Description

Rivers are layered landscapes that reflect how different societies have related to the land, natural resources and to one another. Shifting values about stewardship, control, extraction, and restoration have become physically manifested in the landscape through the intentional and unintentional shaping of the river landscapes. In this interdisciplinary studio, students will be asked to consider the relationship between textiles and landscape architecture practices to address, reconcile and interpret the complex ecological and cultural histories of rivers. Weaving and other structural textile techniques will be explored as both a metaphor and a physical strategy to weave together the multiple cultural narratives of a river as well as consider how to support the diverse river ecologies and the unique experiential qualities of being at the water's edge. The Blackstone River will provide the geographical, cultural and ecological lens for the studio. Some of the overarching material, formal and performative questions we may ask in the studio are: How can fibers be used to stabilize the water's edge, direct flows and provide habitat for riparian plant and animal species? Can the woven materials become unglued from the ground plane to shape the human aesthetic experience of the water's edge? Can textiles be used to interpret or reveal the multiple stories, histories and layers of the landscape? How can basket weaving traditions inform the way we manage the landscape? How can woven materials be integrated with living plant material, mycelium, and soil? How can the density of a textile aggregate and disperse to respond to different site conditions or to shape the pattern of plant growth? How long should the materials persist? Could they be designed to degrade overtime? What is the relationship between traditional craft practices and digital fabrication or scripting? Can community groups be involved in the construction and installation of the textiles as a way of rebuilding a connection between people and place?

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

All Landscape Architecture graduate students at RISD are required to submit a Thesis Book that is the culmination of the work undertaken in the Advanced Design Research Studio (Thesis). The Thesis Book class is designed to support the written and graphic component of the Thesis Book. The course will provide resources to support the framing and reflection of the thesis work through writing. In addition, the graphic layout of the book will be used as a tool to help structure the inquiry into student's thesis topics.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

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

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

Autumn Site works is a grounded, creative space for a more attentive and reciprocal relationship between people and local biodiversity. Our weekly classroom will be an outdoor test plot at RISD’s Tillinghast Farm, where we will listen to visiting speakers, tend to plants and soil with our hands, and draw our close attention to the many life forms, forces, and surprises in the landscape. Each student will have the creative freedom to design an experimental land-based practice, installation, or event within the plot. Our work will be respectful of diverse ethics, from climate resilience to symbiosis and beauty. However, our learning direction will be focused on topics like the labor of caring for a landscape rich with relationships, local material sourcing for habitat creation, and community stewardship building.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Spring Site works is a grounded, creative space for a more attentive and reciprocal relationship between people and local biodiversity. Our weekly classroom will be an outdoor test plot at RISD’s Tillinghast Farm, where we will listen to visiting speakers, tend to plants and soil with our hands, and draw our close attention to the many life forms, forces, and surprises in the landscape. Each student will have the creative freedom to design an experimental land-based practice, installation, or event within the plot. Our work will be respectful of diverse ethics, from climate resilience to symbiosis and beauty. However, our learning direction will be focused on topics like the labor of caring for a landscape rich with relationships, local material sourcing for habitat creation, and community stewardship building.

Elective

The course delves into the world of maps through a critical lens, examining the role of maps beyond the conventional utilitarian purpose of navigation and exploring them as tools of representation of power, space, and society within the built environment. Drawing from history, theory, and contemporary scholarship the seminar explores key concepts and methodologies of critical cartography, including power and representation, semiotics and symbolism, spatial narratives, countermapping, and the role of technology. From traditional hand-drawn maps to contemporary digital mapping technologies, the course interrogates how maps mediate architectural knowledge production, design, and social interaction.

The course examines maps as sites of contestation, imagination, and social transformation. Moreover, it also explores contemporary representational tools of mapping and data visualization. The students will engage in directed research project and produce story maps as final outputs for the course.

Elective

It is estimated that since the early 1600’s, North American land in the United States has lost half of the wetland habitat that provided essential areas for wildlife, held water on the land, hydrated soils, and supported vast areas of wetland vegetation. Wetlands provide essential fish and wildlife habitat, supporting rare plants, animals, and birds. Wetlands also store carbon, filter pollutants from water, and retain floodwaters. However, the legacy of viewing marshes and swamps as wasteland, continues to result in the degradation and destruction of many freshwater wetlands by human activity. In this field-oriented seminar students will spend class time within these important habitats, learning to understand them for their varied forms, their biodiversity, and their ability to store carbon and water with the potential of ameliorating on-going climate changes. Through field emersion, students will learn to see the landscape for the evidence it holds of what wetland habitat once was. They will identify the plant species that depend on wetlands for their survival, and will become intimately familiar with the water and soil that support these plant species. Extensive reading will support field observations and conversation in the field. The policies that brought about wetland destruction as well as protection, will be topics covered, along with wetland banking and restoration. Final projects for this class will offer students an opportunity to explore how their studio work can inform salient aspects of these watery worlds.  

Estimated Cost of Materials: $75.00

Elective

Participants will be introduced to the medium of Fresco painting. A focus on technical and material aspects of fresco painting will be central to the course. Students will become familiar with the process of building adequate supports needed to hold lime plaster surface for the painting process.  There will be a  historical and industrial analysis of the development of fresco painting as a technology and relationship to architectural spaces. Along with learning the needed skills and technique to create a fresco, students will be encouraged to situate the medium in their current artistic practice and experiment with material, forms and painting process. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Elective

This is a hands-on course, designed for advanced painting students who are fascinated by color, surface, transformation and alchemy, DIY processes, craftmanship, invention, and the stuff of paint. It is for those who are eager to dive deep into all sorts of materials, methods and techniques. The objective of the class is to arm students with the tools and resources to figure out how to make what they imagine and to expand their practice through material exploration and information sharing. With an emphasis on experimentation, play, research and development; advanced students explore, problem solve and implement specific grounds, paints, supports, mediums and tools into their own practices. The level of specialization and expertise students may eventually desire for their work could require seeking the advice of paint manufacturers, conservators, fabricators, other artists or even experts in other fields. How to identify and acquire knowledge outside of one's comfort zone, approaching and finding a common terminology with peers and specialists is also a part of this course. Relevant art historical and contemporary methodologies, techniques and materials will be presented. Environmental Health and Safety guidelines that apply to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Elective

This first-year graduate seminar approaches painting as a technical skill, a historical practice and an intellectual project. Weekly sessions begin with group discussions of key readings about recent painting. Readings are organized in three sections. The first looks backward, to the problem of medium that preoccupied modernist painting and, residually, contemporary practices until the 1980s. The second section looks at the academy, the institution and the art market, and their effect on how painting is produced, disseminated, discussed and received. The third, the most speculative, looks laterally at a range of contemporary practices and their cultural frameworks from the 1990s to the present. Frequent studio visits will occur and drive some of the reading and discussion.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register. Preference is given to Graduate Painting Students.

Elective

This studio-based course will provide the foundation necessary to understand basic color theory and practice in painting, art and design. A historical and cultural perspective will be introduced to inform ongoing color studies executed in the studio. Students will acquire the vocabulary to articulate color phenomena and the means to exploit the expressive potential of color in their work. Color studies will be principally created with gouache, and a variety of other materials and means will also be explored. Lectures, demonstrations, and museum visits will supplement studio work. (An in class presentation is required).

Elective

This studio-based course will provide the foundation necessary to understand basic color theory and practice in painting, art and design. A historical and cultural perspective will be introduced to inform ongoing color studies executed in the studio. Students will acquire the vocabulary to articulate color phenomena and the means to exploit the expressive potential of color in their work. Color studies will be principally created with gouache, and a variety of other materials and means will also be explored. Lectures, demonstrations, and museum visits will supplement studio work. (An in class presentation is required).

Elective

This studio-based course will provide the foundation necessary to understand basic color theory and practice in painting, art and design. A historical and cultural perspective will be introduced to inform ongoing color studies executed in the studio. Students will acquire the vocabulary to articulate color phenomena and the means to exploit the expressive potential of color in their work. Color studies will be principally created with gouache, and a variety of other materials and means will also be explored. Lectures, demonstrations, and museum visits will supplement studio work. (An in class presentation is required).

Elective

The work intensive studio course will involved students in an intense visual, aesthetic and theoretical discussion around the historical relationship of Cinema to Painting and Arts Culture in general and move on to the analyze the current embodiment of Cinema's more conflated and confounded, co-dependant relationship to the Art's of today, tapping into the cross-pollination resulting of imagery, politics and theory's as they apply. Each class meeting will involve studio work and discussion and culminate with a film screening. The film screenings will move forward from Cinema's very beginnings to a few of today's best Indie films. The concentration of the course will be assigned painting projects that will be direct responses to the films being screened and related critiques of these projects as they pertain to the films and the applicable supplemental literature, allowing the discussion around Cinema, cinematic and art critical theory and the Art culture to be transferred to the students individual works thus allowing for the work to be seen in a larger context.

Elective

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that will become an increasingly personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that will become an increasingly personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that will become an increasingly personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that will become an increasingly personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that will become an increasingly personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that will become an increasingly personal statement.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Painting Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

The purpose of this course is to continue development based on Painting I. Individual expression will be encouraged through a series of larger works which require greater time and organizational skill. Experimentation in different painting media, including oil, acrylic, watercolor and mixed media will be encouraged. Group and individual critiques are required. Outside work will be assigned.

Open to non-majors pending seat availability and department permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting