At RISD students approach glass as both an artist's material with remarkable expressive range and a studio discipline imbued with limitless potential, incorporating sculpture, architecture, design, craft and decorative art. Both undergraduate and graduate students in Glass discover an open, flexible and expansive studio discipline built on a unique history that dovetails with rapidly expanding dialogues defining innovation and creative practice. The department emphasizes a commitment to both material and conceptual investigations of glass, helping students to refine an individual perspective through disciplined experimentation and rigorous critical inquiry.
Degree programs
- BFA
- 4-year undergraduate program
- MFA / Post-B
- 2-year graduate program/ 1-year post-baccalaureate program
In the studio
Both undergraduate and graduate students have full access to a newly renovated Hot Shop, along with a Cold Shop and kiln and casting rooms. In addition, all students are given individual studio spaces and access to refined installation spaces both within the department and elsewhere on campus.
Mays Albaik | MFA candidate
"In Glass students are encouraged to make their own path and everyone is open to different methods of making. We're also actively engaging with experts in diverse fields, and what I take from these conversations comes into my practice and research in interesting ways. I've established a great foundation here for what comes next."
Student work
Rachel Berwick | department head
“We ask Glass majors to value and nurture their native curiosity as the basis for developing a strong personal aesthetic. Through disciplined investigation of both the material and conceptual manifestations of the medium, students are encouraged to engage with the wide world through continual experimentation and artistic striving.”
Based on the strength of their experience at RISD, Glass alumni tend to remain closely connected with the department. Whether returning as visiting artists and critics or providing internships for current students, they help influence subsequent generations. Accomplished alumni such as Dale Chihuly, Dan Clayman, Karen Lamonte, Judith Schaechter, Tavares Strachan, Bohyun Yoon, Toots Zynsky and many others continue to push the boundaries of the medium and make enormous contributions to advancing the role of glass in contemporary art and design.
Alumni at work
Josiah McElheny BFA 89 | studio artist
Multimedia artist and 2006 MacArthur Award winner Josiah McElheny is fascinated with space, time and the notions of infinity and purity. While at RISD in the mid-1980s, he studied in Rome through the school’s European Honors Program and worked with master glassblowers such as Ronald Wilkins in London. McElheny now lives and works in New York City, where he’s represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery and has recently exhibited at White Cube in London and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
Anjali Srinivasan MFA 07 | studio artist
Based in Dubai and Chennai, India, glass artist Anjali Srinivasan creates provocative original works that are shown worldwide, with recent exhibitions in New York, New Delhi, Seattle and Sydney, Australia, among other locations. She recently has a successful solo show at the DakshinaChitra art center in Chennai, and has taught at the famed Pilchuck Glass School, an international center for glass art in Seattle, WA, founded in 1971 by fellow alumnus Dale Chihuly. Anjali also creates work on commission and travels the world teaching workshops, offering demonstrations, speaking about her research and serving as a visiting artist and critic for a wide range of cultural organizations.
Tavares Strachan BFA 03 | fine artist
Born in the Bahamas and based in NYC, Tavares Strachan is
known for exploring environment, materials and the limits of the human body in
his work. He often works on a massive scale, harvesting a 4.5-ton block of ice
from the Arctic Circle for
The Distance
Between What We Have and What We Want
and “showing” nine years of work in a
20,000-sf industrial space for the closed exhibition
seen/unseen. Continually challenging the idea that place delimits
identity and experience, Strachan represented the Bahamas at the 55th
Venice Biennale with the multi-sensory Polar Eclipse, an installation
documenting his voyage to the North Pole.
