda noted the similarities between studio-based education and project-based learning, along with the contributions of art and design to every field—from stem cell research and health care to entrepreneurship and education. “Rhode Island is a leader in this area of integrating art and design into its economy,” Maeda noted. “It’s time for this message to be heard both locally –Susan Curran and nationally.”

For more information and to support H.RES.319, go to stemtosteam.org.

Every year the RISD Annual Fund asks alumni to give back to the school to help current students get an education that will serve them extraordinarily well for life. You’ve probably received at least one RAF solicitation in the mail by now, along with email reminders and phone calls from students. That’s because the Annual Fund is working to raise as much as possible by the close of RISD’s fiscal year on June 30, 2012. With tuition now just shy of $40,000 a year, you may wonder why RISD and just about every other college out there needs to rely on gifts to the Annual Fund. The answer is simple: RISD takes in less in tuition income than it spends in supplying studios, maintaining equipment, paying salaries and doing everything else it needs to do to keep a college of this caliber operating effectively. All gifts to the Annual Fund are welcome at www.risd.edu/give.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

sketches, doodles, ideas in progress

Christian DeFilippo 02 PT

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Christian often likes to make his own sketchbooks—something he learned how to do in a bookbinding class at RISD. But since he “never got the hang of putting

on a cover,” his bindings are exposed on the spine. That actually works out great given that he often loads his sketchbooks with plenty of stuff besides marks on paper. “If I really overload the book,

there’s a little more room for it to give,” he says in Drawn In, a great new book featuring this sketchbook and dozens of others.

Images courtesy of Julia Rothman 02 IL and Quarry Books

Please submit a page from your own sketchbook (showing anything thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on your mind). Our favorite will appear in the next issue. Questions? Email risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

a blast from the past

Books of the Year If you’ve attended school in the Western hemisphere, chances are you have at least one yearbook stashed away somewhere—from high school or college days. At RISD the yearbook tradition started in 1949, when the graduating class produced the very first edition of Portfolio. The seniors who created that classic 62 years ago noted that the book was designed to “present [RISD students] through photographs and drawings, at work and at play.” With a prescience that shows the natural genesis of RISD’s current STEM to STEAM efforts (see page 51), they also urged readers to “keep in mind that [the RISD students presented in the book] are the artists, designers, engineers and scientists of the future.” Sounds like further confirmation that science has always been a natural component of the art and design formula at RISD.

from Portfolio 1949, edited by

vintage yearbooks courtesy of Alumni Relations + the RISD Archives

Jesse Edenbaum 49 TC

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from Portfolio 2001

from Portfolio 1969, co-edited by George Lorenz 69 GD + Ray Machura 69 GD

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

a lifechanging art + design experience p r e - co l l eg e p ro g ram june 23 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; august 4, 2012

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

risd.edu/precollege fall/winter 2011/ 12

undergraduate class notes

3 million +

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg MFA 80 SC

# of books by David Macaulay BArch 69 sold in the US alone

# of RISD Caldecott Medal + Honor wins

most popular RISD picture book on Amazon

Nathaniel Coleman BArch 84 Effie Minzel 76 TX

(UK)

Peter Bakelaar 83 IL

(Seattle)

(Japan)

Christine Koch 88 IL (Florida)

Sarah (Berg) Bergman 06 SC (Shanghai, China)

Kellie Riggs 11 JM (Italy)

Jennifer Comar 91 AP

Ricker Winsor 77 PH/MFA 78

(Australia)

(Trinidad + Tobago)

Caroline Saenger 01 PR (Ecuador)

growth in book sales in the US between 2008 + 2010

world’s leading publisher of books (according to UNESCO)

13.6%

percentage of the Adult Fiction market represented by e-books

145,000 938,218 130 million

450 million

# of books in the collection at the Fleet Library at RISD

estimated # of books sold in the Harry Potter series

# of new book titles published worldwide this year (UNESCO estimate)

total # of book titles published in modern history (Google’s estimate)

relative references to various majors in this round of class notes

Arch

FAV

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Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

AE AP Arch CR DM FAV FD GD GL IA

JM LA PH PT PR SC TX

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

+ 4.1%

United Kingdom

Phyllis Goodblatt AE

Ruth Adler Schnee 45 IA Ruth Adler Schnee: A Passion for Color was on view last summer at the Museum of Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice, in conjunction with the 54th Venice Biennale. Now based in Southfield, MI, Ruth has devoted her celebrated career in textile design to the search for and creation of good form, textures and color combinations. Ronit Eisenbach BArch 86 (Takoma Park, MD) and Caterina Frisone curated A Passion for Color, which was complemented by a documentary film directed by Terri Sarris and co-produced by Ronit.

1943 Enamel work by Kay Whitcomb JM (Rockport, MA) is included in San Diego’s Craft Revolution: From PostWar Modern to California Design, an exhibition on view through April 15, 2012 at the Plaza and Theater Galleries in Balboa Park, San Diego. One of her enamels is in the permanent collection of the RISD Museum of Art.

1947 An exhibition of prints by Sid Chafetz IL (Columbus, OH) was on view from July to September at the Columbus [OH] Museum of Art. The show featured selections from the range of his favorite topics,

from politics and academia to personal biography. Sid is professor emeritus at Ohio State University; most of his print work is now in the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum.

1959 Suzanne Packer GD* (South Yarmouth, MA; suzanne mpacker.com) showed still life oil paintings last summer at Gallery 333 in North Falmouth, MA.

1960 Elliott Barowitz PT (NYC)

exhibited mixed-media works last winter in a two-person show at Cultuurcentrum De Spil in Roeselare, Belgium.

(Apopka, FL) was honored as the Orlando [FL] Museum of Art volunteer of the year for 2011. Since 2002 she has been a docent in the museum’s Education Department and a member of the board of directors of the volunteer council. She also teaches workshops and works as an instructor for various art camps.

1962 50th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

For more than four decades, Michael Manoogian GD

(michaelmanoogian.com) has been creating logos for highprofile clients including Tom Cruise, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Superbowls. “I want to make each logo a jewel,” he says, “a handcrafted, polished, singular gem.” Check out recent interviews with the designer (who’s based in North Hollywood, CA) at somuchpileup.blogspot.com and at towncrier.us.

are part of the Ella V. Bowering Collection, a fascinating group of “curios”—toys, ornaments and travel souvenirs—found all over the world by and for Judith’s mother. “In 2001, while serving as president of the Chinese Culture Connection (a nonprofit educational organization), I initiated a free exhibits program promoting Chinese culture for public libraries,” Judith explains. “Using items inherited from my mother and my own ‘treasures,’ I have presented numerous exhibits throughout New England. Anyone who knew me at the time of my studies at RISD will not be surprised that I have pursued my passion for sequential images and for all things Chinese.”

Carlene (Bausch) Moscatt PT and her husband Paul Moscatt (Baltimore, MD) were two of the landscape painters who captured Baltimore’s Cylburn Arboretum in the 2011 Celebration of Art at Cylburn. Artists were invited to paint aspects of the newly reopened facility for a benefit exhibition and sale held in June.

Robert Cronin 59 PT Recent paintings by Robert were on view earlier this fall at Gunn Memorial Library in Washington, CT, near where he lives in Falls Village. He has recently updated his website (robertcroninart. com) with new paintings and works on paper.

1963 Last summer Judith Funkhouser IL (Waban, MA) installed an exhibition of Chinese puppets in the Fleet Library at RISD. The puppets

Don Almquist 51 IL Sunrise Sentinel (watercolor, 28.5 x 32.5") is one of the works exhibited in New Paintings, a solo show held last spring at Carspecken Scott Gallery in Wilmington, DE. Don worked as a painter and graphic artist throughout his career—including as a creative director at Ahlen & Akerlund in Stockholm, Sweden—and now lives in New Castle, DE with his Swedish wife Kerstin.

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

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of collage and assemblage work by 12 artists, including Ann P. Smith 03 IL. Next spring she’ll host a solo show of work by children’s book illustrator Steven Kellogg 63 IL (see below).

1963 continued Dana Newbrook BArch was the proud winner of the inaugural Awesome Alumni Award, created by Nat Hesse 76 SC, former president of the Alumni Council, and presented at the Council’s annual meeting in June. The honor recognizes Dana’s record of volunteer service to RISD: he is a long-

Elissa (Scott) Della-Piana PT opened the fall season of Gallery Della-Piana in Wenham, MA with Pieces, a group show

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time member and past president of the Alumni Council, an honorary RISD trustee and a warm and caring mentor to many alumni and students.

1964

American Classic When Steven Kellogg 63 IL was at RISD in the psychedelic ’60s, he couldn’t have guessed that half a century later he would be one of the most prolific and well-loved RISD grads involved in publishing. Since illustrating his first children’s book in 1967, he has published more than 90 picture books and written a third of them himself—books such as The Island of the Skog, the Pinkerton (the dog) series, American tall tales (Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed) and classic stories (Chicken Little and The Three Pigs). Parents are now reading some of the same favorites to their kids that their parents read to them. When he was at RISD, Kellogg was also among the first wave of students to participate in the European Honors Program in Rome— an experience that he credits as a major influence on his development as an artist. Last fall when the EHP celebrated its 50th anniversary, he participated in a panel discussion at RISD about the future of the book. Despite the rapid upsurge in e-readers and ongoing changes in technology, Kellogg told the audience that he believes in co-existence. “The book is a perfect technology—it has qualities that new technology cannot duplicate,” he pointed out. “It is also the perfect introduction to so many art forms.” In addition to nurturing an appreciation of art and language, picture books are very dramatic and theatrical: “With every turn of the page, kids are making associations and predictions.”

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For more, go to stevenkellogg.com.

Sherrill Hunnibell AE (see

Recent work by Nancy Silvia PT includes a series of paintings inspired by the landscape of Abiquiu, near her home in New Mexico. She also writes: “Hiroshi Murata 64 PT and I were sweethearts in Rome on the EHP in ’63-64. We have been married 47 years today [8.29.11]. Our two daughters Aya and Yuki both attended RISD summer school, and Yuki [Murata] MID 02 earned a master’s degree from RISD. Our nephew Takeshi Murata FAV and his wife Francine Spiegel PT both graduated in 1997. They are dedicated artists living in Saugerties, NY, with a new baby daughter (destined to attend RISD?). Keeping it all in the family!” Pat White IL (Cambridge, MA) and Wendy Gonick 88 IL (Arlington, MA) participated in Cambridge [MA] Open Studios in May. Both artists showed a variety of work including collage and mixed-media pieces.

Steven Kellogg 63 IL Kellogg’s ability to tell stories and express feelings through his art is widely celebrated. “I hope that an association with my books encourages children to appreciate reading and the visual arts throughout their lives,” he says of his life’s work. Like any author who visits classrooms on a regular basis, Kellogg says that kids always ask him if being a children’s book illustrator is a quick way to get rich. While it’s a question that no longer puzzles him, he still finds it mildly distracting. So this is what he says: “I am lucky because I have a job I love and I make just enough money to make my life happy.” Then he adds this: “I’m glad I don’t make too much.”

far left: photo by Adam David Kissick

Judy Kensley McKie 66 PT Judy’s work is featured in Furniture with Soul: Master Woodworkers and Their Craft (2011, Kodansha International), a new book by David Savage. He notes that the artist, who works out of her studio in Cambridge, MA, is “one of the most inventive and expressive of contemporary furniture makers.”

Earlier this fall work by Eric Engstrom IL (Fairfax, CA) was featured in a solo show at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station, CA. He also showed artwork in several group exhibitions last spring and summer, including the Altered Book Show and Silent Auction benefiting the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, CA; the Marin Arts Council Annual Members Show in San Rafael, CA; the Annual Members Show and THE BOX SHOW, both at Gallery Route One; and the Art for AIDS Art Auction at San Francisco Design Center. One of his pieces was published in the May 2011 issue of Marin Magazine.

Stuart Murphy IL (see page 9)

1965 Wendy Hertz Caputo AP

(Riverside, RI) wrote in to share a delightful shock: “Can you imagine my surprise when a friend and I viewed the [summer 2011] Cocktail Culture exhibit at the RISD Museum of Art, only to find an ensemble I designed on display! I was aware that my harem pant ensemble, #120 in the catalogue, was placed in the museum’s Costume and Textiles archive back in June of 1965. What a thrill to see it on exhibit with the likes of my idols— Balenciaga, Dior, and Chanel.” Following a career in architecture and architectural photography, Andrew Kramer BArch is now retired and pursuing fine art painting. His work has been shown in galleries in Park City and St. George, UT. He lives in a desert community outside St. George, surrounded by a spectacular landscape that provides inspiration for his painting. Rick Shnitzler AR* (Philadelphia) is the co-founder of TailLight Diplomacy, a nonprofit advisory group that promotes cultural exchange between the US and Cuba via interest in vintage cars. The group recently donated its archives of 29,000 documents to the National Automotive History Collection in the Detroit Public Library system. Rick notes that Cuba is home to the world’s largest vintage Detroit car fleet, with an estimated 30,000-plus vehicles manufactured in Detroit in the mid 20th century.

1966 Marji Greenhut CR has a

sculpture and photo studio/ gallery open by appointment in Brunswick, ME, and her work was on view in August in the Brunswick Outdoor Art Show. She plans to volunteer with nonprofits in Nepal next March and April, leading art activities and English lessons for young students, as she has done in previous years. “I started with kindergarten at a very poor government school,” she explains. “They never had art materials at school or at home. I gave them crayons and paper to draw for the first time.

1967

process behind one of her new pieces: “I recently completed a self-portrait in thread on layered fabric. Cutting freely into the fabric and omitting preliminary studies on paper, I used a full-length mirror from which to draw directly with scissors and machine. In full-scale, I show myself from the hip up at my cutting table.”

45th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

1968

No one’s work had ever been hung up so I made a rope and clothespin system going around the room to hang art, writing and math…. I plan to go back in March for 6 weeks. I am buying all kinds of paper and crayons and colored pencils at yard sales to take back.”

Moments of Grace, a solo show of photographic portraits by Ben Larrabee PH (Darien, CT), was on view in October at The Gallery at Still River Editions in Danbury, CT. Mary Curtis Ratcliff AE had work in several exhibitions last spring and summer, including Flow Patterns at The Atrium in San Francisco, Of Water at Bay Model in Sausalito, CA, Natural Vision/Dreams and Apparitions at Mythos Fine Arts and Artifacts in Berkeley, CA (where she lives) and Mercury Rising at Mercury 20 Gallery in Oakland, CA.

In 1994 Teresa Metcalf PT* (NYC) produced Living Under The Cloud: Chernobyl Today, an award-winning documentary about the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. The film, which is newly relevant in light of the recent disaster in Japan, is available through Bullfrog Films.

1969

1971

In August Jack Dickerson GD celebrated the one-year anniversary of his Dickerson Gallery in Brewster, MA with a new exhibition of marine-life paintings and a reception.

Carol (Doebrich) Dragon TX/

Last spring John Dilg PT (Iowa City, IA) had a solo show titled Primitive Pets at Luise Ross Gallery in New York City.

1970 David Hansen PT* resumed

his alter identity—Sport Fisher of the legendary Providence band The Young Adults—for a one-night-stand reunion in May. The stars of Jim Wolpaw’s cult film (It’s a) Complex World performed at The Met, playing together for the first (and last) time in 25 years.

MAT 74 (NYC; caroldragon.com) is featured in 100 New York Photographers (2009, Schiffer Publishing) by Cynthia Dantzic. Her work has been included in a number of recent exhibitions, including Capture Brooklyn at the New York Photo Festival.

1972 40th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

1973 Doris Ettlinger IL (doris ettlinger.com) has illustrated over 30 picture books; her latest is A Book for Black-eyed Susan by Judy Young (Sleeping Bear Press). She lives and works in a 150-year-old gristmill on the banks of the Musconetcong River in western New Jersey.

Deidre Scherer AE (Williamsville, VT) received an honorable mention for her fabric-andthread piece Buddha on Silk in the 2011 Regional Juror’s Choice Exhibition at Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery in Keene, NH. Her piece Huddle was included in A Stitch in Jewish Time, a group exhibition shown in September at Vered Gallery in East Hampton, NY, and in July she participated in open studios as part of the Rock River Artists Tour. Deidre explains the

Susan Neighbors 73 IL Last summer Susan earned an honorable mention for It Could Have Been Worse (acrylic on canvas with hex bolt and steel wool, 7 x 5"), a piece she entered in the Nuts & Bolts Creative Challenge sponsored by the Friends of Franklin Park Arts Center and Nichols Hardware in Purcellville, VA (near her home in Potomac Falls). Artists had to use at least one item from a grab bag of hardware in creating their entry. In her artist’s statement, Susan wrote: “In 2002 I had a disc replaced in my neck. The surgeon used a metal plate and two screws. Today, the hardware I carry inside is just another part of my body. I guess it could have been worse.”

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

1973 continued Last spring Henry Isaacs PT (Sharon, VT) was an artist in residence at the 2011 Kennebunkport [ME] Festival; he showed new paintings in June and July at the town’s Maine Art Gallery. Richard Kattman BLA (Hol-

liston, MA) exhibited Recent Paintings in September at Fountain Street Fine Art in Framingham, MA.

1974 Candy Barr PT/MAT 75 (Warren, VT) invited the public to view her landscape and figure paintings during her annual open studio in August.

Last January Jamie Dalglish FAV (morphoglyph.com) exhibited work at Broadway Gallery, NYC in The International Artists at Home and Abroad Exhibition Series. He also wrote to let us know that he’s the proud grandfather of Clara Jean, born to his son Max and daughter-in-law Elmira on March 27, 2011, the 73rd anniversary of his parents’ wedding. Gary Rein ID (NYC) is the

founder of TECH-Naissance Inc., a product development company that “utilizes our IP to bring innovative consumer products to market, such as denturevault.com and bumper guard.org,” he writes. “This

Pia MacKenzie PT 74 Pia showed work such as this oil on canvas painting in two exhibitions in August: Pia the Painter: 38 Works from 38 Years, a “mini-retrospective” at Snow Library, and Paintings & Collages, a two-person show at OMA Gallery. Both venues are in Orleans, MA, where she lives.

follows a 27-year career in the point of sale industry, and an eight-year career as a landmark townhouse developer in New York. My middle daughter Chloe Rein 09 IA follows in her father’s footsteps, and is working in California for one of Apple’s agencies.”

1975 In June paintings by Ed Giordano SC were featured at LK Studio in NYC, where he lives. Landscape Elements LLC, the landscape architecture firm run by Elena Pascarella BLA (Pawcatuck, CT), earned a 2011 Connecticut Main Street Award of Excellence for its design of gateways for the historic waterfront district in New London, CT. The five

Kathleen Kolb 76 IL above: Long Shadow, May Morning was one of several works shown by Kathleen (Lincoln, VT; kathleenkolb.com) in recent exhibitions at Sanford Smith Fine Art in Great Barrington, MA, Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, VT and Shelburne [VT] Farms.

gateways, which combine landscaping with signs, define and “brand” the National Historic Register District. Cynthia Scott SC and Les Colonello were married in November 2010 at her parents’

Judith “Effie” (Wilbour Nelson) Minzel 76 TX Clarion Call (1978, hand-dyed wool on cotton warp kilim tapestry, 5 x 8'), a tapestry Judith created as part of her master’s thesis at Cranbrook, was recently acquired by the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. After being accepted into the Marietta [OH] College Crafts National, the piece had been bought by a collector and Judith hadn’t seen it for 33 years. Last spring the Seattle-based artist was delighted to be reunited with it at the Renwick, where it’s now on display before entering the museum’s revolving collection.

home in Fairhope, AL, which has been in the family since her great-grandparents lived there. Last spring she had a solo show of sculpture, drawings, video and installation at Home Space gallery in New Orleans. She

showed at Antenna gallery in August, and more of her work will be on view this fall at Staple Goods gallery, where she is a member of the artist collective, and in a show that she cocurated at Home Goods gallery (all galleries are in New Orleans).

Peter Hanks 74 IL

Film director Gus Van Sant FAV and his friend, actor James Franco MFA 12 DM, taught a Summer School master class series at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, NY, in conjunction with their show at the museum.

Morning Moorings, one of Peter’s graphite-on-paper drawings, is featured in the new book Strokes of Genius 3—The Best of Drawing (November 2011, North Light Books). Peter is based in Easton, MD.

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Laurie Harden 76 IL Last spring Laurie (laurieharden-us.com) and photographer Pam Hasegawa joined forces for Around the World in 80 Pictures, a two-part exhibition at Design Domaine Gallery in Bernardsville, NJ featuring “paintings and photographs from the far reaches of the world,” she writes. Laurie also exhibited paintings in the 2011 Members’ Show at the Salmagundie Club in NYC and in the Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council’s Skylands Art Show in Newton, NJ. Her pastels were included in the Pastel Society of New Jersey’s winter and spring exhibitions.

Laurie Rosenwald PT (NYC) created an animated promotional short for PICA 2011: BEYOND: the un-convention, a spring conference of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. She also served as MC for the event, which was held in beautiful Banff, Alberta. Ricker Winsor PH/MFA 78 has

The Summer School venture also featured presentations by Ryan Trecartin 04 FAV and RISD Digital + Media critic Francisco J. Ricardo.

1976 A solo show of paintings by Susan George PT (Houston; susangeorgeart.com) opened at Houston’s Harris Gallery on October 22. Nat Hesse SC was profiled

in the May 2011 issue of THE, the arts magazine in his hometown of Santa Fe. The spread showed Nat at work in his sculpture studio and summarized his philosophy as an artist. In addition to writing for RISD XYZ, handling PR for Gallery Night Providence and organizing shows for Bank RI’s three galleries, Paula Martiesian PT makes paintings in her Providence studio. Check out her work at paulamartiesian.com. Spagnola and Associates, the NYC visual communications firm owned by Anthony Spagnola GD (Brooklyn),

recently completed three projects for Yale University: a graphics program for the school’s hockey rink and informative exhibitions for the Visitor Center and International Room at Sterling Library.

1977 35th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

entitled Infinite Obsessions at Barry Friedman Ltd. in New York City. He was also featured in the summer 2011 issue of Urban Glass Quarterly; the article focused on his elaborate surface work and compositions that “evoke the natural world, through fractals and Fibonacci, tiny biological structures and galactic spirals.”

left Bradford, VT for Trinidad and Tobago, where he is teaching studio art at the International School of Port of Spain. He expects to stay in the position at least two years.

1978 Karten Design (formerly SKD; see the new website at kartendesign.com), the design firm founded by Stuart Karten ID (Marina Del Rey, CA), won

two 2011 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA): a silver for the Hearing Aid User Experience research project, and a bronze for the Zen Cordless Prophy professional dental device. The firm has partnered with Dr. Leslie Saxon at the USC Center for Body Computing to explore wireless innovation in the healthcare industry. Salley Mavor IL (see page 11)

1979 Kathryn Dethier BArch

recently edited the book Sustainability in Interior Design for Laurence King Publishing, London. She is a professor and chair of the Design Department at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.

Moon/Flower Climb, a 14-foot installation that Karen Rand Anderson CR (Providence; karenrandanderson.com) created from birch saplings, grapevine, beach stones, moonflowers and copper, was on view last summer at Mystic [CT] Arts Center. She also showed work in Nature Nourishes, a group exhibition held in August at ArtSpace Hartford [CT]. Deborah Gavel IL (Albuquerque, NM) showed a piece entitled OMG OMG in the show of RISD alumni work held at Scripps Fine Art in Santa Fe (see page 39).

Last summer Michael Glancy SC/MFA 80 GL (Rehoboth, MA) had a solo show of glass work

Tom Faulkner 78 PH In August and September Tom exhibited photographs from his series The Shoreline and This Tall in a solo show at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. The Shoreline “consists of color photographs, taken over a one-year period, of a diverse group visiting a boat rental [facility] outside of Baltimore, MD,” he says, while This Tall “depicts preadolescent children and the awkwardness of this stage in their maturation.” The Maryland-based photographer is currently working on “large images of tent caterpillars and pencil-like drawings of their webs.”

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Michelle Voda Eckhart

86 TX left: Michelle’s mosaic Early Spring in the Peach Orchard earned the Best of Representational award in the 2011 National Mosaic Exhibition in Falmouth, MA. She and her husband Jan Eckhart (who managed “the infamous Taproom in the ’80s,” she notes) own Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown, RI (Sweet BerryFarmRI.com).

juror’s award in the Beeline Exhibition at the Fifth International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA and was on view last summer at the town’s Kobalt Gallery.

Claudia Flynn 84 SC left: Last spring Claudia’s work was featured in Sculptures and Paintings, a solo show at the Galerie Vidourle Prix in Sauve, France. She lives in South Kingstown, RI.

at Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, MA. She lives in Ashland, MA.

1979 continued Francesca Woodman, the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the brief but remarkable career of the late Francesca Woodman PH, is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from November 5, 2011 to February 20, 2012.

1980 Three pieces by Laraine Armenti PR (larainearmenti.

com) were included in Off the Wall and Community of Artists, concurrent summer shows held

Peter Bakelaar 83 IL Peter, who lives and works in Nagoya, Japan, assisted in relief efforts in Kamaishi, one of the areas hardest hit by the quake and tsunami that hit Japan in March.

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Work by T Barny SC (Healdsburg, CA) is on view through November 20 at Broadhurst Gallery in Pinehurst, NC. He celebrated 30 years of sculpture with a spring show at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT, and in September he offered 9/10/11=T30, another 30-year celebration featuring food, music and an auction benefiting Alliance Medical Center. Linda R. Fraser SC (Footscray, Australia) has a series of videos on YouTube that focus on various glass sculpture techniques. William Jacobs BArch/MID 80

(see page 11)

For the third year in a row, Bonny Katzman GD (Boston; BKinvitesU.com) has won the ISES Esprit Award from the International Special Events Society in the category of best marketing/graphic design under $25K. Her elaborate invitation to a Parisian salon weekend at Sunglow Ranch in Arizona involved laser-cut wood and 3D inspirational icons. Philip Mitropoulos BArch

recently relocated his architectural practice from Manhattan, where he had been based since 1985, to Douglaston, Queens—where he “hopes all of his practice will finally pay off.”

1981 Marybeth Farrell Rothman IL

(Tenafly, NJ; marybethrothman. com) is showing encaustic and mixed-media work in Ripped: The Allure of Collage, a group exhibition continuing through January 12 at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, NY. Her Self Portrait was selected for the

1982 30th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

Karen Capobianco 84 SC March Flood is one of three of Karen’s photographs about global warming included in Hudson Valley Artists 2011: Exercises in Unnecessary Beauty, a group show that runs through November at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz, the town where she lives.

For the past two decades Ricky Boscarino JM

(Sandyston, NJ) has presided over Luna Parc (lunaparc.com), a private sculpture park and museum situated on five acres in the northwestern woods of New Jersey. The “perpetual work-in-progress”—a “fanciful and phantasmagoric house”— serves as Ricky’s home and

studio, where he creates jewelry, miniatures, stained glass and pottery. In August Luna Parc was featured on the MTV show Exteme Cribs; it has also been shown several times on HGTV. Ricky opened the house to the public at the end of October for his twice-yearly event.

Ana Flores 79 PT An interview with Ana (Wood River Junction, RI; earthinform.com) is included in the book Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora, and her work was featured in two recent related exhibitions, both at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in Pueblo, CO. Ana and Cynthia Whalen Nelson 87 IL (Narragansett, RI) exhibited together in Spirit of the Land, a show held last spring at the Courthouse Center for the Arts in West Kingston, RI. Additionally, after contributing an essay to the series This I Believe on RI’s public radio station, Ana was featured in the short film This I Believe REVEALED, which was screened in Newport, RI in May. She also participated in Poetry in the Wild, a project in Connecticut that pairs artists with poets for collaborative pieces.

Bernhard Hildebrandt PT

(Baltimore, MD) showed photographic work—prints of images taken from a TSA body scanner—in the spring show Corridor at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC.

1985 Cynthia Lahti IL (cynthialahti.

Recent paintings by Madeleine Pydych Hopkins 82 IL (Moody, ME) are included in Women Artists in Maine, which continues through December 31

Steven Rosen 81 IL On the first day that same-sex marriages were legal in New York, Steven (Brooklyn; stevenrosenphotography.com) photographed six weddings— “I think that’s some kind of record,” he says. His portraits of NYC club-goers—like the one shown here—were featured in the September 2011 issue of Shutterbug magazine.

at the Thos. Moser Fine Wood Furniture flagship store in Freeport, ME.

1983 Lani Kennefick PT (Brooklyn) is featured in The Chromatic Journey, a two-person show that runs December 8-31 at Dib Gallery in New York City.

Stained glass by Judith Schaechter GL (Philadelphia) is featured in Glasstress, an international exhibition that continues through November 27 at the Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti in Venice, Italy in

conjunction with the Venice Biennale. She and furniture artist Matthias Pliessnig 03 FD were also two of the four artists selected for the recent 2011 craft invitational at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.

1984 Explosive art by Gudjon Bjarnason BArch (Reykjavik, Iceland and NYC) was on view last summer in DySTOPic ProgressiONs, a show at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio, TX that was part of the center’s Icelandic Cultural Exchange. He creates sculpture by blowing up metal tubing in carefully planned explosions; his exhibitions include photographs and films of the explosions. Nathaniel Coleman BArch

edited Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia, which was

Trine Bumiller 81 PR Floodplain is among the work Trine (Denver, CO) showed in Slipstream: New Paintings, a show held early this fall at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in NYC.

published last June by Peter Lang. The collection includes essays that “explore divergent manifestations of the play of utopia on architectural imagination, ranging from the early Renaissance to the present day,” he explains. In October he presented a master class, roundtable discussion and public lecture related to the book at the 36th Annual Meeting of The Society for Utopian Studies hosted by Penn State University. Nathaniel completed his PhD in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and is currently a senior lecturer at Newcastle University in the UK.

blogspot.com) exhibited recent sculptures and drawings in NURSE, a solo show held in September at PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, OR, where she lives. Plazm magazine (issue #30, fall 2011) featured an article about her sculpture entitled Born Again. Poulin + Morris, the New York design firm where Douglas Morris GD is a principal, recently completed environmental graphics programs for MSG Media’s corporate offices in Manhattan and New York Law School, as well as a new website for the real estate investment and development firm J.J. Gumberg Co.

1986 Nan (Parson) Rossiter IL

(see page 9) The Sacrificial Universe, a three-volume set of drawings and writings by David Chaim Smith PT (Brooklyn; david chaimsmith.com), will be published by Fulgur Press (London) in 2012. His last book, The Kabbalistic Mirror of Genesis, was released last year by Daat Press in Glasgow, Scotland.

Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn

83 TX Working with designer Deidre Tanton 83 GD, Lisa recently created an extensive new website (lisapevaroff.com) to showcase her paintings, drawings, photography and a new line of jewelry, which is also available at risd|works. In addition to making gemstone jewelry, she loves working in encaustic—as in this painting, Africa 1 (18 x 18")— because the “hot wax combined with pigment creates a spiritual dream-like effect, reminiscent of a hologram.” As an active member RISD’s Board of Trustees, Lisa is also a strong proponent of the transformative power of art and design, and supports scholarship fundraising efforts.

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Brent Cardillo 89 IL Brent (Elmwood Park, IL) created the illustrations for Alice in Zombieland (2011, Sourcebooks), a “darkly humorous mash-up of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland with—you guessed it—zombies,” he writes. “I created original pen and ink illustrations which I combined in Photoshop with scans of Sir John Tenniel’s wellknown work.” Brent is creative director for new product development at Publications International, “where I design electronic children’s sound books. These are the licensed sound books (a.k.a. ‘noisy books’) that delight children and annoy parents everywhere.”

1987 25th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012 Trine Giaever IL (Piermont,

NY) exhibited work in three juried shows last spring: the 6inch Squared Exhibition at Randy Higbee Gallery in Costa Mesa, CA; an exhibition at A.R.T.S Gallery in Croton Falls, NY; and Art in the Country at Easton [CT] Public Library. She also participated in a show and sale at Rockland Center for the Arts in Nyack, NY to benefit VCS Gay Pride Rockland. Work by Farsad Labbauf BID (Jersey City, NJ) was featured in several shows last summer, including In Portrait at Blank Space in NYC, Heroes & Villains at Lawrie Shabibi Gallery in Dubai, UAE, and Summer in the City at Amstel Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets (psks.org), the nonprofit co-founded by Elaine Simons JM (Redmond,

WA), is the focus of an essay in the new book Emancipatory Practices: Youth/Adult Engagement for Social And Environmental Justice (2010, Sense Publishers). Simons runs PSKS as a support organization for homeless youths in the Seattle area.

1988 Michael Coughlan PT and

Sheila Buchanan were married on October 2, 2010 in Beverly Farms, MA. They live in New York City. Jeff Grantz ID (Boston;

materials-methods.com), principal of Materials & Methods, was co-producer for “a digital media, light and projection festival in May in New York City in which we shut down nearly three square blocks of SoHo and had a good

Scott Briggs BArch 87 As senior associate for museum services with LHSA+DP (skolnick. com), Scott served as project manager and lead designer for environmental graphics and interior design of the new Children’s Library Discovery Center at Queens Library in Jamaica, NY. The sciencethemed addition to the library incorporates interactive museum exhibits developed in conjunction with San Francisco’s Exploratorium, the New York Hall of Science and Brooklyn Children’s Museum. “We created colorful, iconic imagery to inspire young readers by illuminating ideas about scientific discovery,” Scott notes.

25,000 people in attendance.” Hisham Bharoocha PH

(Brooklyn) was one of the artists involved in the festival. Christine Koch IL (Bradenton, FL; booststudio.com) writes: “In the last year, I became engaged to a fellow graphic designer, sold two houses, bought one house, moved from Massachusetts to Florida, and began a new design studio with my fiance, Steve Boris. Boost is a full-service branding and design studio recently chosen as the design agency for the most revered cultural institution in Sarasota, the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. Our clients can be found around the world, covering multiple

Eric White 90 IL Eric’s solo painting exhibition Automatic was on view earlier this fall at Antonio Colombo Arte Contemporanea in Milan, Italy. He’s based in Brooklyn (ewhite.com).

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Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

sectors from technology to education to culture. We want to catch our breath before setting a wedding date.” Jimmy Moss GD recently

earned tenure as an associate professor of art at California State University, Los Angeles. He also serves as president of the LA chapter of AIGA. Denis Letourneau Paul AR

(formerly Paul Denis Letourneau) of San Francisco writes: “In 2008 I got a Masters of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry, the Unitarian Universalist seminary in the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley, CA. My first introduction to Unitarian Universalism was through Frank Lloyd Wright, whose uncle was an early mover and shaker in the two different churches ….I work in an organization called the Faithful Fools Street Ministry, and am constantly amazed by how much my BFA and MDiv inform one another…. For starters, I build sermons the

way I built houses, and the art and architecture I do now (though entirely for myself) are about spiritual reflection and renewal.” Last spring John Ruggieri PT* had an exhibition of abstract landscape photographs at Addo Novo in Boston, where he lives.

1989 Karen Gelardi PT (South Portland, ME) worked alongside fellow artist Meghan Brady on Constructions, a print project at Wingate Studio funded in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission. Each artist created an etching that explores geometric forms; Karen produced Saco Bog, a soft ground etching with sugar lift and aquatint, in an edition of 20.

In last summer’s Glass Ceiling, the fifth solo show Jill Greenberg PH (Beverly Hills, CA) has had at ClampArt in NYC, she revisited her interest in feminist art by photographing female athletes and dancers underwater swimming towards the surface wearing colorful bathing suits and high heels. Liz Jaff PT (NYC; lizjaff.com)

had work in the Affordable Art Fair held in New York City in May, and images of her work were published in Papercraft 2 (Gestalten Press, Berlin), which was recently released in the US.

Marcellus Hall 87 IL Marcellus recently released The First Line, an album accompanied by a 44-page illustrated booklet of drawings and issued by Glacial Pace Recordings, Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock’s label. The artist is based in NYC.

Suzanne Scripps PT

The Dreamtime II, a solo exhibition of paintings by So Yoon Lym PT (North Haledon, NJ), is on view through November 28 at Korn Gallery at Drew University in Madison, NJ. She also showed her hair and braid pattern paintings in August and September at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA. Barbara Pollak FAV (San

Francisco) and her husband

Stephen Lewis have started a new company that specializes in interactive apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android platforms. Hard Boiled Industries (hardboiledindustries.com) recently launched its first app, a kids’ game called Bounce Party. Barbara and Stephen are also working on several e-book apps for kids including an interactive board book for toddlers.

generously donated space at her Santa Fe, NM gallery, Scripps Fine Art (scrippsfineart. com), to host the RISD/New Mexico Alumni Show (see page 39). Thirty-four alumni exhibited work in a variety of media, and New Mexico Alumni Club leader Nat Hesse 76 SC printed a museum-quality catalogue detailing the work.

1990 Lisa Albin BArch (Brooklyn), the designer behind Iglooplay children’s furniture (iglooplay. com), joined Offi in sponsoring the Sit. Stay. Play. Lounge area

Inspiring Young Readers “Kids have high standards,” notes author Chris Eboch 91 PH. “Some of the best literature in recent years has been for young people”—and she’s doing her part to add to the bounty, with a growing list of historical fiction, history, “spooky” and science titles targeted at 8-12-year-olds. Since earning an MA in writing from Emerson and publishing her first book in 1999, Eboch has produced a dozen more—from fictionalized biographies of Jesse Owens and Milton Hershey to a three-book series called Haunted. She also leads workshops on writing, speaks at writers’ conferences, penned a how-to book on plotting for fellow writers and recently debuted the Treasure Hunter romantic suspense series for adults (under the pen name Kris Bock). Eboch’s many young fans are effusive about her knack for creating realistic characters and suspenseful, exciting scenes, while parents and teachers applaud her ability to get kids hooked on reading— no small feat in a highly distracting digital age. Report-

at the New York International Gift Fair held in August. Subliminal Icons: SoHyun Bae and Traditional Korean Art In Context, a show of work by SoHyun Bae PT (NYC; sohyunbae.com), will be on view from November 4 to 25 at the Kang Collection of Korean Art in New York City. She also exhibited in the Summer Show at NYC’s Skoto Gallery. Paul Forsyth IL (Shaker Heights, OH), vice president and director of brand content at the advertising agency Ligget Stashower, was interviewed recently for an “Insights” piece on the Communication Arts website. Patrick Keesey PT (Marfa,

TX) showed two ink-on-paper pieces in Works on Paper, a summer group exhibition at ACME in Los Angeles. In August Roo Trimble ID* (Shutesbury, MA) participated in a 100 MPG “race” to the

Boston Green Fest at Boston City Hall. His Roopod car (roopod.com) and its rivals competed for highest mileage per gallon, and were then exhibited at Green Fest for two days. One competitor and admirer—Jory Squibb, father of current student Eliza Squibb 13 TX—reports that R00’s vehicle is “a feast for the eyes, and a real gift to the future of transportation.” Christopher G. Watts GL

(Roxbury, MA) showed work last spring in the exhibition Concepts in Glass at the New Art Center in Newton, MA.

1991 Last spring Dominic Avant IL was profiled on YourObserver. com, a Sarasota, FL-area online magazine. The article discussed his love of “mundane” domestic moments as subjects for his paintings; he also teaches animation and visual development at Ringling College of Art and Design.

Chris Eboch 91 PH ing on The Well of Sacrifice, an adventure story about a Mayan girl who stands up to a tyrant, young readers gush that it “just got better and better”—and most significantly, “After this book I have been reading about the Mayans every chance I get.” With “so much history and culture hidden in plain sight,” one teacher noted about the Egyptian mystery The Eyes of Pharaoh, kids gobble up historical facts before even realizing it’s good for them. Now based in Socorro, NM, Eboch moved around a lot as a child, spending her early childhood in Saudi Arabia until her family relocated to Colorado and then Alaska. She speculates that her affinity for middle-grade readers stems from her own reliance on reading during difficult transitions as a kid. “I was shy and found comfort in books,” she recalls. Her readers readily do the same, relating to characters that are driven by familiar emotions: “love, fear, greed, insecurity, pride, piety,” she explains. It’s “those basic human instincts” that keep kids engaged, and wanting to read more. —Anna Cousins

For more, go to chriseboch.com and krisbock.com.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Jae Park 94 ID As one of the creative directors for Windows Phone Studio, Jae is “happy to announce that our Windows Phone 7 design received a Gold award for Interactive Product Experiences and a Bronze award for Design Strategy” in this year’s IDEA 2011 competition.

Kelly Booth GD is a creative director at Weldon Owen Publishing in San Francisco. Her team works closely with authors and editors to create roughly 100 books and digital editions per year, on topics including “photography, sex, fashion, science, and zombies— though thankfully, not usually all in the same book.” (See also page 11.)

Last spring Rebecca Chamberlain AP (Brooklyn) had a solo exhibition of new work at DODGEgallery in NYC. …wouldn’t it be sublime… featured her paintings of modernist interiors and architectural elements on vintage architectural paper. Jennifer Comar AP sent in

this message from her home in Australia: “On May 20, 2009, Greg and I welcomed a

Frances Gaitanaros IL,

a partner in the NYC-based Rooster Design Group, wrote to let us know that Miko Skye Gaitan Mordeci was born on April 28, 2010. Mel Prest PT (San Francisco) was a co-curator for Stop & Go Rides Again (stopandgoshow. com), an exhibition of anima-

Booking the Best of Roctober With “the brains of a world-class scholar..., the soul of a historian… and the heart of a furious but funny rock ’n’ roll hell-raiser,” Jake Austen 92 PT is clearly the guy to bring us the latest “must for any serious rock reader’s bookshelf.” Or so says critic Jim DeRogatis, co-host of the talk show Sound Opinions. Cartoonist and author Chris Ware simply adds that Austen is “a polymath force of nature.” Jake certainly has the history and chutzpah to have earned such veneration. For almost 20 years he has been “cutting through the crap” of pop culture to produce Roctober, a magazine he started at RISD as “a messy clump of stapled Xeroxes ornamented with crayon marks.” Having gone to a show to see rockabilly behemoth Sleepy LaBeef at Chan’s in Woonsocket, he had done an interview on spec for a zine that never panned out. So with “a typewritten interview in my backpack and no place to publish it,” he did the obvious thing: he asked his RISD “classmates to contribute comics, essays, illustrations and origami designs as side dishes to the LaBeef main course.” And he then created his own zine in place of the one that had fizzled out. Since then Jake has published 50 issues of Roctober, which features work by underground cartoonists, exhaustive explorations of madeup genres like “robot rock” and in-depth conversations with forgotten artists performing on the fringes of the rock scene. For more on Austen’s antics, go to roctober.com.

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Michael Riley GD (Los Angeles) is creative director at Shine Studio, which was chosen by HBO to create the main title sequence for the “financial meltdown thriller” Too Big to Fail.

1992 20th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

In June and July Arnor Bieltvedt PT (Pasadena, CA) showed expressionistic landscapes in an international group exhibition celebrating the 15th anniversary of Galerie Beeldkracht in Scheemda, the Netherlands.

Self-professed “new media gal” Katie Hutchison BArch (katie hutchison.com) is a residential architect, owner of Katie Hutchison Studio in Salem, MA, and since 2007 has published House Enthusiast, an online magazine that aims to inform and inspire fellow devotees of home design. She also writes (and illustrates) for Fine Homebuilding, Cottage Living and Cape Cod & Islands HOME magazines, among others. Sears-Peyton Gallery showed work by Bo Joseph PT at the fall Pulse Los Angeles Art Fair and in Scalding Hot, a summer group exhibition at its gallery in NYC. Last spring the NYC-based artist was invited to create a 40-foot-long table for the Brooklyn Artists Ball at the Brooklyn Museum. “In addition to the table,” he writes, “I created a custom, silkscreened suit with imagery relating to the table concept: x-rays of objects from the Museum’s collection.” The

Jake Austen 92 PT This fall Duke University Press released Flying Saucers Rock ’n’ Roll, a compilation of some of the most compelling interviews that have appeared in Roctober since its inception. Subtitled Conversations with Unjustly Obscure Rock ’n’ Soul Eccentrics, the book bundles together interviews with musicians such as rockabilly icon Billy Lee Riley, Armenian novelty artist Guy Chookoorian and “interstellar glam act Zolar X,” among others. To accompany the entertaining interviews that have kept Roctober readers coming back for more, Jake selected more than 60 images from the magazine and commissioned another 10 from King Merinuk. It all adds up to a fun, 320-page take on off-thebeaten track pop culture. In addition to editing Roctober, Jake is a music writer and founder and co-host of the cult-favorite dance show Chic-a-Go-Go, which airs on CAN-TV (Chicago Access Network Television). He also wrote TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol and edited A Friendly Game of Poker: 52 Takes on the Neighborhood Game.

far left: photo by Jim Newberry

1991 continued

daughter, Lenora (Nora), to our family. Two years later, Nora and I have taken over the house with all of our creative projects. Luckily, Greg works in computers and doesn’t need so much space.”

tion coupled with the filmmakers’ small-scale artworks. In May and June the show traveled to several spots in Germany and the Netherlands. Mel also showed 4 Tokyo Metro Drawings at HELLO by candystore collective in San Francisco, and continues to teach painting courses through CCA Extension.

C. Ryder Cooley 93 SC

Stephanie Sawchenko ID

(Baltimore, MD) created a user interface that allows foodies to save and share recipes online. The site recently sponsored a benefit for Red Cross efforts in Japan that rewarded donors with recipes from celebrity chefs.

In July Ryder (carolynryder cooley.org) presented XMALIA at Proctors Main Stage in Schenectady, NY. Part of her ongoing series ANIMALIA, the multimedia performance “combines live and recorded music, taxidermy, video projections and aerial movement,” the San Francisco-based artist explains. “The show features songs about extinct animals…sung by a lonely mortician who summons the animals back to life for her graveyard cabaret.”

1994 Last spring Andrea Allegrone IL had a solo painting

exhibition entitled Spirits of the Storm at the Defoor Centre in Atlanta, where she lives.

clinical health psychology at Bastyr University.

project was shown in the New York Times Sunday Style Section and in the June issue of the Art Newspaper. Bo is currently preparing for solo shows at Sears-Peyton (February 2012) and McClain Gallery in Houston (spring 2012). Arpie Najarian GD (Woodcliff

Lake, NJ) participated in Art in the Open Philadelphia, a citywide event held in June that celebrates artists and their relationship to the urban environment. Her work was on view in various locations in the city.

far right: ad photo by Laurel Schwulst 10 GD + Ari Weinkle 10 GD

Last summer Denyse Schmidt GD (Bridgeport, CT) exhibited

her Mt. Lebanon, NY quilt series at Lori Warner Studio/ Gallery in Chester, CT (owned and operated by Lori Warner PR; loriwarner.com). She also spoke and offered quiltmaking workshops at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR.

In June 2011 Elise Campbell BIA (Seattle) completed a masters degree in nutrition and

Erik Kuniholm GD (Grafton, MA) recently began a new position as principal designer at Cole Creative, a creative services and marketing strategy agency in Boston.

As lead designer for the new website KeepRecipes.com,

After a long search for the perfect stylus to make art on the iPad, Don Lee BArch (Portland, OR) ended up creating his own. His Nomad Brush has received rave reviews from artists and techies alike—visit nomadbrush.com to see some of the remarkable artwork that Nomad users have created.

1993 A video piece by Mark Callahan PR (Athens, GA) was featured in You All Fell for My Act, a group exhibition held in September and October at MAMA: Showroom for Media and Moving Art in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Mark expanded the infamous speech by Miss South Carolina in the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant into a 24-hour video loop, inviting viewers to reflect on the phenomena of fame, voyeurism and entertainment.

Andrea Williams 93 JM In June Andrea (boundearth. com) won a first-place Saul Bell Design Award in the beads category for her Kebyar Grass Necklace. To create her jewelry, she carves into found beach stones and inlays them with reclaimed/recycled sterling silver. In September she had a solo show of nature-inspired designs at Patina in Santa Fe.

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

risd:store risdstore.com 30 North Main Street | Providence | 401 454-6464 find us on Facebook + Twitter

fall/winter 2011/ 12

1994 continued

Jill Scher 94 TX

santoro.com) is creating a site-specific sonic fabric piece for the City of Culture of Galicia event in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in December; she supported the work by accepting commissions for customized sonic fabric last summer. Her Voidness dress is on view this fall in the exhibition Power of Making at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Alyce is based in Fort Davis, TX. Jennifer Shaw PH (see

page 8) In April Zoya Tommy PT participated in an artist talk with Donna Huanca at PG Contemporary gallery in Houston, where she lives.

1996 Lee Lee PT (Taos, NM +

Denver, CO) exhibited work in several summer shows, including ones at the Taos [NM] Country Club, Columbia Arts Center in Hood River, OR and the Denver [CO] County Fair. She also served as a panelist at the July Art & Social Justice conference hosted by the Women’s Caucus of the Arts in Saint Louis, MO.

Fiberarts featured Foundation Stones, a felted and embroidered piece Jill created for the donor wall of The Third Street Center in Carbondale, CO (where she lives), in its March/ April issue. The piece honors donors to the capital campaign that transformed an old school building into a multipurpose nonprofit center.

From his printing studio in the desert hills of Cerrillos, NM, Mitchell Marti PR is currently creating mixedmedia landscapes that draw on data from the western states while also referencing the sweeping romanticism of 19th-century painting. Visit interbangpress.org to learn more about his work and collaborations with other artists. Charles Wilrycx BArch (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) writes to let us know that he has founded Arkitektur llc (arkitektur.us),

Jen Hill 97 IL (Brooklyn) has illustrated her first children’s book: The Boy With Pink Hair, written by Perez Hilton and published in September by Penguin/Celebra.

“a multidisciplinary studio serving the architecture, engineering, and construction industries, as well as providing services to owners. The Studio is dedicated to working in a strictly 3D environment, creating intelligent content for such notable businesses as Delta Light and Luminaire. The firm’s reach is limited only by its access to customers striving to interact within the BIMstream and leverage the power of 5D design.” Luna’s Sea (lunassea.com), an aquatic puppet/dance/ blacklight show for children written, directed, designed and

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Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

built by Linda S. Wingerter IL (West Haven, CT) for the Mystic [CT] Aquarium, will be performed in May 2012 at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC as part of the museum’s bioluminescent exhibition. After illustrating seven children’s books Linda “got hooked on puppets,” she says, apprenticing with Puppetsweat Theater Company and performing in places such as the Kennedy Center. Luna’s Sea is her first show.

1997 15th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012

Ben Coccio FAV, a theater director, and Katherine Malone FAV, a math and reading coach, were married on March 20, 2010 and live in Brooklyn. Anna Katherine Curfman BGD (Bainbridge Island, WA; indigocrane.com) is working as a feltmaker, creating textiles from wool and silk; for several years she oversaw the design and production of art books,

Abbie J. Zuidema 98 PT Abbie (abbiejzuidema.com) was among the artists asked by Brian Lehrer of WNYC radio to create a map of New York City’s “lesser-known ethnic communities.” Her map depicts Little Thailand in Elmhurst, Queens, one of her favorite neighborhoods. “When you go, you are somewhere other than Queens,” she says. “This is why I live in NYC.” Abbie discussed her map on Lehrer’s radio show in July. She also recently had the pleasure of painting a commissioned watercolor menu for a private dining celebration for Alice Waters. The meal celebrated the chef of Chez Panisse, who was receiving the Visionary Award from the New Museum.

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

Alyce Santoro CEC (alyce

Ken Millington 96 IL left: Two large-scale watercolors by Brooklyn-based artist Ken (kenmillington.com) were included in Bronx Calling: The First AIM Biennial, a summer show at the Bronx [NY] Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibition featured 72 emerging artists who participated in the AIM (Artist In the Marketplace) program.

routine on the popular UNIVISION program Nuestra Belleza Latina. The episode aired in April. In July she created KREL-2-GO Quickie Couture—garments fashioned in under an hour, in collaboration with the wearer—at the Bread & Butter Sport & Street Dessert Land event in Berlin; in August she created more instant couture at Jacques et Gilles on Shelter Island, NY.

Marilyn Yu 97 SC In August Marilyn (San Francisco; marilynyu.com) celebrated the launch of her latest book, La Femme Fatale (co-authored with Heather Papp). “La Femme Fatale tells the mythic story of Eva the vampire encapsulated in a deck of cards,” she writes. “Intricate illustrations enliven the personal narrative of a struggle for selfdetermination…. La Femme Fatale is an art tool to catalyze the spirit.”

1998 Pattie Lee Becker PR

catalogues, note cards and DVD materials for glass artist Dale Chihuly MFA 68 CR .

Karelle Levy TX (Miami), designer of KRELwear knitwear, did the costuming for a dance

(pattieleebecker.com) exhibited work in a variety of disciplines—drawing, printmaking, sewing, ceramics

Questioning the Extra Adjective Grace has published more than a dozen picture books, three children’s novels (including the 2010 Newbery Honor book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon) and the early reader Ling & Ting, which won a 2011 Theodor Geisel Honor. I am often referred to as a “multicultural children’s book author/illustrator.” It’s a strange label. When I was at RISD, I knew I wanted to be a children’s book illustrator. Then I knew I wanted to add the word “author.” But “multicultural” never crossed my mind. That extra adjective is a real double-edged sword. When I published my first book, The Ugly Vegetables (a story about the Chinese vegetables my mother and I used to grow), I was thinking more about my personal story than about a genre. So it was a little surprising when one of my peers said, “It’s good that you’re using your culture—multicultural books are hot now. That’s what’s getting you published.” Was it? Suddenly, the validation I had felt as a published author was marred by the idea that I had somehow squeezed in through a back door. Was I only getting published because of my heritage? Was I cheating? Was I selling out my culture for a career?

and woodworking—in the spring show Psychescapes at Illiterate Gallery in Denver, where she also offered a workshop. She lives in Boulder.

Stephanie Diamond PR

(NYC) presented her Listings Project at the Open Engagement conference held in Portland, OR in May.

by Grace Lin 96 IL

This fear haunted me. I hadn’t intended to jump on a bandwagon for diversity—I had just wanted to get a story I loved published. But somehow, my book was seen as representing “the Asian-American experience.” And who was I to be doing that? I felt that in my desperation to get published, I had faked my way in. Then, during discussions for another project, an editor asked me to change my proposed Asian girl character to a Caucasian boy. The reasons were valid; it would help sell more books and I wouldn’t be pigeon-holed as an author. But this made me even more uneasy. Somehow, proving that I was publishable without relying on my heritage seemed to be a pale consolation prize compared to creating a book that’s true to my vision. It’s not that I’ll never do a book with a Caucasian character or that the books I publish are meant to preach (horror of horrors!), but being able to publish my work is a gift not to be squandered on something soulless. And my soul is Asian-American. So, strangely, it was the unsettling nature of this editor’s request that finally made me proud of that extra adjective and of what I am— a multicultural children’s book author and illustrator.

For more information, go to gracelin.com.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Kati London 98 PT Three collaborative works by Kati are included in Talk to Me, a fall design show at MoMA in NYC (where she lives): Botanicalls, a device that enables houseplants to tweet and call their owners; Sharkrunners, an online role-playing game about ocean exploration; and Helix, a trading card game that incorporates players’ genetic codes. Fast Company magazine selected her as one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business for 2011.” In addition, a game she produced called Macon Money—built around a new local currency for residents of Macon, GA—earned the Future Everything award at the 2011 Future Everything Festival.

1998 continued Clara Lieu IL (claralieu.com) is the subject of a new 20minute documentary made by Paul Falcone 88 FAV (Lexington, MA); the film (vimeo. com/27843025) focuses on her artwork and teaching. In addition to teaching in RISD’s Foundation Studies and Printmaking departments, she is currently working on a series of 50 self-portraits about depression and anxiety.

The gallery was co-founded by Ryan Wallace 99 IL.

Katherine Weaver Schelter GD and Christopher John

Val Britton PR (San Francisco;

Schumacher were married on June 16, 2011. Kate is a creative director, stylist and founder of Kate Schelter LLC, a fashion consulting agency in New York City.

valbritton.com) has exhibited work in several recent exhibitions, including the solo show Val Britton: Documents, July-August at Sixpack Projects at Phantom Galleries Los Angeles; Life of the World to Come: Chase the Tear, June-August at the National Institute of Art and Disabilities Art Center in Richmond, CA; and the Headlands Center for the Arts 2011 Benefit Art Auction, June 1 at Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio, San Francisco.

Anna Schuleit PT (anna

schuleit.com) was interviewed by Michelle Aldredge for Gwarlingo.com, a blog about the arts. Visit the site to read Anna’s thoughts about her painting process and studio in rural Harrisville, NH. James Wynn GD (Brooklyn)

was recently promoted to principal at SYPartners, a strategic consulting firm located in New York and San Francisco.

Jon Asher IL (see page 8)

Earlier this fall Glen Baldridge PR (forthestate.com) showed work in a two-person exhibition at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY.

Five pieces by Anna Kristina Goransson FD (annakristina designs.com) are included in the new book 500 Felt Objects: Creative Explorations

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right: In July Laura traveled to the Tabarre region of Haiti with the Haitian Coalition of Somerville [MA] to build a school and provide medical services at a settlement camp that is home to people displaced by the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake. During the two-week stay, she engaged kids in fun activities to turn trash into pieces of art. Laura works as a religious educator and artist in residence at Arlington Street Church— Unitarian Universalist and an art teacher at the Gifford School in Weston, MA, where she teaches kids with emotional, learning and behavior challenges.

Kimberly Glyder GD served

as a judge for this year’s AIGA 50 Books /50 Covers show recognizing the best cover and book design of the year. The show is on view this fall at AIGA’s national headquarters in NYC.

1999

Laura Yvonne Steinman 99 SC

of a Remarkable Material by Nathalie Mornu (2011, Lark Crafts). James Holland FAV (Brooklyn)

recently directed a music video for the band Only Son, featuring “Macaulay Culkin, Regina Spektor, Reggie Watts, Adam Green (of the Moldy Peaches) and a bunch of other designers, musicians, writers,

and artists,” he writes. Find the video for Stamp Your Name On It on YouTube. Brooklyn-based artist Stephanie Housley TX runs Coral and Tusk (coralandtusk. com), an accessories and stationery business. Her handmade aesthetic is inspired by her travels in India, where she spends several months every year designing textile collections. New items in the Coral and Tusk collection were

shown in August at the New York International Gift Fair. Last spring Yamini Nayar PH (yamininayar.com) had a solo show at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Her work was also included in the summer show Always the Young Strangers at Higher Pictures Gallery in NYC. She lives in Brooklyn.

2000 Scott Fisher FD operates T2theS (T2theS.com), a design/

build studio in St. Petersburg, FL, where he creates furniture, additions, homes and commercial spaces for clients such as Aveda and Bumble & Bumble.

Stacey Dietz 98 GD On April 16, 2011 Stacey and Daniel Poulsen were married at Villa Montana beach resort in Isabela, Puerto Rico.

Brittany Hague FAV and Jim Sanders FAV (Brooklyn)

welcomed a baby boy named Van on October 24, 2010. Christine Holtz PH has been

promoted to a professor of Media Arts/Photography at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, PA. Haavard Homstvedt IL (see

page 15) Sara Greenberger Rafferty PH (Brooklyn) showed new photographic portraits earlier this fall in Remote, a solo exhibition at Rachel Uffner Gallery in NYC. She and Ruby Sky Stiler 01 PR (Brooklyn) had concurrent solo shows last spring at The Suburban in Oak Park, IL. Chris Sergio GD (see page 15)

2001 Katie Herzog PT (see page 8) Niki Hildebrand GL (Wrightsville Beach, NC) showed stained glass work in a summer exhibition at the Community Arts Center in Wilmington, NC. Kristian Rangel BGD (The Woodlands, TX) was accepted into ArtPrize 2011, a fall competition held in Grand Rapids, MI; his entry, a scratchboard piece entitled Farfalle, was on view during the competition period He discussed these projects at Green Lion Gallery in Grand last spring in an interview Rapids. For several years on Glitter Café, a program Kristian has been working on a photography project entitled on Televisa. De Manos (DeManosKristian “I am currently living in Quito, Rangel.com)—a series of Ecuador with my husband and handstand self-portraits taken two children (Bea, age 6 and around the world—as well as Charlie, 3),” writes Caroline creating scratchboard artwork (kristianrangelvallari.com). Saenger PR. “I am painting in

Aaron Distler 99 IL After winning the Clifford Chance/University of the Arts London Sculpture Award 2011, Aaron (aarondistler.com) created an installation that’s on view through November at the London offices of Clifford Chance Art Group. “The installation was completed a few months ago and contains two works: Chimera and Between Here and Here,” he writes. “Both are explorations of the significance of craft processes and material on the maker him/herself.” In 2010 Aaron completed a postgraduate diploma at the Chelsea College of Art.

a studio in my home and also working as a resident artist at the American International School, Academia Cotopaxi.” Last summer she participated in a group show at Ileana Viteri Gallery in Quito, and in January 2012 she will have a solo show of new oil and egg tempera paintings at Susan Calloway Fine Arts in Washington, DC. Last spring Sarah Small PH (sarahsmall.com) presented the latest in her experimental performance art pieces in Brooklyn, where she lives. Called Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions, the piece is performed by 120 cast members of all ages, genders,

colors, sizes, shapes and temperaments, and got rave reviews from major national art critics. Sarah is collaborating on a documentary about the Delirium project and preparing for an international tour of the live performance in 2013.

2002 10th Reunion October 5 – 7, 2012 Heather Guidero JM

(Providence; heatherguidero. com) had a solo show of jewelry work at DeNovo in Palo Alto, CA for the month of August. Jason Herron GD (Los Angeles)

won a Golden Trailer award for his promotional poster for the Woody Allen film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Zaneta Hong ID, a design

principal of General Architecture Collaborative (GAC; gacollaborative.org) in NYC, and Yutaka Sho BLA 96, GAC founder and design principal, organized the Art=Relief fundraiser in April to support earthquake/tsunami relief efforts in Japan. The event collected and auctioned off art by established and emerging New York artists and contributed funds via the Japan Society. Andrew Kennedy IL

(Montclair, NJ) had several paintings selected for publication in the fall 2011 issues of Direct Art and Studio Visit magazine. Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Eunah Kim 04 PT

KEY current majors AP

Apparel Design

Arch

Architecture

Ceramics

Digital + Media

FAV Film/Animation/ Video FD Furniture Design GD

Graphic Design

Glass

Interior Architecture

Industrial Design

Illustration

Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Photography

Painting

Printmaking

Sculpture

Textiles

In Her Wake: Eunah Kim, a solo show in memory of the artist (see Deaths), was held last summer at Gallery DA in NYC. Eunah’s last major work, Lucy’s Pelvic Bone (2009, cast and highly polished bronze), “represents the concept of turning the dark reality of death into a lasting treasure, by celebrating what Kim considered a woman’s most sensual body part through the luxurious beauty of gold.” Last summer curators also selected several sculptural pieces that focused on the “insidious and poignant nature” of Eunah’s terminal lung cancer for the four-person show Migration at Freight+Volume in NYC.

2002 continued

former majors AD

Advertising Design

Art + Design Education

LA Landscape Architecture MD

Machine Design

Textile Chemistry

Textile Engineering

5th-year degree BArch Architecture former 5th-year degrees BGD

Graphic Design

BID

Industrial Design

BIA

Interior Architecture

Last January Krista Ninivaggi BArch (NYC) joined SHoP Architects as director of interior design. She has specialized in interiors since graduation, focusing on high-end hospitality design; one of her recent projects, the Hong Kong restaurant/bar Lily & Bloom (co-owned and operated by Ben Ku BArch 00), opened in July 2010 while she was a senior designer at AvroKO. Last fall she and her husband of two years, William Prince, were selected to co-edit the food section of the New

Museum Exhibition The New City Reader, along with Edible Geography writer Nicola Twilley, during The Last Newspaper show. Krista is also a part-time faculty member at Parsons. Howie Sneider SC (Providence) exhibited work in Vista, a spring and summer show at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, NY.

began a new position as manager of the museum store at the Portland [ME] Museum of Art.

2003 In September Jessica Hess IL (jessicahess.com) presented

master’s degrees Art Education (formerly MAE)

MArch Architecture Teaching

MAT

MFA Fine Arts MID

Industrial Design

MIA

Interior Architecture

MLA Landscape Architecture OTHER CEC

Continuing Education Certificate

enrolled for FS Foundation Studies only * attended RISD, but no degree awarded

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painting project undertaken last spring at Fowler Arts Collective in Brooklyn. In May Jesscia showed paintings in the event ArtPadSf at the Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco. Jessica Rizzuti TX (NYC)

offers a line of handbags called Jess Rizzuti New York

Sally Struever GD recently

BLA Landscape Architecture

It Finds You, her first solo exhibition at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco, where she lives. The show featured more than 20 new paintings of “graffiti-soaked landscapes.” She was also one of the artists included in Paint It Now, a collaborative, site-specific

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

Garth Borovicka 02 PH Garth has started two companies: Furniture Revival (chicago furniturerevival.com), a high-end furniture restoration and refinishing company, and Always Delivery, a white-glove furniture delivery service offering receiving, shipping and storage services to design clients and other businesses. He recently worked on vintage furniture pieces, including the credenza shown here, for the interior of The Smart Home at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

(jessrizzuti.com). They’re available on Etsy.com and at boutiques in Connecticut and Georgia.

2004 Matthew Chevlen FAV

(Napa, CA) recently completed his MFA in directing at the American Film Institute, where he received the Fujifilm Grant and the Panavision New Filmmaker’s Grant. Marci Ross Easterbrook IL

graduated from Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque, NM in May. Lithographs that she created

in collaboration with UNM students were included in Tamarind’s 50th anniversary show, which was held in May; Marci also participated in the anniversary symposium.

OH), had a great summer run at MoMA PS1, it moved across the Atlantic to Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, where it’s on view through January 8, 2012.

Isadora Leidenfrost SC

2005

(Madison, WI; isadoraleiden frost.com) has created new films through her production company Soulful Media, including Things We Don’t Talk About and Creating Buddhas. Michael Neff PH (michaelneff. com) participated in Can’t Hear the Revolution, a summer exhibition by 100-plus artists at Kunsthalle Galapagos in Brooklyn, where he lives.

After Any Ever, the latest solo show of films by Ryan Trecartin FAV (Perrysburg,

Paintings by Whitney Claflin PT (Brooklyn) were included in Come Closer, a four-person show held in September and October at Thomas Erben Gallery in NYC. Annie Lee GD (annieleedesign.

com) is excited to share the news that she is a winning team member in the recent Reinvent NYC.gov event, a collaborative “hackathon” devoted to reimagining the web presence of New York City government. “My team’s goal for a new NYC.gov

Alexander Barton 04 IL Hot Hide XXII, part of Alexander’s series of drawings made with swine blood, was included in a Silent Noise auction held earlier this fall at Gallery Bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. An interview with the Brooklyn-based artist (alexanderbarton.com), called Alexander = Holy Blood + Grotesque, appeared on Art Gypsy Tales in August.

Noah Breuer 04 PR Noah created the cover art for the recently released book The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World (2011, Rutgers University Press) by Cyrus Farivar. The artist is based in Brooklyn.

was making it simple,” she explains, “a consistent and clean user interface across all devices, context-aware search and a personalized experience.” Her team won the honor for best user interface. Annie is a senior promotion designer at O, The Oprah Magazine and a graduate student in graphic communications management and technology at NYU. Last January Matt Mignanelli IL (mattmignanelli.com) left NYC for an artist’s residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In March he exhibited new paintings with Miami’s Spinello Projects at SCOPE New York.

Writing Undefined Though she continues to draw and paint, Rachel Glaser 05 PT is also an amazing poet and short story writer who regularly gives readings and conducts writing workshops. Hilary Plum of The Kenyon Review calls her first collection of short stories, Pee on Water (2010, Publishing Genius Press), a “commanding and audacious debut” full of “vivid, startling prose.” In August she invited Rachel to talk about her writing in writing—i.e. by creating her own definitions of the following commonly used writing terms.

allegory People are very suspicious of this. There is a talking fork in your story, but the fork is trying to address a political issue thinly veiled as a kitchen drawer drama. A character from a story reaches out and hangs onto a character from beyond the story. The reader sees it and gets uncomfortable. The reader misses it and everyone in their class is incredulous.

animals (talking) (anthropomorphism) (bestiality) I enjoy writing talking animals because they are speaking from such great bodies. It seems anything they say is true. Even if the animal is lying, it is Follow Rachel’s blog at rachelbglaser.blogspot.com.

Harim Song FAV (Brooklyn;

harimsong.com) had her debut solo exhibition in June at Brooklyn Artist Gym Gallery. Fearfully and Wonderfully featured interactive installations that combined furniture pieces with video to explore the boundary between routine habit and obsession/compulsion. Her work was also on view in July and August in The Beauti:Fool, a three-person show at the Korean Cultural Service New York.

Rachel Glaser 05 PT a smart, purer-than-human lie.

authenticity To be faked carefully. If you cut and paste from Wikipedia, lose the blue underline. This is the stunning result when the thing you are reading seems more real than your life. The writer has given birth to a city, just by stringing some words like beads. climax The point of the story where the bullets collide. The mailman breaks into tears. The president slips on a banana peel at the ceremony. The writer has hit a home run, and now walks calmly out of the stadium. The story rattles with the cares of all the characters. You hear your name being called to dinner, but you’ve reached the magic pinnacle of the plot. departure An author tries something new, and a thoughtful interviewer types, “This is a real departure from your earlier work,” and the author agrees and says he recently had a kid, or the silvery instinct to try a new process. Alternate definition: This is when the lead character leaves the novel out of boredom. He checks into a hotel of blank pages. fall/winter 2011/ 12

2005 continued Kevin Cunningham BArch

(Providence), the entrepreneur behind Spirare Surfboards (spiraresurfboards.com), participated in a panel discussion about business innovation and global inspiration at the spring 2011 RI Business Expo. RISD President John Maeda convened the discussion.

2006 Sara Bergman (Berg) SC

gave birth to David Amani Bergman on May 17, 2011. She and her husband Paul live in Shanghai, China. Janet Bruesselbach IL

(bruesselbach.com) served as visual editor for issue 13 of A Gathering of the Tribes, a magazine of art and literature. She lives in Forest Hills, NY. Last May Brandon Herman PH had a photography show entitled The Emerald City at Creato Finito Home in Los Angeles, where he lives. In May Alice O’Neill PR (aliceoneill.com) had her first show in Providence, where she

lives. Indigo featured large cyanotypes, etchings and stone lithographs and was shown at Gail Cahalan Gallery. Rob Rey IL (Providence) exhibited paintings in a summer solo show at Rogers Free Library in Bristol, RI.

The design trio Rich Brilliant Willing (richbrilliantwilling. com)—a.k.a. Theo Richardson FD, Charles Brill FD and Alexander Williams FD— won the top award for New Designer 2011 at the spring ICFF in NYC. The group’s winning collection featured self-

Kelly Berg 08 IL Last summer Kelly showed Hidden and Aerial in Subterranean, a solo show at Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. She lives in nearby LA.

produced furniture, lighting and accessories, including an Appalachian dining chair in wood and painted steel and a Russian Doll end table in painted steel, glass and leather.

2007 Eleven years after his recovery from bone cancer, Robin J.

Everett-McGuirl IL (Jamestown, RI) celebrated in June with a 100-mile bike race around Lake Tahoe. He and Jessica Pollak IL (Providence)

joined the race to raise money for the RI branch of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; Robin’s father, musician Ed McGuirl, joined

Simple yet powerful. When you include RISD in your estate plan, you deepen your investment in keeping art and design at the forefront of the future. Regardless of the size, your gift touches many lives by helping students and faculty to push the boundaries of knowledge—in the studio, in the classroom, in the Nature Lab.

Leave a legacy gift. Make an impact on RISD’s future. For more information, contact Louise Olson, director of Leadership Giving, 401 454-6323 or email giftplanning@risd.edu.

risd.edu/giftplanning

at The Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn. The artists in the show took inspiration from a comment made by former Fed chair Alan Greenspan about irrational escalation of value to “examine seemingly rational systems of mass belief or delusion.” Tom Prado PH (NYC) showed

work in a summer group exhibition at Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn. Dave Wieneke CEC (dave wieneke.com) has begun a new career as a digital marketing consultant. He’s also an adjunct instructor of Digital Media at Northeastern University.

2010 Work by Lorraine Nam IL (Brooklyn) is featured in the book Papercraft 2 (Gestalten

Rich Pellegrino 06 IL Rich (richpellegrino.com) illustrated The Battle of the Olympians and the Titans and Medusa’s Stony Stare, two books of Greek mythology for young readers that were published in August by Picture Window Books. His work has been featured recently in Game Informer magazine and on the SpikeTV program Gametrailers.

Press, Berlin), which was recently released in the US. Ashley Zelinskie GL (ashley

zelinskie.com) recently opened Active Space Gallery and Studio Space, an exhibition and artists’ work space in Brooklyn, where she lives. The summer exhibition Goodbye Space Shuttle featured work by Alexis Knowlton 04 PT and Jason Mones 99 PT.

Isaac Bader 07 IL Passages, Isaac’s first solo painting show, is on view from November 4 – 30 at the Gallery at Magnet in San Francisco, where he lives. It features “a group of five large-scale egg tempera paintings that manipulate both a high degree of illusionism and a simple flat organization of the picture plane,” he says.

Thanks to winning a Kiln God juried competition, she also did a summer residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME.

2009 friends in a benefit concert to support the cause.

pants will be all from my own textile design for the fall fairs.”

Xephyr Inkpen IL (Pascoag, RI;

As a former designer for Google, Shaun Modi ID (Mountain View, CA; shaunmodi.com) was largely responsible for the visual design of the “circle” editor for Google+. Shaun recently left Google to pursue a new social network start-up based on his own ideas.

xeph-ink.com) is currently “designing woven afghans that are manufactured sustainably. From the locally grown cotton down south to the small mills and looms, the blanket is 100% Made in America,” she writes. “Also I’m releasing my first pewter pin for the Renaissance Fairs. I sell at fairs for 15 weekends out of the year—the pins are very popular collectors’ items, and people wear them on leather swatches on their costume belts. I also have two different tapestry designs in production in India right now so my cloaks, tunics and wrap

Eva Motch AP is a freelance fashion designer and illustrator in Brooklyn. Check out her work online: evamotch.com. Allison Valchuis CR was

recently awarded the Loretta Grellner scholarship to do an artist’s residency at Ox-Bow School of Art in Saugatuck, MI.

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

Last spring a blog post by Francesca Capone TX (secret littlegem.blogspot.com) was picked up by the popular design blog ApartmentTherapy.com. Her blog highlights intriguing found artifacts of art, design and pop culture. Benjamin Hobbs PH

(Bellbrook, OH) is a cofounder of Ah-Oh! Games Ltd. (ahoh games.com). The company’s newly released first game, The Epic Adventure of Milton, is available through the iTunes store. Sam Keller PT (Providence) and Jay Peter Salvas GD (San Francisco) had work in Irrational Exuberance: A Recession Art Show, held in the spring

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Kyle Norris 11 IL right: In 2010 Kyle worked as a creative intern/illustrator for the snowboard company Rome Snowboard Design Syndicate (romesds.com) in Waterbury, VT. The 12 snowboards he designed— featuring images of George Bush Jr. and Sr., Lindsay Lohan, Keith Richards and more pop culture icons—are currently in produc tion and will be included in the company’s 2011/12 catalogue. Kyle recently took a position as graphic designer at Armada Skis in Costa Mesa, CA.

visit waterwalla.org to learn more about the research and international partnerships fueling the project.

Jenny Lai 10 AP In September Jenny showed portrait by sheet, the first collection for her new brand not, at New York’s Fashion Week. Her 11 looks are “for the woman who sometimes wants to observe the world under anonymity yet never ceases to express herself through her disguise.” Jenny has been busy since graduation, taking part in last fall’s Fashion Next show sponsored by Elle magazine and then interning at Viktor & Rolf in Amsterdam for three months, followed by a vigorous internship in the studio of the conceptual duo at Boudicca in London. She’s now back in NYC focusing on making not work.

2010 continued Zio Ziegler IL and a partner

have recently opened a gallery and store in Mill Valley, CA “that focuses on making art accessible to the community through clothing,” he explains. Their brand of silkscreened t-shirts, swimsuits, bags and accessories is called Arte Sempre (“art always”), and their goal is “to build a local Bay Area arts forum and community from the founda-

tion of a gallery and store.” Visit artesempre.com for more.

2011 After winning a 2011–12 Fulbright grant for study abroad, Athanasiou Geolas BArch is exploring the architectural manifestations of culture and community that unify Greek cities, and looking at the similarities and differences in how urban and rural communities articulate

space. In June he also earned the AIA’s Henry Adams Medal, which recognizes the potential of top-ranking seniors graduating from architecture programs around the country. In collaboration with a group of students and alumni from Brown, Soaib Grewal ID (NYC) is working to create a new corps of micro-entrepreneurs who can deliver reliable, clean water to urban slums in India and beyond. The group established the nonprofit WaterWalla in 2010 to apply business principles to a vital public mission;

Thanks to a Fulbright grant, Misha Kahn FD is studying in Israel this year, where he intends to create and exhibit a small body of work that explores ideas of conceptual duality and synthesis and their relationship to Israeli culture, history and politics. A cross between fine art, utilitarian design and playful commentary, his Choose Your Own Adventure cabinet attracted a lot of attention in the design world last year. Kellie Riggs JM earned a fellowship to attend Hello Etsy, the online marketplace’s international summit on small business and sustainability

Calvin Waterman 10 GD + Max Ackerman 11 GD Using defunct billboards and debris from the I-WAY construction project in downtown Providence, Calvin and Max created the installation #2(HB). “One billboard shows the writing end of a #2 pencil; the other shows the eraser,” they explain. “The pencil spans the two billboards; transcending the space of the Jewelry District, it creates intimacy between the viewer and the Providence skyline.”

Deaths

held in September in Berlin. This year Kellie is studying in Italy after winning a Fulbright Grant to research how traditional jewelry-making practices meet contemporary culture. Melise Senaydin GD

(melisesenaydin.com) designed Harper’s Bazaar: Greatest Hits (2011, Abrams), a lush new coffee-table book featuring memorable images of celebrities and fashion from the magazine’s past 10 years. In August Jake Zien GD made his TV debut on Quirky, a reality show on the Sundance Channel that highlights the processes and personalities behind successful inventions. Jake presented Pivot Power, his flexible power strip that can be manipulated into different shapes. The gadget—which started as a RISD class project—has been a runaway success, with more than 60,000 units sold.

2012 Ryan Novelline IL (see page 10)

Worden Gray Robinson 60 ID

Mary Louise Russell BS 63/

of Frederick, MD on May 29, 2011.

MA 70 of Chatham, MA on May 31, 2011.

Janusz Jerzy Gottwald BArch 70 of Mount Washington, MA on September 10, 2010.

of Drums, PA on June 22, 2011. Eunah Kim 04 PT of Seoul, Korea in November 2010.

Josephine “Jo” Taylor 81 AR

Henry L. “Joe” Budlong 43 GD*

Joseph A. Guertin 62 GD

Peter Linder 65 SC* of

of Cranston, RI on June 16, 2011.

of Yarmouth, ME on December 26, 2010.

Columbia, SC on August 20, 2011.

Karen Aqua 76 IL of Cambridge, MA on May 30, 2011.

Bethany Gleason Kallgren

Nan Smith Prout 63 AP of

Emily Ruth Grueneberg

Timothy Lynch 80 IL of South

Peter C. Angelo CEC 06

Marshall 44 AP* of Fort

Winston-Salem, NC on May 20, 2011.

Seltzer 68 AE of Forest Hills,

Windsor, CT on January 19, 2011.

of South Boston, MA on June 1, 2011.

Collins, CO on May 9, 2010. 74

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NY on October 14, 2010.

graduate class notes

1963

1971

Martha Armstrong MAE

Last spring Bernard Palchick MFA SC (Kalamazoo, MI) exhibited Beyond Landscape, a solo show of paintings at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts at Western Michigan University.

(Hatfield, MA) showed landscape paintings last summer at the Oxbow Gallery in Northampton, MA.

1969

bottom, far right: photo by Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxxx

Steelie Sphere, a construction of steel and automotive paint by Perci Chester MFA PT (Minneapolis, MN), was installed recently in Grandview Square Park, Edina, MN. It will remain on view for a year, with the possibility of purchase. Perci’s 2009 work Gyr Family Cycle, a three-part textured stainless steel installation, won a People’s Choice award and is installed in Centennial Lakes Park Promenade, also in Edina. Last summer she exhibited a series of ink-jet prints at Bego Ezair Gallery in Southampton and Greenport, NY.

1973 Alan Metnick MFA PH

Muriel Angelil MAE 71

Sue Jensen Weeks MFA FAV

Linda Hudgins MAE showed

Last spring Muriel (muriel angelil.com) exhibited Beehive, a site-specific installation at Riverway Park in Brookline, MA, as part of a group show organized by Studios Without Walls. In July she showed paintings like the one to the left—inspired by childhood memories of her life in Alexandria, Egypt—in the Summer Highlights exhibition at New Century Artists Gallery in NYC.

showed paintings recently in Poplars and Clouds, a two-person exhibition at the 15th Street Gallery in Salt Lake City, where she lives.

paintings during Art Trek Tryon 2011, a summer open studios event in her hometown of Tryon, NC.

Hmong National Conference. A collaboration with anthropologist Louisa Schein, the film is a sequel to The Best Place to Live, their 1982 production about the then-new Hmong community working to establish new lives for themselves in Providence.

1974 Earlier this fall Providencebased photographer Kathie Florsheim MFA PH showed R ’n R, a selection of photographs from her series A Day at the Beach, at Shore Galleries in Provincetown, MA.

1975 Large-scale Tree Sculptures by Joseph Wheelwright MFA SC

are on view through May 2012 in an outdoor sculpture garden at the Katonah [NY] Museum of Art. Joe is based in Boston.

1978 Laurence Young MAE/MFA 79 PR exhibited New Works in a summer solo show at the Alden Gallery in Provincetown, MA, where he lives.

1979 Last spring Lois Bryant MAE (loisbryantstudio.com) presented the ground beneath my feet, her master’s thesis show at Ford Gallery, just prior to accepting her degree from Eastern Michigan University. She lives and works in Ann Arbor, MI.

1982 Anne Sherwood Pundyk MFA PT , one of 15 artists involved in an artist’s residency at Queens College Art Center last spring, Anne (annepundyk.com) created paintings and a largescale installation that were included in a group exhibition. “Mourning, my architecturalbased installation in the Art Center’s zoetrope-like library atrium, refits the ivory tower with a broadcast tower,” she notes. “Tune in—we are in a time of war. The installation sends and receives, reflects and collects evidence through which to consider the relationship between the cultural framework of the art world and our current state of war.” A selection of Anne’s Pixel Paintings was included in Abstraction, a summer show at the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Los Angeles.

(Providence) created the poster for the 2011 Pawtucket [RI] Arts Festival. Signed, limitededition posters with his detailed pen-and-ink tableau of Pawtucket mills were sold for $75 each to benefit the summer festival. Peter O’Neill MFA FAV, who

is still teaching in RISD’s Film/ Animation/Video department, traveled to Minneapolis last spring to debut his new documentary at the 15th Annual

Arno Rafael Minkkinen 74 MFA PH Photos like this, taken in Finland in 2007 and 2009, were used in a late spring campaign for the Finnish National Tourist Board. In addition to adding Nordic flavor to the Paris Metro, the images were featured in 20 French and German magazines. “For me, it was an honor to be able to represent my homeland with such simplicity,” Arno (arno-rafael-minkkinen.com) notes. His work was also on view over the summer at the Seoul Art Center’s Hangaram Art Museum in South Korea, and in November he’s having a solo exhibition to mark the 20th anniversary of the Les Boréales festival in Caen, France.

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

delphia, where both artists live. The installation paired 100 fingerprints with people’s responses to the questions, “What do you wish for?” and “What do you worry about?”; an interactive component encouraged visitors to contribute their own fingerprints, hopes and fears. In addition, a commissioned family word portrait that Judy created was included in C3: Create, Connect, Collect, a recent show at Main Line Art Center in Haverford, PA.

1992 Sharon Bolton-Eels MAE

(Fernandina Beach, FL), who works as a high school art teacher, has illustrated her first children’s book. Called Amelia A to Z (2011, Island Media Publishing), it’s an alphabet book by Rob and Kim Hicks about Amelia Island, FL.

Linda Leslie Brown

MAE 87 For her spring exhibition Habits of Growth, Linda incorporated living tillandsia plants into sculptural pieces. The show was held at Kingston Gallery in Boston’s South End.

to see her handmade rugs at her annual open studio in Newport, RI; she also showed her work at a trunk show at Blue Heron Gallery in Deer Isle, ME.

Wendy Wahl MAE (see page 13)

internationally known for her performance art pieces, sculpture and installations.

1989

1991

Janine Antoni MFA SC was

Judy Gelles MFA PH and

awarded a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship based on the strength and promise of her work. Based in Brooklyn, she’s

Linda Brenner 62 SC exhibited

1993

together last June and July in Hopes and Fears, a show at Pentimenti gallery in Phila-

In September Carol Hahn MFA PT showed work in 4 Seasons, a four-person show at MK

1985 1984 The article Brave New Rugs focused on Meg Little MAE (meglittle.com) and was featured in the July/August 2011 issue of Design New England. In August she invited the public

As the owner of Shepard Fine ArtSpace on Martha’s Vineyard, MA, Melissa Breese MAT recently curated a show of art and craft by artists from Cape Verde, Zambia and a women’s collective in Haiti.

Books Bridge Cultures “I fell in love with Ghana the moment I arrived,” recalls Jonathan Thurston MFA 02 SC. Traveling to the West African country several years ago after hearing about its rich culture from his friend Sarah Philbrick 03 PH, he found the warmth of its people irresistible and immediately planned a return trip; that led to another, and another. Before long the educator felt strongly that he “wanted to give something back to this country I loved. I was really interested in education, but was not yet sure how to go about contributing to it.” The answer became clear in 2006, when Thurston introduced a group of his college students to Ghana. Stopping to visit a village school, they found it to be a small, leaky room devoid of paper, pencils and books. “This made a big impact on my students and me, who have always had ready access to basic educational materials,” he recalls. A few days later, he was glad to be able to provide another school with a tablet of notebook paper and the $5 it took to buy a soccer ball. The overwhelming gratitude of teachers and students suddenly made him realize that “it was really possible for someone like me to make a positive difference in the education of African youth.” 76

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Meridith Pingree

MFA 03 SC As one of four artists exhibiting in Migration, a summer show at Freight+Volume in NYC, Meredith presented kinetic sculptures like this one. Magic Curtain incorporates motion sensors and small motors that allow it to respond to visitors in the gallery.

Gallery in her hometown of McLean, VA. As the featured artist for Women’s Month (October 2011) at the Ah Haa Museum and School in Telluride, CO, Julie Shelton Smith MFA PT/PR

exhibited 68 paintings from her ongoing project 100 Women Over The Age of 50 Who Like Who They Are Becoming. She’s based in Newport, RI.

Jonathan Thurston MFA 02 SC Several years and plenty of legwork later, Thurston has built his passion for education in Ghana into a network of nonprofits. The International School of Art, Business and Technology is the umbrella organization for several initiatives, including an ongoing effort to ship books to Ghana, with 35,000 donated books having been distributed to schools and villages so far. ISABT also runs the Global Bookmaking Project, which enables Ghanaian students to publish their own stories, and is working toward the goal of building educational centers with libraries, computer access and housing for international exchange students. “Everyone benefits!” Thurston says of his latest goals. Western students stand to gain invaluable experience, but the advantages for young Ghanaians are far more fundamental—for “in Ghana,” Thurston has found, “absolutely everyone seems to value education more than almost anything else.”

For more on Thurston’s work with the International School of Art, Business and Technology, go to isabt.org.

91 JM (NYC) that’s on view from

November 11 to December 25 at Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul, South Korea. Alissia, who’s based in Brooklyn, also showed new design work at several recent events, including a McMasterpiece—a household object fashioned from industrial parts—at the ICFF 2011, and Milk Stools and other objects at Preview for Tentoonstelling, both held in NYC in May. Tim Waterman MLA (London)

Jecca 03 PH A new iteration of REM Map, a project that Jecca (stealthart.org) began at RISD, was on view last summer in What’s Yours Is Mine at the Linden Centre of Contemporary Arts in St. Kilda, Australia. Here’s the gist: “125 images of the world are projected on 1,000 magnetic photographs of a sleeping man…. People are invited to take a magnet from the exhibition, and… later when [they] place the magnet somewhere in the real world, they contribute to a map of art-vectors traveling covertly in a new magnetic field. REM Map is a launch site for anonymous gifts of art that will travel secretly from one person to another.”

1994 Last spring the Fondazione Merz in Torino, Italy hosted Kara Walker: A negress of noteworthy talent, an exhibition, film series and conference focusing on stereotypes about race and the work of Kara Walker MFA PT/PR. Kara, who teaches at Columbia University in NYC, discussed her work in an audio interview that’s available at radiopapesse.org.

1995 Last April the National Art Education Association (NAEA) named Lisa Silagyi MA, director of Education and Public Programs at the Orange County [CA] Museum of Art, the 2011 Pacific Region Art Museum Educator of the Year. She was proud to accept the award at the annual NAEA conference in Seattle.

2001 After premiering at Lincoln Center and MoMA last winter,

El Velador (The Night Watchman), the latest film by Natalia Almada MFA PH

(altamurafilms.com), made its international debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The story of a night watchman in a Mexican cemetery is a commentary on endemic violence in Mexico and how “ordinary life persists and quietly defies the dead.”

2002

over the summer, and Robert will show video and photographs of the project in December at Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and Indi Go Gallery.

2003 For her project Markers of Time, Christina Seely MFA PH (christinaseely.com) has traveled to Alaska, the Bering Sea and Svalbard Territory in the Norwegian Arctic to investigate “how climate change is altering natural rhythms in the delicate ecosystems of the Arctic,” she explains. During the perpetual daylight of the summer solstice in Barrow, AK she photographed interactions among the snowy owl and lemming populations, a relationship that “reflects the health of the arctic ecosystem,” as well

as glaciers and other natural and manmade features of the environment. Christina is normally based in San Francisco. Don Tarallo MFA GD (Bridgewater, MA) was recently awarded a Marion and Jasper Whiting Fellowship to research Roman inscriptions in Italy.

2004 Jointed Jewels designed by Alissia Melka-Teichroew MID

(byamt.com) are included in Open Mind, an exhibition curated by Kiwon Wang MFA

was a featured speaker at the 2011 conference of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, held in August in Brisbane. His speech was entitled Landscape is a Transformative Way of Knowing. Tim lectures on landscape architecture, landscape urbanism and urban design at Writtle School of Design in Essex, UK; he is the author of The Fundamentals of Landscape Architecture and co-author of Basics Landscape Architecture: Urban Design (both 2009, Ava Publishing).

Frank Poor MFA 92 SC In October Frank exhibited Going Home, a solo show of sculpture and works on paper, at the Newport [RI] Art Museum. Over the summer his show Mapping Memory was on view at The Welch School of Art and Design Galleries at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Frank lives in Cranston, RI.

Robert Ladislas Derr MFA PH

(Columbus, PH) received an Envision 365 Grant from the City of Urbana, IL to produce a multimedia project entitled In My Shoes: Urbana. For this continuation of his “investigation of life and art,” Robert explains that he is “requesting community members’ shoes associated with a specific memory in Urbana that I will wear at the exact location of the memory, filming with video, reciting the memory, to capture the essence of place.” Live performances took place

Please email information for class notes to: risdxyz@risd.edu.

fall/winter 2011/ 12

Amelia Henderson MFA 95 TX Last spring Amelia participated in Salvations, an annual juried furniture exhibition and auction sponsored by the nonprofit The Green Project. In keeping with the organization’s commitment to recycling and repurposing building materials, submissions had to contain at least 90% recycled or reclaimed materials. Amelia’s Eco Summer Covers were built from leftover trim moldings and beadboard, kitchen cabinet doors, scraps of woven jacquard fabrics, discarded address numbers and found objects. They’re intended to fit into the cast iron fireplace surrounds that are common to the historic housing stock in New Orleans, where she lives.

2005 During May Design Week in NYC, Houston-based entrepreneur Melissa Borrell MFA JM (melissaborrell.com) showed interior accessories in the exhibition Model Citizens NYC at the Chelsea Art Museum. Her designs on view included Fantasy Shades for windows, wall décor and Shadow Bulbs. Last spring Jesse Burke MFA PH (Rumford, RI) showed photographs in the exhibition Sweet Meat at The Print Center in Philadelphia. In addition, Blind, his recent body of work, was featured in Fraction Magazine (issue 25).

2006

artists, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, and writers. The organization recently added a winter residency program to its offerings and is welcoming the first of its artists-inresidence to its historic mill studios in November.

2007 In August Grain (graindesign. com), the Seattle design studio run by Chelsea Green MID and James Minola 07 ID, joined forces with seven Pacific Northwest designers to present new work at the New York International Gift Fair . The studio also showed new work at the 2011 ICFF held in NYC in May. Two paintings by Jesse

The Wassaic Project (wassaic project.org), the artist-run arts organization in upstate New York co-directed by Jeff Barnett-Winsby MFA PH, Bowie Zunino MFA 09 SC

and Eve Biddle, had its annual Summer Festival in August. The free three-day event featured a full program of 100-plus

Thompson MFA SC (jesse

thompsonart.com) were selected for the summer Open Painting Exhibition at the Providence Art Club; one of the two, Among Twenty Snowy Mountains, was singled out for the first-place Edward Bannister award. Jesse teaches at Bristol [RI] Community College, Johnson &

Wales and in RISD’s summer Pre-College Program. Last summer Millee Tibbs MFA PH (Providence) exhibited her photography at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR. Working together in Brooklyn as the collaborative Studio AND, Audra Wolowiec MFA SC and Niels Cosman MID (studio-and.com) “make projects that exist somewhere between art, design, science and everyday life,” Audra explains. Their project Urban Meteorites was published in Thresholds Magazine, issue 38: “In 2009 Studio AND created The Department of Mineral Science, a pseudo-institutional branch dedicated to the inspiration of urban exploration. The department’s main area of study focuses around the curious phenomenon of Urban Meteorites. Composed from the materials found in the urban landscape, Urban Meteorites are presented as artifacts from an imagined future.”

Mark Pack MFA 04 PT In October Mark (myartspace.com/markpack) showed paintings like this at Gravers Lane Gallery in Philadelphia. Based in Wilmington, DE, he says: “‘Growing’ is the word that best describes my primary concern while painting.” In other words, he believes that instead of “making” art, it’s important to allow it to grow.

2008 Edible Glass by Yuka Otani MFA GL (Brooklyn) was featured in Glass in All Senses, a group show held earlier this fall at Brattleboro [VT] Museum & Art Center. For the new work, she drew inspiration from “the

Esther Chak

MFA 07 GD + Mary-Jo Valentino

MFA 08 GD Based in Chicago and Brooklyn respectively, Esther and Mary-Jo work together via their studio Imaginary Office (imaginary office.com), which focuses on design work for nonprofits ranging from scienceresearchers to performing artists. Last spring they worked with Ocean Conservancy and a grant from Sappi Ideas that Matter to create a five-part “on the ground toolkit” aimed at providing Gulf residents with helpful facts and resources to help them respond to the 2010 oil spill. The project was recently featured on the Design Observer blog.

RISDXYZ

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material similarities between molten glass and hard candy,” she explains. Edible Glass is a “hard candy piece that looks just like a broken shard of glass. In contrast to its sharp edges and un-candy-like packaging, the candy has a sweet and tasty flavor.” Production was done in collaboration with the artisan candy store Papabubble New York, where it was displayed in July. Work by Michael Radyk MFA TX was featured in New Weave,

a show of five contemporary weavers held last April at the University of WisconsinMadison Design Gallery. Michael is based in Athens, GA. Breanne Trammell MFA PR

(Brooklyn) presented her performance piece Let’s Fly a Kite in the June event Solid Sound 2011 at MASS MoCA. Her piece was one of a pair curated by the Wassaic Project (see 2006 entry above), where Breanne is a 2011 Artist Resident.

2009 Cheryl Eve Acosta Guely MFA JM , an artist in residence at the Arts Incubator in Kansas City, exhibited clothing and jewelry recently at the 2011 West 18th St. Fashion Show in Kansas City. Amy Diaz-Infante MFA PR

(Salinas, CA) recently joined the faculty of Out of Site, a nonprofit organization that offers free visual and performing arts programs to public high school students in San Francisco. Work by Eli Levenstein MFA FD (NYC) was on view last summer at NYC’s Meulensteen Gallery as part of Ebb, a tribute to Buckminster Fuller. Eli created a viewing environment for screenings of an archival film of Fuller demonstrating his Rowing Needles design. Monica Martinez MFA SC is

having fun in San Francisco running Don Bugito, an adventure in selling edible insects. “Two years ago I constructed a sculpture habitat for some edible insects, and over time this structure transformed into a more sophisticated living space where I was able to raise these insects,” she explains. The most natural next step was setting up a food cart based on edible insects, so in August she launched Don Bugito at the San Francisco Street Food Festival. Monica describes the offerings as “a unique California-inspired cuisine influenced by pre-Hispanic and contemporary Mexican flavors.” Earlier this year she was selected to show her work in New Positions 2011, Art Cologne’s sponsorship program for young artists. As a result, her work was on view last spring in Cologne, Germany. The Rip + Tatter Kid’s Chair designed by Brooklyn-based designer Pete Oyler MFA FD (peteoyler.com) was featured in two exhibitions in Milan last spring: in the Kids room—ZOOM! installation, as part of Milan Design Week, and in the project In the Shadow of An Art Work at the Stella McCartney boutique. Tom Prado PH (NYC) was

Allen Phillips MArch 10 Allen is currently making furniture through his company Archfern 11, based in De Kalb, TX. RISD grad students Katie Blue MArch 12 and Levi Jette MArch 12 assisted him over the summer, helping to make pieces incorporating several species of solid wood.

Chain Letter, a summer show at Samson Projects in Boston. The global group show began with 10 artists, each of whom invited 10 artists they admired; each of those artists then invited 10 more, and so on, for 30 days—resulting in “an exponentially massive, artist-curated group show based entirely on admiration.” Last summer Gabriela Salazar MFA PT (Brooklyn)

showed work in Nests, Shells and Corners, a group exhibition at Meramec Contemporary Art Gallery at St. Louis [MO] Community College. She also completed a nine-week residency at the Skowhegan [ME] School of Painting and Sculpture.

2010 New England Home selected Debra Folz MFA FD as one of “5 Under 40” up-andcoming design professionals

to watch in 2011. Through her Boston-based company Debra Folz Design (debrafolzdesign. com), she designs and manufactures furniture and tabletop accessories. Fellow RISD grad Carol Catalano 80 ID (Hamilton, MA) was one of the jurors for the New England Home recognition. In June Charlotte Potter MFA GL (Waitsfield, VT) joined the Chrysler Museum of Art as manager of the new Glass Studio. Once it opens in November, the studio will accommodate visiting glass artists and will offer demonstrations, classes and artist-in-residence programs. “The glass studio’s opening week will feature RISD alumni [including Brett Swenson 10 GL and Ben Wright MFA 09 GL] for special

demonstrations, with emphasis on experimentation and the theatrics of glass,” she says. Charlotte has been an artistin-residence at Pilchuck Glass School, The Art Making Machine Studios, the Creative Glass Center of America (at Wheaton Arts) and the University of Sydney in Australia. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of American Glass and the Frieda and Henry J. Neils House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

2011 Anna Plesset MFA PT com-

pleted a 2011 summer residency in Giverny, France sponsored by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Now back home in East Hampton, NY,

she focused on painting and mixed-media work during the eight-week residency.

2012 Last May Tamara Johnson MFA SC used her performance piece The Beam to draw attention to an endangered historic property in Providence. Propping up a piece of foam camouflaged as a steel beam, she appeared to be supporting the façade of the downtown Providence National Bank Building for a period of two and a half hours. “It is an active, endurance project and I am hoping that on the most simple level, someone notices,” she said. The façade of the 1940s-era building was preserved when the building was demolished in 2005, but plans for new construction have stalled out.

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