This seminar/studio course is centered around a series of invited artists, writers, scientists who work at the intersection of diverse identities and lived experiences to model their specific perspectives on making as a counterpoint to historically euro-centric and monolithic approaches that have burdened glass as a creative medium. Readings, discussions and class activities prioritize issues of identity, culture, gender, race, colonialism - questioning past cannons of making and proposing challenging alternatives. The participatory and collaborative work done for this class is fundamental to our thinking and making community; a willingness to share ideas and make earnest attempts to connect and support one another is central. Our lecturers and HotNights participants set a broad and challenging spectrum of topics which are built on by the research and perspectives of everyone in the class. In each case, we will strive to address topics, discussions and shop time problem solving in a manner that is respectful to all individuals.

Juniors register for GLASS-4316 (Fall) and GLASS-4318 (Spring).

Seniors register for GLASS-4320 (Fall) and GLASS-4322 (Spring).

Major Requirement | BFA Glass

Graduate Glass II continues with the objectives of the preceding semester. It is expected that students continue artistic experimentation and individual growth at an increasingly professional level.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Major Requirement | MFA Glass

With assistance from department and outside faculty, the graduate student defines and organizes an evolved artistic viewpoint presented in both a comprehensive written thesis and a thesis exhibition. At the beginning of this semester, students are also required to present a slide source presentation to a department assembly that is a compilation of the previous three semesters' visual research. A professional portfolio is presented to the department at the completion of the student's graduate study.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Major Requirement | MFA Glass

All Glass junior, senior and graduate degree program students meet together to engage both practical and theoretical issues of a glass career through: field trips, technical demonstrations, visitor presentations, and direct exchange with visiting professionals from relevant disciplines through student/professional collaborations, artist residencies, individual consultations, critique, and organized group discussion. Class will require reading, active participation in weekly discussions, and prepared student presentations.

First-year graduate students register for GLASS-435G (Fall) and GLASS-436G (Spring).

Second-year graduate students register for GLASS-437G (Fall) and GLASS-438G (Spring).

Major Requirement | MFA Glass

All Glass junior, senior and graduate degree program students meet together to engage both practical and theoretical issues of a glass career through: field trips, technical demonstrations, visitor presentations, and direct exchange with visiting professionals from relevant disciplines through student/professional collaborations, artist residencies, individual consultations, critique, and organized group discussion. Class will require reading, active participation in weekly discussions, and prepared student presentations.

First-year graduate students register for GLASS-435G (Fall) and GLASS-436G (Spring).

Second-year graduate students register for GLASS-437G (Fall) and GLASS-438G (Spring).

Major Requirement | MFA Glass

This semester is directed towards defining and organizing an evolved artistic viewpoint that incorporates glass in a visual imagery. At the beginning of this semester, students are required to present a slide source presentation to a department assembly that is a compilation of the previous three semesters' visual research. Each student is also expected to further develop his/her artistic association with a designated "outside" advisor(s) and involve this professional artist in critique and consultation. Artistic premise and intention are comprehensively presented in a senior thesis exhibition. A complete portfolio is presented to the department at the completion of this semester.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Major Requirement | BFA Glass

This class serves as an interface between the new technologies of digital and the old technologies of optics. New digital technologies are given alternative possibilities with the addition of specific projection apparatus (in terms of both, projection optics and projection surfaces), plays with reflection (such as the construction of anamorphic cylinders, zoetropes, and other optical devices), and in the fabrication of project specific lenses. Given the hands-on nature of the glass department, the actual making and/or subversion of traditional optics is possible. The class encourages collaborative work between students of varying experience levels and fosters the incorporation and dialogue between students of the two differing areas of expertise.

Elective

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas while teaching at RISD. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning.

As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher- scholars through refining, expanding and updating the teaching portfolio. In an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of diverse learning styles and methods, and an awareness of how social identities produce systemic hierarchies in the classroom to their own discipline-focused art and design instruction.

Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Partial requirement for Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design Conferred with Teaching Experience.

Elective

This course helps prepare graduate students to be effective educators while fostering a community of shared ideas while teaching at RISD. Designed to support graduate students while they are teaching in RISD's Wintersession, the course is a practicum in which participants discuss practical and theoretical concerns related to collegiate teaching and learning.

As a forum, the course provides a space for group reflection on teaching experiences and challenges in addition to developing effective learning and assessment strategies. Through structured feedback from faculty, students evaluate their teaching effectiveness and document their development as teacher- scholars through refining, expanding and updating the teaching portfolio. In an immersive teaching and learning experience, graduate students will have an opportunity to share and apply knowledge of diverse learning styles and methods, and an awareness of how social identities produce systemic hierarchies in the classroom to their own discipline-focused art and design instruction.

Each participant is required to be teaching or co-teaching a Wintersession course. Partial requirement for Certificate in Collegiate Teaching in Art + Design Conferred with Teaching Experience.

Elective

This course will focus on the graduate level inquiry of wood-based construction designs and commensurate skills. Lighting and upholstery techniques, as well as outside vendor protocols, may also be employed pursuant to the graduate student's design needs. Graduate students will develop a multi-lateral skill set applicable to their area of study. Thesis concepts are often explored within this class. Students concentrate, in sequence, six weeks of Studio Based Learning of techniques and skills followed by six weeks of dedicated, full scale, designed and executed piece. Located in the Center for Integrated Technologies, CIT Bldg, the Graduate Studies Wood Studio will focus on contemporary and traditional: joinery, shaping, and vacuum lamination construction techniques. In addition, metal (cold working) techniques and manipulation are also covered. Surface treatments and finishing methods for metal and wood will be covered throughout this class.

Elective

Join a community of thesis writers, whether as a first-year graduate seeking to unearth a direction for the Master’s written document or as a second-year graduate engaging the completion process. In an atmosphere that allows you to open up, “stretch out” in reflection, and dynamically gather in exchange, this writing-intensive seminar will enable you to explore relevant ideas, themes, core values, and conduct research in support of the inquiry process. Sessions involve scrutinizing various angles of your perspective as an artist/designer and to write from these angles to discover the emerging aspects of solutions that matter. Each class will suggest a specific theme or principle of inflection to precipitate what is needed for the work’s progress. Included will be several forms of writing: narrative essay, poetic formations, lists, annotation, review, extended caption, as well as several levels of research: bibliographic, archival, fieldwork, dialogue, interviews. Emphasis will be on maps of meaning that will be used as a way to further processes of ideation and understanding. At the conclusion of the seminar, you will have a conceptual focus for your thesis that is clearly formulated visually and verbally. The writings and insights from this time can then be used productively to further the breadth and depth of your ideas through open-ended exploration and self-generated work.

The course offers students a forum for exploring historical and theoretical foundations of contemporary design and craft arts. Readings, discussions, lectures, and writing projects address a range of contexts for the practice of design, from materials and making, to ways that objects are encountered, consumed, and lived with, to design's promises and limitations for dealing with global crises of climate, poverty, conflict, disease, and displacement. Weekly meetings are structured around critical themes selected through student input. Readings and case studies offer points of departure for discussion and writing. Guest lectures by designers, curators, and critics provide viewpoints on contemporary practice. Culminating with a final artist statement and presentation, the work undertaken throughout the term will be oriented toward developing historical and critical frameworks in which to situate students' own studio and research practices.

Elective

Inventive Political Ecologies is a HPSS elective and NCSS core seminar. The course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Inventive Political Ecologies. This course will critically interrogate the many different proposals for inventive political ecologies that have emerged out of the critical social sciences, technology and engineering studies and the broad fields of design, planning and architecture. We will collectively discuss and debate what these inventive political ecologies might offer for addressing and acting on the environmental and climate crisis. We will consider ways in which discussion of “invention” and “innovation” can both open up and sometimes narrow eco-political and environmental discussions. Finally, we will continually consider which inventive political ecologies might help us move towards designing and building more just post-carbon futures.

Undergraduate students register for HPSS S702 - INVENTIVE POLITICAL ECOLOGIES.

Elective

The unknown gap of the 'betwixt and between' is a space of great curiosity and charge. It is a space that has captured the imagination of many artists, designers and writers throughout time. The main interest in this course is to investigate the nature of this space, how it is experienced, understood and given meaning from multiple viewpoints in art, design and literature, and ways in which it can become a space of significance for our practice as artists and designers. As background to our own research, we examine features of the betwixt and between as it is evoked in the writings of the pre-Socratic thinkers, the theories of anthropologist Victor Turner, the lectures of composer John Cage, William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin's book titled The Third Mind, and philosopher Gaston Bachelard's view of spatial poetics. Artists also walk us to that space, as is the case with Eva Hesse's threshold Works on Paper, Anselm Kiefer's preoccupation with ambivalence, and Anish Kapoor's sublime voids. Most importantly, we will make and write as a way to see and understand the various forms and ways the betwixt and between presents itself in our own work.

Elective

Motion can be used as a dynamic and interdisciplinary tool to communicate ideas and narratives that utilize time based media. The intention of this studio class is to equip students with understandings of the mechanics of motion, making and working through analysis and discussion of motion pieces, which they will then use to inform decisions, harnessing motion as a tool for presentation of their work and its documentation as well. Students will navigate motion through the 12 principles of animation, assess moving pictures across different media like live action films, traditional animation, stop motion animation, advertising and motion graphics through diverse screenings. They will also draw on their understanding of time, sequencing, narratives and techniques in their own creative practices. Students will begin with a solid foundational understanding of After Effects, be equipped with essential skills and techniques like working with hand-drawn animation, stop motion and motion graphics using text based-media. As a project focus for the course, students will work on a 45-second motion project of their choice, using vector graphics, kinetic type, or object stop motion. From pre-production to post-production, they will consider processes like storyboarding and sound in creating their visual sequences.

Elective

This Exhibition design course supports the complex and expanding roles of today’s designers and artists, and introduces students to the many facets of exhibition design, from concept development through execution. Exhibition design showcases the interdisciplinary nature of our industries, and are a powerful way to shape how stories, ideas, and objects are experienced. This course will cover topics including curatorial practice, identity design, wayfinding, exhibition & spatial design, promotional, publication catalog, and community engagement.

The class will work collaboratively to develop an exhibition that will have an opening near the end of wintersession, and will include a student-led workshop with a publication hand out. The outcomes will include two exhibitions: a larger group show in the GD Commons (TBD) and a smaller tabletop or vitrine exhibition in partnership with Fleet Library Special Collections. Especially as students prepare for senior shows and departmental exhibitions, this is an excellent opportunity to engage with all the steps of an exhibition execution. Guest critics, field trips to the RISD museum to meet with their curatorial and exhibition design teams, as well as meeting the librarians at Fleet Library will help inform our process and work. Students will engage with key questions such as: What is the narrative we are trying to share? How do we shape an audience’s experience? What role does design play in exhibition-making?

Open to Undergraduate Students

Elective

This course challenges students to rethink how they gather inspiration and conduct research for art and design practices. By engaging new sources and collaborative methods, students can creatively generate original research that counters harmful narratives, combats erasure of identity and culture, engages collective memory, celebrates personal experience, or reveals unanticipated insights about a topic, whether new or old to their practice. This course is for students of any discipline, at any stage of their academic journey. Using free tools, students will create publicly accessible, participatory web archives. Students will create surveys, and activate online and in-person networks to gather submissions around a topic of their choosing.

Students will learn to connect their surveys to HTML, enabling responses to auto-populate a website they design. No previous coding experience required. The course combines studio practice, lectures, readings, and discussions. Students will be introduced to key figures such as Mindy Seu, Chia Amisola, and Zoë Pulley to provide examples of how web-based archives can inform and be a part of creative bodies of work beyond the course. Students will connect the research they gather to their existing practice through an open-ended final project of any medium. Experimentation and the cultivation of a collaborative studio culture are emphasized in the classroom as students explore how situated knowledge, lived experience, and varying perspectives can be gathered, shared, and represented.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $100.00

Elective

UI/UX design is the backbone of digital experiences. It shapes how we interact with screens, transforms innovative ideas into intuitive interfaces, guides navigation through complex systems, and creates aesthetic coherence that makes technology accessible and engaging. At its core, UI/UX design bridges creativity and usability, ensuring that digital products are not only functional but also meaningful and enjoyable to use.

This workshop introduces students to the workflow and foundational knowledge of UI/UX design for smartphone applications. Using Figma as the primary tool, students will learn methodologies and tools central to app design, including researching existing forms and functionalities, translating concepts into wireframes, and developing visual aesthetics and navigation systems. In the initial sessions, students will analyze the intuitiveness and patterns of existing apps, critically assess and redefine their functionalities, and explore alternative modes of use. Subsequent sessions focus on redesigning an app by addressing existing frustrations or repurposing its intended use, creating prototypes that challenge standard user expectations, and developing high-fidelity interactive prototypes that integrate navigation and interaction design. No prior experience in UI/UX or coding is required, and coding will not be taught in this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Elective

UI/UX design is the backbone of digital experiences. It shapes how we interact with screens, transforms innovative ideas into intuitive interfaces, guides navigation through complex systems, and creates aesthetic coherence that makes technology accessible and engaging. At its core, UI/UX design bridges creativity and usability, ensuring that digital products are not only functional but also meaningful and enjoyable to use.

This workshop introduces students to the workflow and foundational knowledge of UI/UX design for smartphone applications. Using Figma as the primary tool, students will learn methodologies and tools central to app design, including researching existing forms and functionalities, translating concepts into wireframes, and developing visual aesthetics and navigation systems. In the initial sessions, students will analyze the intuitiveness and patterns of existing apps, critically assess and redefine their functionalities, and explore alternative modes of use. Subsequent sessions focus on redesigning an app by addressing existing frustrations or repurposing its intended use, creating prototypes that challenge standard user expectations, and developing high-fidelity interactive prototypes that integrate navigation and interaction design. No prior experience in UI/UX or coding is required, and coding will not be taught in this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Elective

UI/UX design is the backbone of digital experiences. It shapes how we interact with screens, transforms innovative ideas into intuitive interfaces, guides navigation through complex systems, and creates aesthetic coherence that makes technology accessible and engaging. At its core, UI/UX design bridges creativity and usability, ensuring that digital products are not only functional but also meaningful and enjoyable to use.

This workshop introduces students to the workflow and foundational knowledge of UI/UX design for smartphone applications. Using Figma as the primary tool, students will learn methodologies and tools central to app design, including researching existing forms and functionalities, translating concepts into wireframes, and developing visual aesthetics and navigation systems. In the initial sessions, students will analyze the intuitiveness and patterns of existing apps, critically assess and redefine their functionalities, and explore alternative modes of use. Subsequent sessions focus on redesigning an app by addressing existing frustrations or repurposing its intended use, creating prototypes that challenge standard user expectations, and developing high-fidelity interactive prototypes that integrate navigation and interaction design. No prior experience in UI/UX or coding is required, and coding will not be taught in this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $25.00

Elective