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HOLLY HUGHES
risd connection: Associate Professor, Department of Painting
special skill: Passing on “an insider’s view of contemporary art” to her students. “It’s great to know who to call when you want a really exciting visiting artist,” says Hughes, who keeps students on the inside track with innovative critiques and fresh, front-line approaches to the language and traditions of painting.
breaking in: Born in San Antonio, Hughes helped kick off the ‘80s East Village gallery boom with her first NYC show at Piezo Electric. During her “travels abroad in America” as a visiting artist and critic at over a dozen colleges (including Bennington, Brandeis, Middlebury, Parsons, Kansas City Art Institute, Sarah Lawrence), she developed an insight into curriculum planning and pedagogy, and an unquenchable thirst for new vistas.
the road to risd: Since joining the RISD faculty part-time in 1991, Hughes has been a frequent instructor in affiliated programs at the Pont-Aven School in Brittany and actively supports RISD’s travel study options. Two recent faculty development grants have provided her with another cultural turn, into painted ceramics executed on-site in factories in Mexico and France. In 1998 she curated Part of the Fabric at The RISD Museum, inviting 10 contemporary artists to draw inspiration from the Asian textiles collection to create new works of their own.
making it: Boundaries in the art world are invisible to Hughes, who credits the expansive essence of her painting to targeted international experiences – as a visiting artist at Finland’s Lahti Institute, on a two-year residency in France, and pursuing landscape and calligraphy studies at China’s renowned Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou. Her fascination with Asian art has also taken her to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Laos. She has been reviewed in ARTnews, Art Forum, Art in America, The New Yorker, The New York Times and D’ARS, Milan. Hughes’ work is represented in the collections of The RISD Museum, the Kemper Museum, the Atlantic Richfield Corporation, Pepsico and the Freedman Gallery at Albright College, among others. She is represented by the Virginia Lynch Gallery in Tiverton, RI.
when not teaching, she’s likely to be: …traveling the world seeing art… painting in her NYC studio or upstate New York barn… playing a fanatical brand of tennis… gardening…
discoveries: (1) “It’s surprising how much fun it is to see past students and their shows in New York.” (2) “RISD students don’t just study art; they become artists.”
education
State University of New York/New Paltz, BFA, 1975
Silvermine College of Art/Europe Program, Lacoste, France, 1972
Silvermine College of Art, New Canaan, CT, 1971
Pratt Institute, 1970
awards
RISD Faculty Development Grant/Mexico, 1998
RISD Faculty Development Grant/France, 1996
Contemporary Artists Center Award of Recognition, North Adams, MA, 1996
ART/OMI: International Artists Workshop, Ghent, NY, 1995
Visiting Artist: Faiencerie Henriot H.B. de Quimper, France, 1995
Millay Colony for the Arts, Residency, Austerlitz, NY, 1986
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