In this studio elective, students will explore extended reality (XR) technologies and their implications for our shared spaces and collective futures, from surveillance and smart cities to interfaces and intimacy. Looking far beyond traditional tech canons — which skew heavily institutional, Western, white, and male — we will actively work to broaden and upend existing narratives about XR’s uses, users, and possibilities.This course is ideal for students looking to connect their own research interests with critical approaches to augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) tools and concepts. Students can expect to leave the course with new technical skills, a body of self-initiated work, and a critical understanding of the promises and perils of extended realities past, present and future. We will focus on beginner-friendly, no- and low-code software, but students who know how to code are welcome to use more advanced techniques in their work. In the class’s first third, workshops and experimental exercises briefly introduce AR/VR tools, photogrammetry, and 3D modeling. Over the rest of the semester, students develop two individual projects. Regular feedback, shared during 1-on-1 meetings and group critiques, will help students define their own process, motivations, and criteria for success. Throughout, in lectures, readings, and discussions, we will analyze diverse work by artists, designers, technologists, and activists who are imagining alternatives to big tech’s constrained visions for our shared futures.

Estimated Cost of Materials : $100.00

Elective

In a society that elevates individualism and expertise, glassmaking refuses these modes of making and instead opens artists to a space of community and experimentation. This course introduces students to concepts of creative refusal and values-based making through glassmaking, drawing on a long history of artists who challenge norms to critique and reimagine the world around them. Glassmaking is an inherently community-oriented process as it can’t be done alone. So what does it mean for us to connect to the value systems embedded in a process - such as refusal and community in glass - and relate them to our own exploration of a material and our act of making with it? And how can we bring our own values into this creative process?

By connecting the communal nature of glassmaking to artistic and personal values, students will explore how material and process might intersect with their own beliefs. Through lectures and creative prompts, students will engage with art movements like Dadaism and Relational Aesthetics, discovering how the ideas of these movements relate to the dynamic, collaborative nature of glass. As students experiment with traditional and nontraditional glass techniques through glassblowing, casting, and imagery creation—they will develop technical skills while reflecting on how these methods inform their own creative process. This hands-on, experimental studio course is open to all experience levels. Students will learn through demonstrations, lectures, discussions, readings, and critiques, gaining both technical proficiency and a deeper understanding of the values that shape their own lives and artistic practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Elective

This five-week studio course introduces students to fundamental glassblowing and casting techniques including glass hot casting, plaster blow mold and kiln slumping while challenging conventional notions of the connection between glass and vessel. Glass has long been shaped to contain, preserve, and transport. Yet what does it truly mean to hold? This course centers on reconsidering glass vessels more than functional objects; they define space, create boundaries, and mediate the relationship between inside and outside. In addition to material and technical skill-building, this course emphasizes research and conceptual problem-solving. Assignments will be introduced with presentations focusing on specific themes. Demonstrations will introduce both traditional and non-traditional glass working methods. Students will develop work in response to evolving conceptual frameworks. By the end of the course, students will create a project that redefines the glass vessel in their chosen forms. A field trip to the RISD Museum’s special collections will provide opportunities for students to analyze and reinterpret vessels across cultures and time periods. What stories do these objects tell? How can glass extend beyond its functional role to become a carrier of meaning, memory, or transformation?

This introductory-level class welcomes students eager to experiment and push the boundaries of glass, encouraging creative risk-taking and a deeper exploration of what glass can be. No prior experience is required—just curiosity and a willingness to question, deconstruct, and reconsider expectations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Elective

Clay has been used to make objects for over 20,000 years. It has unique inherent properties with a broad application of use. This course introduces students to the principals involved in the design and production of functional ceramics objects for tabletop and interior spaces. We will employ plaster mold making and ceramic slip casting techniques since this is the preferred method of manufacturing ceramics for both design studios and industry. Students will design at least five distinct objects and produce multiple editions of most of them in response to specific prompts. Innovation and expression will be encouraged. Each project will go through an iteration process to promote refinement of design. This course not only focuses on prototypes but also on completed glazed and fired pieces. The production variations make it possible for students to produce resolved work.

The First half of the semester will focus on two projects. The first will be the design and production of a drinking cup with handle, and the second will build on that with a larger form. We will also do an initial mold-making project to become familiar with the process and a subtractive method for model making.

The second half of the semester will be devoted to designing a collection of interrelated pieces. This will provide a chance for students to dive more deeply into form and function, build on the skills acquired during the first half of the semester and to pursue individual areas of interest. Two or more of the objects in the collection will be selected for production and then developed and refined to finished pieces.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design, MID (2.5yr): Industrial Design

For centuries, myth and folklore have shaped our understanding of the natural world, influencing how we relate to it. These narratives are often annexed by scientific essentialism, disconnecting the human experience from the natural environment. Storytelling, however, can reignite an emotional connection to nature and a deep sense of belonging, fostering a sense of kinship with the environment.'

In this hybrid studio and seminar course, students will explore the intersections of nature and storytelling. We’ll explore myths and folklore from different cultures and the work of different artists engaging with storytelling as a way of conveying knowledge about nature. We will also visit the Brown Conservatory and the RISD Nature Laboratory to converse with objects from nature, creating our own interpretations of these intersections into different visual outputs. We’ll experiment with visual communication forms, such as comics, zines, and posters, considering how these creative expressions play an important role in preserving knowledge that promotes ecological awareness and reinforces human connection with the natural environment. The course content is divided into 3 themes: storytelling, kinship, and communication. These concepts are intertwined, and we will explore them as singular concepts as well as the connections between them.

This course will be informed by the theory of Donna Haraway1 and Leslie Marmon Silko2, who actively think about the relationship between humans and nature from the experience of the body and Indigenous knowledge, respectively. In the same way, it will include examples of folklore and storytelling used to introduce people to engaging with more than human beings.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $150.00

Elective

In this studio course, we will create digital + physical based projects by investigating the body as a medium for communicating personal narratives and observing emotions. Through the analysis of contemporary performance artworks and the use of multimedia software programs, we will engage with sound installation, video, site-specific performance, and related media. Methods such as movement practice, object interaction, field recording, social experiment, and nature observation will guide our exploration of the body’s integration with its surroundings in a nonverbal way.

Do you remember the unspeakable inner trigger that emerges when you begin creating something? What is it? In an era dominated by algorithms, the body exposed to data, reaches the edge of sensation, and often collapses unconsciously. As social hierarchies shift the modern art system into an invisible ‘factory,’ (Hito Steyerl) visual dominance pushes us into the world of ‘hot medium.’ This course challenges us to re-position ourselves as an artist, a doer, a viewer. Between eternity and ephemeral organic reactions, lies a gap that calls for recognition. We will create a supportive space to let the natural body lead, redefining vulnerability as a form of resistance. Engaging with existing works, including Bruce Nauman, Francis Alÿs, Yvonne Rainer, David Tudor, and Aki Sasamoto, we will reinterpret them beyond conventional critique, developing a sensitivity to presence and transforming perception into embodied practice. The course unfolds in three phases: decompose, recompose, and decompose again.

Open to Undergraduate Students

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Liminal Landscapes: Gradient of change within your own landscape. What captivates us about a sunset? Most likely, you’ve enjoyed the sunlight distorted by our atmosphere’s gases and how compelling that transition is. The gradient in the sky, the border between day and night, is a liminal threshold we encounter daily. Like vestibules on buildings, beaches between land and water, marginal vegetation between forest and outside, adolescence is a liminal stage between childhood and adulthood. Liminality can be a gradient from a lesser to most change. Liminality in landscape architecture primes us to understand the change of seasons and the effects of climate change. Applications span ecological, social, cultural, and political topics. In this complex contemporary world, we must break from the binary constraints and embrace the nuances for a more empathetic existence.

The studio will examine experiences, recognize thresholds, and the implications of crossing physical or psychological landscapes. We will achieve this with three short exercises, creating artifacts to detect liminality. We will employ technical drawing methods, texture generation, pinball site analysis, and model-making, among other forms of representation. Readings from Anthropologist Victor Turner, Urban Planner Michel Dear, Landscape Architects like Chip Sullivan and James Corner, Architects like Dilip Da Cuna, and American scholar Gloria Anzaldua, among others, will inform our making practice, applied in a site case study. Short lectures, meditation exercises, field trips, and work sessions will compose our class experiences, culminating in a final presentation and conversation to understand the magnitude of our inhabitance within liminal landscapes.

Elective

This practice-driven course equips design students with the foundational tools to navigate the business side of creative work and design practice. Blending entrepreneurial thinking with design management, it offers a designer’s perspective on essential MBA concepts such as value proposition, market fit, customer segmentation, and business models. The course is ideal for students looking to launch their own ventures or pursue leadership roles in the design management field.

The curriculum builds professional fluency through modules on grant writing, client management, portfolio development, and gaining exposure via design fairs and trade shows. Students will learn to communicate the value of their work—and of themselves as creative professionals—to diverse audiences, while grounding their strategies in ethics and sustainability.

Students will engage with applied frameworks like the Lean Canvas, Agile, and the Business Hypothesis Model to articulate assumptions, identify meaningful problems, and test early- stage ideas. Agile methodologies will help students manage iterative, collaborative design processes effectively. Course activities include Pecha Kucha-style business presentations that sharpen communication and pitching skills—crucial for engaging funders, clients, and collaborators. Conversations with guest professionals will offer insider perspectives on launching and sustaining a design venture.

The curriculum also builds professional fluency through modules on grant writing, client management, portfolio development, and gaining exposure via design fairs and trade shows. Students will learn to communicate the value of their work—and of themselves as creative professionals—to diverse audiences, while grounding their strategies in ethics and sustainability.

By the end of the course, students will have built a tested business or studio concept, developed key entrepreneurial and management skills, and crafted a clear, compelling vision for their creative career.

Elective

Junior Seminar promotes and supports students taking on greater responsibility for the content and impact of their creative practice through reading, writing, and critical discourse. The course content for this seminar is organized around BIPOC thinkers/makers, to foster an awareness of individual and collective perspectives in an effort to allow students to engage in conversations and critical thinking about the tacit racist and colonial attitudes present in the discipline. Students will read from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary sources as well as look at examples of artwork from across cultures to engage in discussions that will call into question assumptions about jewelry and art objects in order to emphasize the importance of developing a comprehensive and critical eye for cultural, social, political contexts and biases. We will journal, read, discuss, research and critique to build upon your individual interests and opinions toward developed critical positions relevant to your internal creative practice and the external contexts you support and contend with. Our shared discussions allow for testing ideas and trying out new roles, allowing you to build experience and confidence in communicating your practice.

In this seminar, we investigate and promote the role of writing in an artistic practice via reading, discussion, exercises, and written assignments. A directed effort to source texts of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ from both within and external to the jewelry field are implemented to step outside the reasoning of the studio and tread further into speculative dialogs concerning the potential future of the discipline. Please note that this seminar combines critical reading and writing with professional practices. Professional practices are embedded in all of our academic work and communications. Students will be expected to conduct all communications with professionalism, follow instructions as outlined, and complete assignments in a timely and professional manner.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing