WHAT IS THE FOCUS OF THE RISD GRADUATE PROGRAM IN CERAMICS?
The ceramics faculty is committed to supporting the rigorous development of each graduate student’s independent, studio-based practice. Every year our graduate students continue to be diverse in how their research and bodies of work contribute to the fields of art and contemporary ceramics. Whether they focus on sculpture, installation or functional pottery and pursue architectural, design-based, experimental, traditional or pedagogical inquiry, they use the language of ceramics as a consistent thread through all of these explorations. In developing fluency through the material, historical, social, cultural, political and critical specificity of ceramic practice, our graduates are equipped to contribute a remarkable depth of material research and critical perspective to the interdisciplinary global context. In addition to this main focus on ceramics, our graduate students may choose to take advantage of opportunities in our department and across campus to enrich and broaden their practice through interdisciplinary, collaborative and/or community-engaged approaches.

IS MY WORK READY FOR GRAD SCHOOL?
The four ceramics faculty members at RISD — Larry Bush, Frank Bosco, Jan Holcomb and Linda Sormin — will closely evaluate your application package and make a joint decision regarding your admission to the program. The most important way of communicating the strength and potential of your work is through your visual portfolio. We will look at your images of work and consider the depth, breadth and momentum of your exploration. We are interested in how you make forms, form questions, question conventions and take risks in your practice. By intelligently editing and organizing your portfolio, you have the opportunity to focus our attention on the issues most central to your ceramic work. Ideally, your images will describe your work to us. Titles, detail shots and/or brief written descriptions of work/context are generally helpful.

AM I READY FOR GRAD SCHOOL?
The faculty will read your letter of application and other materials in order to understand the motivation behind your ceramic practice — the life, travel and professional experiences that enrich your work and your goals as an artist — and what you hope to achieve by coming to grad school. In addition to a strong portfolio, we are looking for quality of thought and purpose, level and range of skills, experience, innovation, commitment, curiosity and ambition. It is in your best interest to provide concrete details and examples of these attributes. The grad experience is all-consuming. Throughout these two years, you will need to push your making and thinking beyond your current limits. You will be challenged to draw on personal, social, physical, intellectual and material resources in new ways, and with a sense of urgency and purpose. The grad experience is not a comfortable one, and in order to move your work forward, you must be ready to open your practice and ideas to the questioning and critique of peers and faculty, to spend long hours working in your studio and to contribute to rigorous discussion and debate. Your willingness to be alternately vulnerable and bold in the studio, to participate in intensive hands-on material exploration, to take risks in your artistic production and to maintain a strong work ethic are all integral to the highly charged, transformative experience offered through our graduate program.

WHAT NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL OPPURTUNITIES ARE AVAILABLE TO ME?
The RISD Ceramics Department is in its first year of establishing a thematic, cross-disciplinary art residency at a traditional working studio site in Japan. Our grads and undergrads now have the opportunity to work in ceramics and travel in Japan during RISD’s six-week Wintersession and over the summer. Ceramics faculty members make it a priority to seek out international opportunities for our students and, when possible, to provide financial support. So far this year we’ve been able to support three of our grads in traveling to the UK, Germany, Japan and Canada to participate in international conferences, work with faculty in installing work and conduct thesis-related research. In addition to these opportunities, the Ceramics Department goes on regular field trips to New York City and NCECA, and there is always the potential for travel and field study each year with interdisciplinary groups at RISD — anywhere from New York to Italy to Australia, etc.

HOW MUCH FINANCIAL AID IS AVAILABLE TO ME THROUGH THE CERAMICS DEPARTMENT?
The majority of our graduate students remain within the discipline and/or the larger field of art. Many go on to establish independent studios (either individual, collective or both), producing one-of-a-kind gallery work and/or limited production pieces. Some go on to design for the industry and/or create work on commission. More recently, our graduates are opening galleries as well as securing teaching positions and artists’ residencies.