more info on applying/curriculum/facilities/faculty/visiting artists + critics

This two-year, studio-based graduate program offers a contemporary, urban context for rigorous investigation and dialogue in support of the development of one’s ceramic practice. Our graduate students are currently engaged in independent studio work on campus and as well as field research in New York, Boston, rural Rhode Island and Japan.

Students in the program are professionally committed, materially articulate, intellectually curious and open. Grounded in a keen awareness of global and cultural contexts, their diverse areas of practice and research include pottery, sculpture, installation, utilitarian and architectural ceramics, design, decoration, historical ceramics, contemporary issues in ceramics, political and narrative ceramics, abstraction, glaze and clay innovation, community engaged practice, ceramics education and other experimental approaches to ceramic materials, processes and ideas.

Through participation in studio critiques and seminars, graduate students investigate the social, historical, philosophical and technical foundations of ceramics, critical theory and contemporary issues. The process of clarifying
one’s ideas is supported through written and verbal communication as well as visual presentation. Throughout the program, graduate students receive feedback and critiques from RISD’s internationally known faculty and an impressive roster of visiting artists. Graduate study – and the inherent invitation to unground and reinvent one’s process and thinking through risk-taking – occurs in individual and communal settings: in the privacy of individual studio spaces, through independent research and experimentation with new processes and ideas in consultation with faculty advisors, and through challenging interaction with peers. The focus of the program is on individual artistic development and
self-directed ceramic work in the studio. In addition, graduate students may choose to take advantage of opportunities to enrich and broaden their practice through interdisciplinary, collaborative and/or community-engaged approaches.

RISD’s ceramics studios and facilities support the production of advanced work through state-of-the-art computerized Blaauw gas car and electric kilns, digital and manual gas and electric kilns, a mobile raku kiln, a computer lab and software for remote kiln control and monitoring, glaze calculation and database manipulation; wheels; a slab roller; rolling worktables; extruders; a ram press; a clay mixing room; and newly refurbished plaster and glaze labs.