The development of new biodegradable materials is a crucial step in creating a sustainable future, but what processes are involved in making these materials and what role can fine artists play in their creation? In this hands-on course, we will delve into the essential techniques for producing biomaterials while emphasizing play and experimentation. Within the context of the lab and the studio, we explore three specific biomaterials: algae (sodium alginate), kombucha leather, and bioconcrete. Students will explore these materials through sculptural processes including but not limited to moldmaking, slipcasting, and wet forming. This class will familiarize students with established techniques while emphasizing experimentation, creating opportunities to develop new methods and materials. This class will visit the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab and the Materials Collection within the Visual + Material Resource Center to gain an understanding of natural materials and existing biomaterial innovations. As an important and growing field in both regenerative design and contemporary art, students will be prompted to consider sustainability, environmental stewardship, and material sourcing within their practice. Through practical hands-on instruction, this course will demystify biomaterial processes. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with the knowledge needed to continue biomaterial experimentation with confidence.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $30.00

Elective

Using exclusively cardboard, we will spend this class building diverse technical competence.

Through a combination of technical demos and presentations of artistic and cultural references, we will teach students to build with cardboard. We will draw upon various legacies including figure sculpting, architectural modeling, and paper-making. By teaching students how soaking, carving, and laminating cardboard can shift its properties we will emphasize how treating a material can completely overturn its applications.

Each class will end with a brief improvisational making exercise—group or individual—that introduces the skills and activities we will cover in following demonstrations. By using improvisational scores, derived from theatrical and choreographic devices, we will find the functional and spontaneous expression of techniques demonstrated in class. These scores will be prompt based, inspired by artistic practices such as Richard Serra’s Verb List. Designed to put you in new situations, these frameworks will playfully invigorate the possibilities you experience in your work with cardboard (and, by extension, other materials).

Throughout the term, we will present on artists and projects that push the boundaries of cardboard, including Chris Gilmour, Warren King, Shigeru Ban and Ann Weber and the movie Dave Made a Maze (2017). With weekly assignments, students will be expected to bend, break, and combine the methods we’ve offered them.

With the optional inclusion of supplementary materials, the final project will serve as an opportunity to explore these ideas of lateral thinking and improvisation on a larger scale, or through more involved methods.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $65.00

Elective

Collaging materials can provide a fresh perspective and enhance the significance of sculpture. In this course, participants will examine various techniques for binding materials to create new narratives, paying careful attention to the implications of their material choices and techniques in the context of their artwork and interests. Selected readings and discussions will emphasize the role of materials and techniques in conveying meaning, as well as how different presentation contexts influence interpretation.

Students will begin by assembling a collection of materials to establish an archive tailored to their interests and practices. This process will involve considering the source context, social implications, and the evolving identity of the artwork once exhibited. From this archive, students will develop a sculpture utilizing a chosen selection of materials. Workshop demonstrations will cover assembling materials through sewing, latching, drilling, slicing, riveting, and wrapping.

The course will conclude with a final sculpture project, during which students will participate in a peer critique session. Additionally, each student will present their material archive list along with an extended description of their piece, articulating its conceptual and material significance.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

In this class, we will delve into the realm of digital design and fabrication, specifically within the context of contemporary art. We will primarily focus on exploring the varied potential of sculptural techniques using a Digital Plotter, Laser Cutter and 3D Printers. Through the use of CAD software, digital tools and traditional making practices, students will enhance their comprehension of how to incorporate digital fabrication into their own art practice.

While our course content revolves around acquiring highly technical skills, its core goes beyond mere technicality. Our objective is not to achieve mastery in a particular software application or fabrication technology. Instead, we aim to cultivate a flexible knowledge of how to adeptly employ a few fundamental digital fabrication processes within one's artistic studio.

Students are expected to investigate each skill-set by way of experimentation and research, extending their practice well beyond scheduled class time. It is crucial that students make time outside the scheduled meetings to develop familiarity with the processes and tools taught in class and continue to develop knowledge outside of class.

Sophomore Sculpture students have registration priority followed by all other Sculpture students. Non-majors require department permission to register via the Request Course Section Prerequisite Override task.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Elective

This hands-on course introduces the fundamentals of mold making and casting, with an emphasis on experimentation and iterative problem-solving as essential to the process. Students will work with plaster and other easy-to-use mold making and casting materials to explore one-part and simple textural molds, direct modeling with oil clay, and basic casting techniques. The course builds toward more complex flexible mold systems—particularly with silicone rubber—while addressing key challenges like undercuts and scale. Alongside technical instruction, students will examine contemporary uses of casting in art and develop the skills to confidently adapt mold making techniques to suit their evolving studio practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Elective

This course is structured according the notion that artists can use what is on hand to research and craft simple solutions to the complex physical, mechanical, and technical problems that must be routinely addressed in their making practices. This material and process based, hands-on, research studio will be structured in response to the issues that the advanced fine arts student is grappling with on a regular basis. Many of the issues that arise in the process of making provide the opportunity to transcend perceived material-based boundaries and thinking. Some of the questions this course attends to include: How do you defy gravity? How do you generate the hidden components required to physicalize the thing we can see in our mind's eye? How is the magic we need to create our work scalable to the resources we have readily available? Example working processes include: mig welding, tig welding, casting for prototyping, woodworking, and mold making. This course is open to juniors, seniors and graduate-level students. Please contact the instructor directly for permission to register.

Elective

In this course, students will spend a semester immersed in the metal shop creating performative works that incorporate elements of steel. We will practice metal fabrication skills such as welding, cutting, forging, and bending. We will explore the performative capacity of the fabricated steel objects through lectures, presentations, process critiques and improvisation. The course begins with a series of exercises that will build an object-based performance language. The second stage of the course will focus on the development of a performance work that incorporates a fabricated steel element as an essential ingredient to the performance. The course will culminate in a public performance.

No performance experience or metal shop experience necessary.

Sophomore Sculpture students have registration priority followed by all other Sculpture students. Non-majors require department permission to register via the Request Course Section Prerequisite Override task.

Elective

Building on technologies covered in Digital Design and Fabrication, this studio will explore relationships between digital fabrication, traditional sculptural and craft processes. Students will research and develop approaches to making that blend emerging fabrication technologies with traditional sculptural techniques including woodworking, metalworking, and casting. Students will leverage existing skillsets and departmental resources to both augment and invent methods of fabrication that complement their research and studio interests. The course will explore intermediate / advanced 3d modeling, 3d capture, robotics, and additive/subtractive fabrication techniques using both departmental and campus resources.

Through weekly slide presentations, readings and class discussions, students will be introduced to a broad range of artistic approaches, practices and communities merging technology and craft. Rhino 3D will be used as the primary CAD tool and students will need to provide their own laptop with Rhino installed.

The semester will be divided into a series of skill-building exercises, each blending digital tools with ‘traditional’ craft processes, and will culminate in a final project incorporating Digital Craft into an existing project and/or research interest. We will be utilizing the Sculpture department’s digital resources (Collaborative Robot, CNC Router, 3D Scanner, 3D Printers) in combination with woodworking, casting and metalworking* facilities.

This course, although technical in nature, is not technical in spirit. Our goal is not the mastery of any one software application or fabrication technology, but instead to gain an understanding of how to effectively leverage digital processes and tools in one’s studio. Success in this course requires resourcefulness, openness, and a willingness to collaborate. Depending on your existing skill set, it may be at times necessary to augment in-class demonstrations, with self-directed research and learning.

Prerequisite: Digital Design and Fabrication, Open Hardware, or equivalent experience with CAD / digital fabrication / physical computing.

Elective

Advanced Critical Issues Seminar 2 introduces a rigorous theoretical framework for thinking and writing about contemporary sculpture practice. Each seminar develops from a specific theme drawing on research from Grad Critical Issues 1, current debates in the field and contemporary events. Past seminars include: Artificial Natures, Precarious Relations, Frankenstein and Crime, Vanishing Points, as examples. Trespassing across sculpture, performance, cinema, fiction, feminist, queer, race and political theory and back again, we will address writings by Walter Benjamin, Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Jacques Rancire (as examples) in conversation with contemporary artists writings and projects to cultivate a conceptual grammar to extend to our studio practice. Approaching issues in contemporary sculpture through these discursive perspectives generates new strategies simultaneously material, conceptual, and critical.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Graduate Sculpture Critique II/IV builds upon topics discussed in the previous semesters during graduate critique I/III. It continues its form as a discussion-based, collaborative critique seminar that makes space for multiple voices and ways of being in community; foregrounding and supporting the burgeoning artistic practices represented in and across the grad cohorts. This course builds upon the intellectual and artistic intimacy among cohort mates and between cohorts established in the first semester of each year. The risk-taking, question-asking, and reimagining of predetermined boundaries in the second semesters yields new critique and research methodologies that in the case of first year grads supports the lead up to their summer studio intensive or residencies. In the case of second year grads, this semester of intensive critiques supports their capstone thesis presentation and the group critiques and final thesis committee meetings that characterize the end of their work at RISD. As a practice in need of continual commitment, students are asked with great intention to continue to expand the discussion around intersectionality, interstitially, and interdisciplinarity and how the space between things comes to bear on the method of critique.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Graduate Sculpture Critique II/IV builds upon topics discussed in the previous semesters during graduate critique I/III. It continues its form as a discussion-based, collaborative critique seminar that makes space for multiple voices and ways of being in community; foregrounding and supporting the burgeoning artistic practices represented in and across the grad cohorts. This course builds upon the intellectual and artistic intimacy among cohort mates and between cohorts established in the first semester of each year. The risk-taking, question-asking, and reimagining of predetermined boundaries in the second semesters yields new critique and research methodologies that in the case of first year grads supports the lead up to their summer studio intensive or residencies. In the case of second year grads, this semester of intensive critiques supports their capstone thesis presentation and the group critiques and final thesis committee meetings that characterize the end of their work at RISD. As a practice in need of continual commitment, students are asked with great intention to continue to expand the discussion around intersectionality, interstitially, and interdisciplinarity and how the space between things comes to bear on the method of critique.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Metal Fabrication studio is a course designed to develop students’ competencies working in steel as a primary material. In this course we will explore the properties of metal both formally and conceptually as a material rooted in culture. Together we will push and expand our understanding of metal as a material for sculpture by cutting, bending, warping, welding, and altering it. We will discuss, experiment and challenge the notion of metal as traditional industrial workhorse, or as coveted art object and embrace or reject these ideas as we create within the medium.

Eligibility: All graduate students. Seniors may request department permission to register via the Request Course Section Prerequisite Override task.

Elective

Students in the MFA program pursue individual work under advisement of resident faculty, visiting artists and critics. This tutorial experience has been organized to nurture student work toward a set of goals and outcomes through routine conversations with faculty and their cohort. The priority is to assist students with recognizing new objectives in their practice.  Faculty work with students to develop new or hone existing skills to set priorities and meet  goals and deadlines. At the MFA level students will experience a deeper sense of individualized mentorship.  While advising students on the material aspects of their work, faculty will simultaneously  guide students toward new conceptual, theoretical and or philosophical frameworks for their work.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Junior Sculpture Studio II is a laboratory situated where art-making and the physical world overlap, perform, critique, collapse, and deploy one another. During this course, you will intentionally push forward your development as an artist. You will utilize the skills and media that you learned in previous courses, while adding new skills and tools to your existing collection. As a result, your projects will demonstrate more conceptual heft. Together, we will support the continued growth of this formal, material, and conceptual capacity by addressing the challenges implicit in making ambitious projects. We take up this work in an effort to deepen our relationship to what informs who we are as artists and to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of a sustainable studio and professional practice. This course is structured with the enactment of care in mind, so our studio practices and artist-selves can thrive.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Junior Sculpture Studio II is a laboratory situated where art-making and the physical world overlap, perform, critique, collapse, and deploy one another. During this course, you will intentionally push forward your development as an artist. You will utilize the skills and media that you learned in previous courses, while adding new skills and tools to your existing collection. As a result, your projects will demonstrate more conceptual heft. Together, we will support the continued growth of this formal, material, and conceptual capacity by addressing the challenges implicit in making ambitious projects. We take up this work in an effort to deepen our relationship to what informs who we are as artists and to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of a sustainable studio and professional practice. This course is structured with the enactment of care in mind, so our studio practices and artist-selves can thrive.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

The Spring semester of Sophomore Sculpture Studio is organized to continue training students to workshop their ideas and concepts while learning basic materials and processes of the sculpture studio. In this department we teach visual vocabulary on the basic principle of, Thinking while making and making while thinking. Advancing from basic fabrication methods learned in the previous semester, students will progress into workshops in modeling, molding and casting. Students will learn the basic language of form through the lens of basic mold-making methods working in wax, plaster and clay advancing to contemporary silicones and plastics. This workshop will culminate with lost wax ceramic shell casting in our foundry.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

The Spring semester of Sophomore Sculpture Studio is organized to continue training students to workshop their ideas and concepts while learning basic materials and processes of the sculpture studio. In this department we teach visual vocabulary on the basic principle of, Thinking while making and making while thinking. Advancing from basic fabrication methods learned in the previous semester, students will progress into workshops in modeling, molding and casting. Students will learn the basic language of form through the lens of basic mold-making methods working in wax, plaster and clay advancing to contemporary silicones and plastics. This workshop will culminate with lost wax ceramic shell casting in our foundry.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

The final semester in the MFA Sculpture Program is structured around the development of a written thesis and culminating in a body of work, components of which may be exhibited as part of the school-wide MFA Thesis Exhibition. This work is nurtured by tutorial studio visits with faculty, visiting artists, and thesis committee members during the run of the semester.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

Sculpture Seminar II: Visual and Critical Literacies is the fourth sequential course in the Sculpture curriculum centered on research and coordinated with the content of the major studio courses. These research courses are designed to excite student learning through the practice of critical and engaged pedagogy in art history, material histories, research methods, representation, and what “counts” as artist research. Course content has been selected precisely to support the understanding of how critical literacy impacts a creative practice. De-material practices like reading, thinking, moving, and speaking can merge with, bend around, and twist through material practices.

Sculpture Seminar II: Visual and Critical Literacies is an intermediary level course which follows Junior Research Studio where students have learned about field research and the local manifestations of larger systems. The design of this seminar is to facilitate and support the study of themes relevant to art practices and conversations today. Through a series of readings, films, classroom discussion, group, and independent work, students learn to contextualize myriad discourses using the frames of art history, critical theory, philosophy, ethics, and politics. In this studio-centered seminar, students will develop critical literacy that is applicable to their working practices and the attendant process of using materials to make meaning. This course supports discourse around the formation of the artist in an effort to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of sustainable artistic and intellectual practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Sculpture Seminar II: Visual and Critical Literacies is the fourth sequential course in the Sculpture curriculum centered on research and coordinated with the content of the major studio courses. These research courses are designed to excite student learning through the practice of critical and engaged pedagogy in art history, material histories, research methods, representation, and what “counts” as artist research. Course content has been selected precisely to support the understanding of how critical literacy impacts a creative practice. De-material practices like reading, thinking, moving, and speaking can merge with, bend around, and twist through material practices.

Sculpture Seminar II: Visual and Critical Literacies is an intermediary level course which follows Junior Research Studio where students have learned about field research and the local manifestations of larger systems. The design of this seminar is to facilitate and support the study of themes relevant to art practices and conversations today. Through a series of readings, films, classroom discussion, group, and independent work, students learn to contextualize myriad discourses using the frames of art history, critical theory, philosophy, ethics, and politics. In this studio-centered seminar, students will develop critical literacy that is applicable to their working practices and the attendant process of using materials to make meaning. This course supports discourse around the formation of the artist in an effort to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of sustainable artistic and intellectual practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Sculpture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture