This course is designed to give junior majors a thorough and deep understanding of the intermediate-level workflow for film capture and scanning and digital camera RAW file capture. Both workflows allow students to produce the highest quality inkjet prints on large-format printers. This course will touch on many topics, including advanced tonal and color correction techniques, image sharpening, digital camera exposure and Raw file processing, inkjet and Lightjet printing and automated batch file processing. While this course is primarily technical, students are expected to pursue their ongoing personal work to fulfill assignments, culminating in a final portfolio of 10 finished digital prints that demonstrate mastery of the techniques learned in the course. Students entering the course should be proficient in the use of the Macintosh platform and basic Photoshop operations and have a good understanding of processing and printing in black and white photography. Transfer majors must demonstrate these proficiencies to the satisfaction of the department before being permitted to enroll in this course.

Prerequisite: PHOTO-5308 for undergraduates.

Major Requirement | BFA Photography

This course will wrestle with the mercurial and ever-evolving subject of Time-Based art. What is Time-Based art? Is it simply art with durational elements that unfold over the course of the work? Is it art that depends on time to define itself? Is it art that can only exist within the confines of regulated space? Is it art that stands firmly in the aftermath of what preceded it? Is it art that keeps time, wastes time, witnesses time, changes time, rearranges time, or records time? In this course, we will explore and welcome work being made under the broad umbrella of Time-Based work, such as: documentary photography, video art, experimental film, performance art, recorded happenings, social practice, and sculpture made with temporal dimensions. The course will operate as a studio course, with students being asked to present work for critique regularly, as well as weekly discussions of historical and contemporary investigations and demonstrations of Time-Based art.

Elective

In the photographic art world today, exciting new forms of print production have expanded expressive choices for artists, often combining processes from the earliest days of photography with the latest advances in digital media. In this course, students will explore a number of vintage and experimental photographic processes, including cyanotype, wet collodion, platinum/paladium printing, albumen, gum bichromate and liquid light. The goal of the course is to broaden the student's repertoire of photographic printmaking techniques and allow for experimentation with hybrid forms that combine old and new methods in innovative ways.

Estimated Materials Cost: $150.00 - $200.00

Elective

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

This class will explore the countless means of representation that exist in photographic portraiture or pictures of people. Through a close examination of the historical and contemporary uses of the camera, students will make portraits that are informed by the complexity of meaning, intention, and ethical considerations, coupled with the formal, technical, and experimental ways to create portrait photographs. Students will gain experience utilizing traditional photographic tools together with current print production technologies, as well as develop a deeper photographic literacy.

This course combines an overview of the history, theory, political influences, trends of expression and a survey of past and contemporary artists working in the field, with the opportunity for students to put theoretical study into practice through assignments that aid in the development of one's own project. In weekly critiques of student documentary work including journals that record one's process and self reflection, we will explore the process, grapple with ideological issues that arise, and challenge each other to push our understanding and the development of a documentary language further.

Elective

This course is an ongoing discussion of individual work with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art. Each student will be required to show and discuss work. Grades by participation.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

The Graduate Seminar works in complement with Graduate Critique to provide a forum in which students assemble in discussion, analysis and reflection around a set of ideas, practices and histories that are of substantial relevance to photography, its history and its contemporary forms. The content of the seminar will vary from year to year, but students will be expected to read, research, discuss, write about and/or present on the material addressed in class. The seminar will interact with the department's Visiting Artist lecture series, with the SEI Lecture Series, and with MCM events at Brown. Attendance at those lectures is highly recommended.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Photography Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Photography

In this RISD Global Summer Session course, students will experience the typographic culture (both ancient and contemporary) of the city of Rome, Italy, as a source for inspiration, understanding, and explorations in their creative practice using contemporary letterpress printing. The course consists of guided walks through the city with its vast typographic resources and archives, combined with studio work in letterpress printing taking place at Betterpress Lab, in the active Roman neighborhood of Trastevere.

The course will begin by using the inscriptions and typography in the streets of Rome as a source material in understanding the development of the Latin alphabet and its evolution into the always changing contemporary letterforms we use today. The technological, political, and social forces pushing these developments and changes will be analyzed, as will the always present resistance to established forms and uses, and how all of these factors shape our present visual typographic culture. Studio work will be based out of Betterpress Lab, an independent letterpress printmaking studio founded in 2014 by Francesca Colonia and Giulia Nicolai, with a focus on creative uses of historical handset type as a form of cultural, social, and political resistance.

Students will have the opportunity to design and create typographic compositions using original movable type from the Betterpress Lab collection, learning hand-set letterpress printing, developing print projects to establish and improve basic letterpress printing skills, culminating with the production of a collective group print portfolio based on the individual students investigations.  No previous letterpress printing, printmaking, or typographic design experience is required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Registration is not available in Workday. Students must complete an application through RISD Global Summer Studies. A minimum GPA of 2.5 is required for all RISD students. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Additional information including deadlines and travel costs can be found on the Global Summer Studies website.

Intaglio: Alternative Practices builds bridges from experience in the medium of intaglio by presenting advanced and innovative platemaking and printing processes using copper, plexiglass, and polymer plate types. Coursework will cover topics such as: custom stop-outs, extended etches, ink interfacing, toner transfers, and extensions into the digital realm utilizing the Benson Hall “Tech Lab” resources. Demonstrations and assignments will focus on the virtues of plating material, not solely as printable matrices, or carriers of transferrable visual information, but also as finished objects. The semester will be driven by demonstration, guided in-class work, independent work focused on experimentation, and conversation geared toward alternatives to substrate (paper), matrix (copper, polymer, plexi), and medium (ink). The semester will culminate in a self-directed final project that requires students to generate a grouping of works that successfully combine a selection of the processes covered which includes a substantial set of proofs, studies, plating tests, and pertinent supplementary visual/technical research.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00

Elective

Printmaking and The Politics of Protest examines the role of prints and printed matter in the context of political protest, the power of images, and how artists as well as non-artists have asserted and supported social justice and sustainability issues through art. While exploring the historical and structural basis of inequality, students will learn different theoretical paradigms and techniques for visual analysis in order to understand how visual media can inscribe and dismantle power and be a catalyst for change while mediating numerous social, economic, cultural and political differences. More importantly students will form recognition of their positions in an increasingly pluralistic world while fostering an understanding of social and cultural differences. This will be investigated through some of the following methods: lectures, exhibitions, guest lectures, video, historical art and media, group research initiatives, and the discussion of and creation of images that define and explore issues impacting our lives.

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

This course offers basic black and white lithographic technical applications on lithostone and lithoplate to those students who are at the beginning level. Contemporary techniques, and technical short-cuts will elaborate on traditional processing. Experimentation is encouraged throughout the semester while emphasis is placed on the development of personally innovative imagery and concept. Informal group and individual critiques are conducted in conjunction with group mid-semester and final critiques. A professionally portfolio of assigned prints is due at the end of the course. Course may be repeated for credit.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

Students will stretch their own screens and will be introduced to a wide range of stencil techniques (cut film, paper stencil, crayon and glue, tusche and glue, and photo). Students are urged to experiment with stencil and printing techniques to produce a portfolio of editioned prints.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $175.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

The use of light-based print processes is ubiquitous in contemporary printmaking. Light to Ink will lay a foundation of knowledge within the printmaking medium for using light as a part of the image-making process. The class is designed to introduce students to the basics of Printmaking using either hand made, digital or photo-made matrixes. The class will learn to make prints using the traditional print methods of intaglio, lithography and screenprint and build a base of information about the production of the film transparencies from which the matrix is made. Students will be taught the skills necessary to take the photo, computer, or handmade image from a one or a series of positive transparencies to a finished print. From Light to Ink is a starting point for growth and exploration in photo printmaking and an introduction to printing in intaglio, lithography and screenprint. No prior knowledge of printmaking is required. This class is most appropriate for sophomores, juniors and first semester seniors.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Painting Students. 
 

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

Students in the graduate printmaking program will utilize graduate level research and scholarship as an impetus for growth within studio practice. Investigation into historical cycles of printmaking will be fostered through assigned texts and exploration of primary resources available at RISD, especially The RISD Museum. A dialogue stemming from intensive studio work will be developed in varied formats by faculty, visiting artists and peers throughout the semester.

Open to Graduate Painting Students. 
 

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

This is a seminar class for the senior printmaking student. The course addresses practical topics related to becoming a professional artist after graduation. Topics include (1) professional content development as applied one’s CV, artist statement, website, and social media promotion; (2) class discussions about galleries, museums, graduate programs, auction houses, and grants; (3) examination of marketing channels for today’s artist; (4) introduction to business skills and professionalism as appropriate for the art world. Professionals from related fields will be invited to the class to share their expertise and experience. 

Open to Senior Printmaking Students. 
 

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking

Students in the graduate printmaking program will utilize graduate level research and scholarship as an impetus for growth within studio practice. Investigation into historical cycles of printmaking will be fostered through assigned texts and exploration of primary resources available at RISD, especially The RISD Museum. A dialogue stemming from intensive studio work will be developed in varied formats by faculty, visiting artists and peers throughout the semester.

Open to Graduate Printmaking Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Printmaking

This course will introduce students to contemporary letterpress printing. While keeping the broad historical role of letterpress printing in mind, the course will allow students to use the various incarnations of letterpress printing to further their own work. The focus of the course will be learning to print, and print well, how to troubleshoot on the Vandercook proof press, and exploring how the different approaches, processes, papers, and techniques effect and direct the finished work. The course will begin with an overview of letterpress printing history and its relation to the evolution of typography, and its major impact on, and reaction to, societal change. We will first focus on setting and printing from handset type, and more traditional image making techniques (read: Linocuts!), and then introduce digital images through the use of polymer plates. Once the basics of the process have been covered, the focus will be on students using the techniques and processes to further their own work, and the creation of a final project using any of the techniques as appropriate to the piece.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Make you own paper for printing or three-dimensional constructions in this hand on experimental studio course in making paper. Curriculum will include: paper specifications, basic sheet formation, Japanese Plant fibers, recycled materials, paper modules and screens, along with paper structures for installation based work.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $175.00

Elective

This course primarily involves the search for a personal, idiosyncratic visual statement. Juniors will refine technical application, engage in experimentation and study historical/contemporary artists and movements as the course progresses from scheduled project orientation to more independent bodies of work involving printmaking and its combinations with other mediums. Installation and presentation of work created will be analyzed as a critical component. This course will encompass oral discussion and presentations. Critiques will be frequent, in individual and group format including a group mid-term critique and end of semester critique that includes an invited, guest critic. In addition to the visual component of the course, instruction in seminar form will comprise visual artist professional practice methods that involve resume, cover letter, and employment application. Presentation of work in gallery, museum and professional interaction formats will also be part of the course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Major Requirement | BFA Printmaking