Ceramics

The Ceramics BFA program teaches you to use traditional techniques and new technologies to transform clay and other media into exceptional work across several fields, from studio and environmental art to architecture.

Through an emphasis on research-based studio practice, the MFA in Ceramics offers a thought-provoking context for you to develop a purposeful visual language rooted in knowledge of the medium’s history and contemporary trajectory.

New York-based artist Nicole Cherubini works largely in sculpture and mixed media. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA), the Jersey City Museum (Jersey City, NJ) and the Santa Monica Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions across the US and beyond. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Artforum, Art News, Bomb, Frieze Magazine, The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Dividing her time between studios in Manhattan and upstate New York, Arlene Shechet creates sculpture from clay, but keeps her hand in a variety of materials—including plaster, paper pulp and glass. Critics and the public applauded her 2015 retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and New York Times art critic Roberta Smith has called her ceramic work “sexy, devout, ugly and beautiful all at the same time.” Shechet serves as an occasional visiting critic at RISD and credits her experiences here with exposing her to “a lot of materials and processes, ideas and images—and perhaps most importantly, conversations.”