Hundreds of rising juniors and seniors are learning the ropes working for arts organizations and design firms from coast to coast.
RISD Students Test-Drive Their Studio Skills in a Wide Range of Professional Summer Internships
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“Interning at Space NY this summer closely aligns with my studies at RISD designing spatial experiences and determining how narratives get translated into physical space,” says grad student Emma Davis MDes 27. “Designers here blur the lines between architecture, visual merchandising, and fashion, working closely with apparel and jewelry brands to develop architectural environments that enhance their products and aesthetics.”
Within the Interior Architecture department at RISD, Davis focuses on Exhibition and Narrative Environments and spends a lot of time ideating and creating, so she sees this internship as an opportunity to build professional interpersonal skills. “It’s important to be able to calmly problem-solve when something unexpected happens, accept critique, juggle multiple responsibilities, and communicate,” she explains. “The goal is to find a balance between designing something artistic and creative that fits our client’s vision and budget and can also be fabricated and constructed by our shop team.”
“It’s important to be able to calmly problem-solve when something unexpected happens, accept critique, juggle multiple responsibilities, and communicate.”
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Davis is contributing to the interior design for a restaurant in Miami and working with clients in the apparel design industry on their fall collections. “One of our clients wants their fabric display to look like cashmere but be made of a more cost-effective material, so my coworker and I went to the Garment District to collect swatches,” she says. “I’m also making mood boards for another client planning a department store popup with an autumn in Paris theme incorporating Parisian architectural elements we can realistically re-create.”
The high-level work Davis is contributing as a summer intern strikes a chord for RISD Careers Internships Manager Karen Harris 86 IL. “What we hear from many of the companies we work with is that RISD’s hands-on curriculum produces students who make great interns able to think about the projects they work on as a whole, rather than just being worker bees,” she says. Her team’s longstanding efforts are tied to a new student readiness program that launched earlier this year. The goal of the program is to build systems, structures, and practices that prepare RISD’s diverse student body to thrive in their chosen professional practices once they’ve graduated.
Harris and her colleagues helped to place more than 300 students in paid internships this summer, including rising senior Rena Yan 27 IL, who is working at DC Comics as a consumer products/themed experiences intern. “My dream job is to work on DC animation projects, so this is a great place to start,” Yan says. “The Career Center was a big help. I was there almost every week getting feedback on my resume, portfolio, and cover letters.”
“The Career Center was a big help. I was there almost every week getting feedback on my resume, portfolio, and cover letters.”
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Although she hopes to someday work on a creative team designing characters from scratch, Yan says she’s learning a lot from cleaning up existing DC Comics artwork for possible use on consumer products like fashion apparel and high-end collectibles. “One project I’m working on is turning the Absolute Universe characters into turnarounds for vendors—showing them from as many angles as possible—which I learned to do in a character design class at RISD,” she adds. “I thought I was already really familiar with Photoshop and the other platforms and programs I’m using this summer, but I’m at a whole new level here!”
Yan is already tapping into the network of alumni support RISD artists and designers have access to when they enter the professional world. Fellow Illustration majors Sabrina Futch 19 IL, Jane Bak 15 IL, and Maddie Brewer 19 IL and RISD Alumni Association President Sol Armada de la Cruz 92 AP work on the Warner Brothers studio lot where DC Comics is headquartered and have offered encouragement (and coffee).
“Organizing and archiving prints and photos dating back 20 years is like a tactile way of studying art history.”
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Painting/Printmaking double major Frances Kadushin 28 PR/PT, on the other hand, says she’s enjoying the opportunity to get out of the RISD bubble this summer, interning in New York City at EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. It’s actually her second summer working with the community print shop, the oldest and longest-running such establishment in the US.
“When I went back to RISD after working here last summer, I found that the experience really shaped my work and how I think about making,” she says. “Organizing and archiving prints and photos dating back 20 years is like a tactile way of studying art history. And as an intern, I’m able to earn hours in the shop to create my own work, which is a beautiful thing!”
Rising Textiles junior Marigold Wong 28 TX is also getting hands-on studio experience assisting collaborative installation artist and RISD alum Tanya Aguiñiga MFA 05 FD in Los Angeles. “I was introduced to Tanya’s work in high school through an exhibition called Hella Feminist that changed my perception of what art can be,” she says. “Seeing how art and community work and activism can intersect helped me see a path for myself and inspired me to apply to RISD.”
“Seeing how art and community work and activism can intersect helped me see a path for myself.”
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This summer, Wong is helping to create a collaborative public art installation for Los Angeles’ Westlake/MacArthur Park neighborhood that involves youth-focused nonprofit Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) and Aguiñiga’s binational artist collaborative Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS), among other organizations. “The project celebrates the Indigenous Oaxacan communities that live in the neighborhood and will include a mural, a fountain, and a few other pieces,” she says.
The ceramic fountain she is working on will feature birds that are endemic to Oaxaca created by kids in the HOLA program using templates Wong created. “It references the migration paths of birds as well as Mexico’s migrant communities and their journeys,” Wong explains. “Tanya is amazing! Her approach to making is more intuitive and free-flowing than what I’m studying in the Textiles department, and that is definitely going to carry into my work when I go back to RISD. I’m so grateful for the opportunity.”
Top image: grad student Emma Davis, who is interning at Space NY, matches Pantone colors with swatches pulled for a client in the apparel design industry.
Simone Solondz
August 13, 2026
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