Sophomore Jewelry I is the first of two introductory studio classes which will familiarize students with the creative jewelry studio environment. Fundamental tools and techniques integral to working with metal are introduced during class demonstrations over the semester. Class projects are structured to blend the use of tools with techniques and are introduced in order of complexity. The course begins with designing and constructing structurally sound 3D objects from 2D metal sheet stock. By the conclusion of the semester students are equipped with technical skills to make jewelry informed with an awareness of the body as site. This is the first of a two-semester course.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This course is designed to challenge first year graduates to rethink their previous assumptions about their work, prior training, working methodologies and approaches to their practice. Through a series of rigorous and innovative start-up exercises, graduates are encouraged to expand their subjects, abandon their comforts zones, fail, edit, and (re) direct their work. Equal emphasis is placed on critical thinking and critical making. Faculty, meet weekly, individually with each student to provide constructive feedback and necessary structure. In small group discussions and in-class reviews, first years are required to actively participate in discourse and take responsibility for the collective dialogue. The resulting insight and shared knowledge between students, along with their own personal gain, sets the tone and direction for their work at RISD over the next two years.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This introductory metalsmithing course blends technical instruction with an investigation of design and concept as it relates to ornament and function. Students develop confidence and proficiency with the basic skills of forming non-ferrous metal. Specific techniques that will be covered are raising, forging, finishing non-ferrous metals, sawing, filing, drilling, sanding, polishing, annealing, surface embellishment, planishing and patination. We will also cover safety in the studio, proper hand-tool care, and the physical properties of metal. It is the goal of this course for students to gain an understanding of metal as a material and a broad understanding of the field of Jewelry and Metalsmithing. Assignments will build on each other and become more challenging throughout the semester. Each project given will rely on technical, formal and conceptual development. Classroom discussions, demonstrations and visual presentations will focus attention on traditional technical skills, design considerations, and the breadth of this exciting field.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This course is an interactive lecture class. A series of distinctly varied individuals active in the field of jewelry will be invited to make presentation about their professional development. These diverging presentations are intended to offer a catalyst to stimulate questions, and encourage group discussion. Among the subjects to be presented are: individual studio practice, designing for industry, gallery connections, non-profit opportunities, partnerships, global opportunities, curatorial and journalistic prospects, wide world of the web, post graduation educational options, support systems for RISD alumni, residency prospects, and technology as resource for design and production. Students will be asked to keep an active journal of weekly observations and fulfill 3 class assignments connected with their ambitions and career interests.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This course provides students with fundamental skills required to use Rhinoceros based 3D modeling CAD software. Rhino 3D facilitates the exploration of materials, and offers opportunities to push traditional fabricating techniques and enhance drawing skills. Research, models and innovative approaches are in direct response to questions of inquiry brought forward through design problems in the class. This class much like other software driven courses tend to be front end heavy with technical information. This information is obtained by completing assignments in an ordered fashion to ensure that the software covered in order for students to have a strong foundation moving into the JUNIOR JEWELRY: FROM CAD TO CAM course.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Following the completion of the first year, second-year graduates identify their personal areas of interest essential to the development of their thesis research and practice. Students are required to outline and pursue independent work with a self-determined structure, timeline, and intentions. Regardless of outcome, students are expected to evidence their progress weekly during individual meetings with faculty. Central to the second year, graduates are required to demonstrate a high level of self-motivation, vision, and initiative reflected through their concentrated inquiry and the rigorous exploration of their ideas. In conclusion of the term, second year graduates are required to complete a thesis presentation, to a J+M faculty review committee, in approval of their preliminary objectives and strategies in preparation for Graduate J+M Thesis.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This course is an introduction to the fundamentals of design and metal fabrication techniques for both jewelry and small objects. Working with precious and non-precious metals, students learn traditional jewelry construction including sawing, filing, forming, soldering, and polishing. A series of structured assignments guide students as they transform their ideas into finished pieces. Solutions for projects are open to enable the student to explore his/her own aesthetic, but taught in a way to insure that students master the basic processes. Lectures on historical and contemporary jewelry supplement, inform, and inspire students' work.

Elective

This course is an introduction to the fundamentals of design and metal fabrication techniques for both jewelry and small objects. Working with precious and non-precious metals, students learn traditional jewelry construction including sawing, filing, forming, soldering, and polishing. A series of structured assignments guide students as they transform their ideas into finished pieces. Solutions for projects are open to enable the student to explore his/her own aesthetic, but taught in a way to insure that students master the basic processes. Lectures on historical and contemporary jewelry supplement, inform, and inspire students' work.

Elective

This course utilizes general and specific topoi to critically analyze the field of contemporary jewelry. Students will develop the ability to write and speak with precision and complexity regarding their own work and that of others. In the process, we will create a communal topography generated by a network of inquiry to aid in locating ourselves and objects. Students have significant latitude to incorporate individual interests in written assignments. Themes addressed include but are not limited to: cultural identity, material history, marginalization, and exhibition strategies.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This course is devoted to developing one's abilities to write and speak with precision and complexity, about one's own work and the work of others. We will examine trends and movements in contemporary art through the lens of critical theory. We will investigate what contemporary art can tell us about the relationships between history, images, and visual culture, subsequently developing the skills necessary to write about your work, what it articulates and argues, and the ideas and traditions from which it emerges. Each term will identify and address a new set of themes relevant to course content.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

In this studio, first-year graduates begin to recognize and develop personal areas of interest. Direction is given to bring structure to the exploration of various processes, materials, concepts, and formats. Weekly individual meetings focus on student's progress and response to assignments, as well as independent research.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

In this studio course, second-year students identify and pursue personally driven research. Weekly individual meetings and studio visits take place with the instructor, and also with scheduled first-year and second-year group critiques. Students are required to maintain a continuous record of their research and development through drawings, writings, samples, models, etc. Active participation in group discussions and critiques is mandatory.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Since its chance discovery millennia ago, glass has developed into an integral and ubiquitous part of daily life. Through lectures, student presentations and field trips to the RISD museum and/or local glass studios, this course is designed to introduce students to the various ways this quixotic material has been made, used, and thought about across time. This survey course employs a chronological format and methodologies of art history, history of science, and material culture to investigate the range of glass objects, formulae, and production methods in use since glass' earliest manufacture through the mid-twentieth century. We will also examine the broader social and cultural contexts in which glass was made and explore the following themes as they relate to the history of glass: mimesis, clarity, innovation, reflection, light, and science.

Major Requirement | BFA Glass

This course is an historical and critical study of the work of selected masters of animated film. A spectrum of animated film techniques, styles, national schools, etc., will be presented. The course will cover the period from the pre-Lumiere epoch to the end of the 1970's. The relationships between animated film and other visual art forms will also be studied.

Elective

This course will examine personalities working in Europe and in North America as well as non-western regions in the period 1400 to 2009. Areas of study will include an examination of interior architecture related issues that will be studied in the context of their social, political, technological, and economic circumstances, as they pertain to the design culture of the period. Special emphasis will be given to interior additions and renovations and other interventions. Other areas of study will include the development of architectural drawing, and the way in which designs often evolved through committees, or ongoing consultations among patrons, designers, administrators, and scholars. Attention will also be given to design theory, and the doctrines relating to site, orientation, proportion, decorum, and the commercial design market. A general background in the history of art and design is desirable but not mandatory.

Open to Sophomore Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

This course provides a cultural history of landscape and landscape architecture through various voices, lenses, and built examples. Following a loose chronology, this seminar will trace the shifting trajectory of landscapes at multiple scales, including lawns, gardens, and suburbs; roads and sanitary infrastructure; agricultural and energy landscapes; rivers and waterfronts, among others. As the second history-theory course in the sequence, we will continue to build upon key concepts explored in History-Theory 1, such as the relationship between Nature and culture, land ethics, systems thinking and ecology, and how landscape architecture has operated as a site for unequal, racialized distributions of power. To that end, we will study, define, critique, and attempt to make sense of the multiplicity of actors that shape environments, including the role of the Designer and the inextricably intertwined forces of colonization and capitalism, federal policies, non-humans, shifting attitudes about Nature, etc. 
 
To provoke critical thinking about the development of landscape form and ideas, readings will be drawn from various perspectives, including landscape architecture, social and environmental history, anthropology, science and technology studies, queer and feminist studies, and geography. These fields will help us understand history as a foundation for thinking about the landscape’s relationship between past and present and center and margin. By critically probing landscape architecture’s canon and its counter-narratives, we will consider how we can be better poised to understand and articulate our own contributions to the field as future practitioners.

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

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

The course will focus on the diverse new roles encountered by the architect in the 20th century: form maker, administrator of urban development, social theorist, cultural interpreter, ideologue. Emphasis will be placed upon the increasing interdependence of architecture and the city, and the recurrent conflicts between mind and hand, modernity and locality, expressionism and universality.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Architecture Students and first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr): Architecture

The course will focus on the diverse new roles encountered by the architect in the 20th century: form maker, administrator of urban development, social theorist, cultural interpreter, ideologue. Emphasis will be placed upon the increasing interdependence of architecture and the city, and the recurrent conflicts between mind and hand, modernity and locality, expressionism and universality.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Architecture Students and first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr): Architecture

How does illustration shape ideas, information, opinion, and culture? How can images make or break “truth”? How does aesthetic delight contribute? This course considers ways Illustration has intersected with authority and resistance globally. From pre-history to the present, we critically analyze how belonging is visually defined in culture and community. We consider illustrators’ participation in systems of governance, knowledge, and communication; and illustrators’ roles in justice, health, spirituality, education, leisure, and community. We study non-industrial forms, as well as how print and electronic technologies shape illustrative processes and aesthetics. We also discuss theories, ethics and controversies in the making and consumption of illustration in order to implement our tools, skills, and ideas responsibly.

Major Requirement | BFA Illustration

How does illustration shape ideas, information, opinion, and culture? How can images make or break “truth”? How does aesthetic delight contribute? This course considers ways Illustration has intersected with authority and resistance globally. From pre-history to the present, we critically analyze how belonging is visually defined in culture and community. We consider illustrators’ participation in systems of governance, knowledge, and communication; and illustrators’ roles in justice, health, spirituality, education, leisure, and community. We study non-industrial forms, as well as how print and electronic technologies shape illustrative processes and aesthetics. We also discuss theories, ethics and controversies in the making and consumption of illustration in order to implement our tools, skills, and ideas responsibly.

Major Requirement | BFA Illustration