What is the meaning of contemporary? What is the meaning of critique? What are models for sustainable and ethical artistic practice? What is the role of the artist in contemporary culture? These are but a few of the frameworks we will use to explore an array of new tools for thinking, feeling, perceiving, and analyzing the textures of our inter-subjective environment. Together, we will address the challenges implicit in the willful consideration of what exists beyond what we think we know; beyond what we have been told is true about our chosen field as artists. We take up this exploration through a selection of readings, films, lectures and class discussions. Some of the discourses we engage include the relationship between politics and aesthetics, critical race theory, myriad feminist theories, theories of institutional critique, and methods of radical practice in contemporary art.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

What is the meaning of contemporary? What is the meaning of critique? What are models for sustainable and ethical artistic practice? What is the role of the artist in contemporary culture? These are but a few of the frameworks we will use to explore an array of new tools for thinking, feeling, perceiving, and analyzing the textures of our inter-subjective environment. Together, we will address the challenges implicit in the willful consideration of what exists beyond what we think we know; beyond what we have been told is true about our chosen field as artists. We take up this exploration through a selection of readings, films, lectures and class discussions. Some of the discourses we engage include the relationship between politics and aesthetics, critical race theory, myriad feminist theories, theories of institutional critique, and methods of radical practice in contemporary art.

Graduate major elective; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

A Collaborative Study Project (CSP) allows two students to work collaboratively to complete a faculty supervised project of indepedndent study.

Usually, a CSP is supervised by two faculty members, but with approval it may be supervised by one faculty member. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses, though it is not a substitute for a course if that course is regularly offered.

In this intensive independent studio students continue and complete the work began in "EHP Studio Elective", culminating in the final exhibition and review. It corresponds to the remaining four weeks of the program, after students have finished with their Art History and Italian classes.

Note: EHP credits replace the on-campus major requirements for the term students attend. Distribution to non-major requirements occurs when major credits are not needed.

Independent studio is at the core of the EHP experience. Upon arrival, students are assigned studio space at the Palazzetto Cenci, home of RISD's program in Rome. With guidance from the chief critic, each student develops a personal body of work sparked by his/her interactions with places, people and circumstances in Rome and other locations that are part of the EHP tours (such as the Northern, Southern or Eastern tours, as well as other shorter trips.) The work takes as a point of departure knowledge and techniques specific to individual home departments, but allows, and even encourages, explorations beyond disciplinary boundaries, including collaborations and cross-fertilization within a group of students from different departments working together.

Beyond consistent and thorough engagement with studio work, requirements include participation in open studios and exhibitions, presentations in reviews, and attendance to all group activities and events, such as lectures at the Cenci and other institutions. From time to time, the chief critic may issue short assignments to introduce or focus on a particular subject. As part of the studio elective, students may be encouraged to keep sketchbooks and/or diaries, participate in optional activities--such as figure drawing sessions--and search for brief internships, apprenticeships, or other forms of interactions with local artists, designers, curators and critics.

EHP Studio Elective corresponds to the first twelve weeks of the program, while students are also taking Art History and Italian classes. This course establishes the direction for the work in the "Studio Concentration" course that follows.

Note: EHP credits replace the on-campus major requirements for the term students attend. Distribution to non-major requirements occurs when major credits are not needed.

The course will introduce RISD students across multiple disciplines to Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island as a gateway to exploring the relationship between historic sites and installation art. Through class presentations and visiting artist lecture students will be introduced to the history and practice of site specific installation. Individually and as a group students will consider the relationship of this practice to their respective studio work, and the art world at large. Students will engage in research and artistic interpretation as a response to the history, architecture, and sense of place at Fort Adams and develop an independent or collaborative proposal for a site-specific installation. Students will create and install the proposed artworks for exhibition at Fort Adams. The exhibition is undertaken as a collaborative class project. Students co-write an exhibition statement and press release, design and distribute posters and materials for media outreach, seek press coverage, organize and implement a public opening and guided tours.

Elective; open to junior and above.

Permission of Instructor required.

Also offered as TEXT-2232 and SCULP-2232; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

Students pursue individual work under advisement of resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. Individual objectives are clarified and professional practices are discussed. Group interaction and discussions are expected.

Graduate major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Students pursue individual work under advisement of resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. Individual objectives are clarified and professional practices are discussed. Group interaction and discussions are expected.

Graduate major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

The Independent Study Project (ISP) allows students to supplement the established curriculum by completing a faculty supervised project for credit in a specific area of interest. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses.

Permission of Instructor and GPA of 3.0 or higher is required.

Register by completing the Independent Study Application available on the Registrar's website; the course is not available via web registration.

We will create a unique learning environment where a classroom space is dedicated solely to the making and the display of the course work for the duration of the semester. This approach will encourage the participants to generate work that cannot be "carted in and carted out for a critique". The opportunity creates a unique format for interacting and making work within RISD's academic and facility structure. The explorations in this course are based on the fact that absolutely everything is a material and that everything can be manipulated using conditional approaches, responses and skills.

We will start with fundamental skills that use; contextual influences, site specific analysis and behavioral observations. The emphasis will always be on making. You must be willing to adapt the way you work and collaborate with one another during the development and fabrication of every exploration. There will be occasions when you are used as material to be worked with.

After a series of investigations and assignments, studio participants will generate work that is connected to their own interests. Together we will also create an environment within the room that supports the optimum display for all of the individual works. Everyone will be required to document their individual process and contribute to a final class compilation. This course supports the exploration and engagement of interdisciplinary and experiential learning.

Major elective

Open to junior and above

Open to non-majors by permission of Department.

Course not available via web registration.

In Junior Research Studio students will be guided through a series of experiences and encounters in the community, at large that help them understand the local manifestations of larger systems. Along the way, we will ask questions and learn inquiry methods that enable an understanding of how these encounters, the conversations they spawn, and assigned readings we take on help anchor, shape, and guide the aesthetic, material, and media choices we make in our artwork. A continuation of the use of research methods in the context of a studio setting is exercised individually and in groups. Reflection is used as a tool for development. Students are challenged to explore relationships between chosen materials, subject matter, processes, and display in order to establish research practices that help them make the work they want to make.

Estimated Materials Cost: $200.00

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

This course marks a crucial fulcrum in the pathway out of the sophomore experience and into independent work in sculpture. Thematically driven prompts will provide the scaffolding of three major work sessions that direct the conversation in the studio. These studio conversations will take the form of in-process critiques, formal group critiques, and scheduled individual meetings. Students may also expect intersecting projects with shorter timeframes when appropriate. There will be demos in advanced methods and techniques when appropriate. The visiting artist lecture series is a vital component of this course.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

We will explore metal by cutting, machining, bending, warping,welding, stitching, binding, and altering the materials to pushand expand students skills and understanding of metal as material for sculpture. We will discuss, experiment and challenge the notion of metal as traditional industrial workhorse, or as coveted art object and embrace or reject these ideas as we create with this medium. Students will be encouraged to pursue other nontraditional uses of metal, through scavenging, collecting, transforming metal from various states into new surfaces and forms. With safety and ingenuity we will put into practice work of the hand and machine, use computer driven techniques in tandem with the deliberate and accidental to experiment with pattern, surface, line, form and color.

Open to non-majors as a non-major elective.

The professional Internship provides valuable exposure to a professional setting, enabling students to better establish a career path and define practical aspirations. Internship proposals are carefully vetted to determine legitimacy and must meet the contact hour requirements listed in the RISD Course Announcement.

This course is structured according the notion that artists can use what is on hand to research and craft simple solutions to the complex physical, mechanical, and technical problems that must be routinely addressed in their making practices. This material and process based, hands-on, research studio will be structured in response to the issues that the advanced fine arts student is grappling with on a regular basis. Many of the issues that arise in the process of making provide the opportunity to transcend perceived material-based boundaries and thinking. Some of the questions this course attends to include: How do you defy gravity? How do you generate the hidden components required to physicalize the thing we can see in our mind's eye? How is the magic we need to create our work scalable to the resources we have readily available? Example working processes include: mig welding, tig welding, casting for prototyping, woodworking, and mold making.

Open to Fine Arts majors only.

Permission of Instructor required.

This course registers an outgoing exchange student into a pre-approved SCULP studio course which is taken at the exchange school. Successful completion of the course will result in a "T" grade once receipt of the official transcript from the partner school has arrived at Registrar's Office.

This class is a hands-on studio elective that explores the potential of fabric as a sculpture material. We will spend the semester looking at useful examples of how fabrics have been utilized in a broad range of engineered solutions. Fabrics can be flexible, transparent, impermeable, delicate, rigid, lightweight, and stronger than steel. How has fabric been used to represent other materials in art? We will explore how fabric is being used in architecture, advertising, fashion, and design. We will consider the diverse functionality of all kinds of fabric and plastic materials and explore how these materials are engineered for specific purposes. We will study inflatable fabric structures as they have been engineered for art, architecture, advertising and functional objects. Students will build their own projects after learning the basics of patternmaking, assembly, and surface manipulation.

Open to juniors and above.

Permission of Instructor required.

This course is an introduction to the six major practices that are essential to the study of Sculpture. These practices include an introduction to wood, digital imaging, plaster, performance, installation, and metal. Over the course of the year, students will be exposed to four week intensives designed to augment their major studio experience. The course begins with wood to expedite the speed of moving from ideation to physicality. From wood, the group moves to digital imaging where basic skills in video editing, photographic documentation, and projection within the built environment are explored. Plaster as a medium is paired with performance as an activity, both of which underscore the importance of the body within the field of Sculpture. Once students have produced objects, videos, and performances, the group moves into considering the fundamentals of installation and metal fabrication so that the architectures that house myriad artworks can be understood as part of the modality of Sculpture. Students can expect to learn proficiency and safety in all of these areas. Students can expect to expand these skills in advanced studio electives in the Junior and Senior years. This course is required for all Sophomore Sculpture majors.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department; course not available via web registration.

Building on the research and synthesis methods learned in Junior Sculpture: Research Studio, this is an intensive semester designed to strengthen your ability to design, organize, and complete a unified project of your choosing in preparation for next semester's degree project. Emphasis will be placed on refining and questioning your areas of interest as well as strategic planning for the creation of a sustainable creative practice upon the completion of your degree.

Estimated Materials Cost: $300.00

Major Requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Building upon the independent work accomplished in Junior studio, students are expected to generate self directed work supported by in-process critiques, formal critiques, and individual meetings. Faculty and peer feedback will help students clarify their objectives, fine tune their technical abilities, and develop a strong working practice. Students are expected to hone their creative problem-solving skills and engage in a high level of dialog and work. Throughout the fall, students will practice integrating their source research into their studio practice. An increased and rigorous integration of contemporary art, critical theory, and criticism is expected. The visiting artist lecture series is a vital component of this course.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

This beginning sculpture studio encounter is organized to train students to workshop their ideas and concepts with the basic materials and processes of the sculpture studio. In this department we teach visual vocabulary on the basic principle of, "Thinking while making and making while thinking."

The assignments in the Fall Sophomore studio parallels the exercises in technical skills taught in WOOD AND METAL SHOP PRACTICE I.

Students will begin working in sculpture specific metal fabrication methods. Students may expect to gain proficiency in gas, TIG and MIG welding techniques, along with hot and cold forming methods.

The second half of the fall semester is focused on sculpture specific wood fabrication methods. Students will acquire skills in methods of cutting and joining alongside methods of forming and lamination.

Estimated Materials Cost: Students are required to purchase a substantial selection of tools.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

This seminar connects sophomore Sculpture majors to significant parts of the ever-expanding discipline of contemporary sculpture. Over the semester the class will explore how methods of artistic production, materials of artistic transformation, and practices of makers participating in various artistic movements have created and sustained the conversations so integral to contemporary sculptural practice. Through a series of film screenings, assigned readings, slide talks, and discussions, students will gain a familiarity with the historic events and trajectories that continue to produce associative canons and relational movements, forming the foundation of their chosen discipline. The course trajectory is coordinated with topics covered in Sculptural Practices I and II and Sophomore Sculpture: Studio I.

Estimated Materials Cost: $50.00

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Students learn the basics of electricity and electronics while focusing on how to use microcontrollers (one chip computers) in conjunction with sensors, lights, motors, switchers, audio signals, and basic mechanics in works of art. Projects include timekeepers, simple robots, and interactive environments. Readings and slide/video lectures encompass artist-built machines and sculpture from 1900 to the present. Students can expect to spend time outside of class reading and programming, as well as designing and constructing. No previouis experience with electronics is required. Students should have taken a basic computer art course and, ideally, a sculpture course. Computer programming and machine shop skills are definitely a plus.

Major elective

Open to non-majors by permission of Instructor.

A Collaborative Study Project (CSP) allows two students to work collaboratively to complete a faculty supervised project of indepedndent study.

Usually, a CSP is supervised by two faculty members, but with approval it may be supervised by one faculty member. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses, though it is not a substitute for a course if that course is regularly offered.

This course explores the interplay of performance, video, and sculpture. Starting with video as a foundation for mixing time, students will experiment and challenge notions of narrative and how video can function as a material for sculpture. Through experimentation with live cameras, found video, and a broad range of sculptural materials, students will design and collaborate on multi-media performances that integrate into their own practices. This course is open to all multidisciplinary artists with an interest in using media in live performance and installation art. Projects exploring poetry, literature, or emerging art forms are also invited.

Also offered as SCULP-1515; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

Using an interdisciplinary, conceptually-minded approach, this course aims to help students identify, research, and begin to develop a solo show through the exploration of a gallery as a sculptural and inherently political space. Just as artists consider the formal and conceptual qualities of individual pieces, how can this consideration be expanded to encompass an exhibition space and the art world in which it resides?

Areas of focus will include new techniques for research, documentation, proposal writing, and portfolio building. Through considering the design of a solo show and the space it is shown in, students can interrogate their broader conceptual, political, and career goals. We will look to the work and writings of Brenna Bhandat, Martine Syms, Rainer Ganahl, Okin Collective, Na hyun, Anuradha Vikram and Sarah Ahmed and others.

By structuring the course around quick, experimental exercises that are individualized to push students out of their material and conceptual comfort zones, we hope to help students unravel and dig deeper into the existing underlying themes in their work. In addition to these exercises, which will result in partner, small group, and one-on-one feedback, students will do readings and research about the political frameworks and social implications of different exhibition space models, ranging from the commercial gallery to DIY spaces.

Estimated Materials Cost: $75.00

The Independent Study Project (ISP) allows students to supplement the established curriculum by completing a faculty supervised project for credit in a specific area of interest. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses.

Permission of Instructor and GPA of 3.0 or higher is required.

Register by completing the Independent Study Application available on the Registrar's website; the course is not available via web registration.

The Independent Study Project (ISP) allows students to supplement the established curriculum by completing a faculty supervised project for credit in a specific area of interest. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses.

Permission of Instructor and GPA of 3.0 or higher is required.

Register by completing the Independent Study Application available on the Registrar's website; the course is not available via web registration.

This course develops narrative of found objects in conversation with site. Autobiogeographical references will be utilized as an original point for creating object-hood. These investigations will then serve as a departure point for creating sculptural works rooted in interdependent relationships with environment, How can the function of found objects be subverted to re-contextualize narratives? What kind of narratives can be formed in response to site for engagement?

Through a series of experimental exercises in writing and sketching, students will engage in generative assignments that will mutate through iterative processes. Final projects will hinge on the cumulative exploration of found object intersectionality, as well as site and audience specificity. Texts such as Miwon Kwon's One Place after Another, Sara Ahmed's Orientations: Towards Queer Phenomenology, and Fred Moten and Stefan Harney's Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study will be investigated alongside studio work.

Estimated Materials Cost: $75.00

What is Operational Drawing? This workshop will make inroads into answering the question by making works that address how we image the body in time and space with tools and media. Akin to dance, drawing just might be the next human activity that engages a spontaneous simultaneous interplay of thought, action and acting upon. In this studio we will be working together and individually to explore how drawing is might to your studio practice. Drawing as a practice has often been mistakenly viewed as a preparatory or even secondary element within traditional studio practices like painting, sculpture and printmaking. Today, in an expanded field, those outmoded viewpoints only stand to unfairly discriminate and rank modes of realizing concept and form. It is also true that this archaic view of drawing has origins in the humble materials often associated within the practice, such as charcoal, graphite, chalk, and carbon black (ink). These geological elements on top of skin like substrates were once the defining features of the activity, but in a contemporary studio practice it is the artist's prerogative to either work with or challenge historical presets. The role of drawing in a contemporary studio practice may play multiple roles. Together we will look at, practice and explore that very thing through installations, group projects and large scale immersive work.

The professional Internship provides valuable exposure to a professional setting, enabling students to better establish a career path and define practical aspirations. Internship proposals are carefully vetted to determine legitimacy and must meet the contact hour requirements listed in the RISD Course Announcement.

Photography and sculpture have long been linked through documentation and studio photography. Now, many artists are blurring the boundaries between the disciplines to make work that doesn't land solidly under either title alone. Queer artists are often adept at navigating and permeating disciplinary boundaries, finding comfort in undefined and in-between spaces. This course will draw largely on the interdisciplinary practices of queer artists in a variety of fields, along with visits to sites like the Roger Williams Botanical Garden, and the Brown Planetary Lab. Through artist presentations, reading discussions, site visits, and studio work, this course asks participants to consider a photograph as a sculptural object, and a sculptural object as a captured moment. Students will learn basic steel working, digital photography, and UV printing techniques. This course will look at the intersection of queer theory in relation to nonconforming art practices, asking students to create works that won't settle neatly into a predetermined category.

Also offered as SCULP-1517; Register in the course for which credit is desired.

What roles can humor play in the contemporary artist's practice? How can it be used to access, empower or veil our creative expressions? What is at stake? What does it mean to take the un-serious seriously - and why bother? In this combined seminar & studio class we will be studying comedic aesthetics and formulas in contemporary & historic performance, art, film and writing, and creating responsive new works, both individually and collaboratively.

Through readings, viewings and presentations, we will survey comedic tropes and structures of the absurd, deadpan, tragi-comic, slapstick, ironic, parody and more. Looking particularly to the myriad ways in which visual artists have borrowed from these comedic arsenals, we will respond to such thematic tropes through regular short assignments in various media and a longer final project. Working in video and performance, photography and documentation, concrete comedy, scores, and installation, we will consider our own positions to the presented comedic lineage and develop new ways to enrich or divert our personal art practices.

Assigned readings and screenings will look to great thinkers from Sigmund Freud to Richard Pryor, Henri Bergson to Joan Rivers. Relocating this material to the artist's studio, further inspiration will be mined from the works of Andrea Fraser, Bas Jan Ader, Fischli & Weiss, Mike Smith, Rachel Harrison, Sarah Lucas, William Wegman, and many more. Sense of humor not required.

Estimated Materials Cost: $25.00

Advanced Critical Issues Seminar 2 introduces a rigorous theoretical framework for thinking and writing about contemporary sculpture practice. Each seminar develops from a specific theme drawing on research from Grad Critical Issues 1, current debates in the field and contemporary events. Past seminars include: Artificial Natures, Precarious Relations, Frankenstein and Crime, Vanishing Points, as examples. Trespassing across sculpture, performance, cinema, fiction, feminist, queer, race and political theory and back again, we will address writings by Walter Benjamin, Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, Jacques Rancire (as examples) in conversation with contemporary artists writings and projects to cultivate a conceptual grammar to extend to our studio practice. Approaching issues in contemporary sculpture through these discursive perspectives generates new strategies simultaneously material, conceptual, and critical.

Graduate major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

This course performs two areas of discourse related to artistic practice for Sculpture graduates: curation and artist's texts. It seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the contextual and social ramifications of artwork outside the artist's studio and how texts and other ephemera can function alongside work and practice. This course suggests that curation is an important part of the art-historical project of directing attention not only to art, but to its context. The single most important factor in how an artist's work is understood, is usually the one she has least control over: context. Curation (as the construction of context) and critique (as the uncovering of this context) are key to creating this control. Curation has evolved from a specialized sub-profession that involved "taking care" of esoteric collections, to an amorphous gatekeeping practice for the cultural world, that includes exhibition-making, criticism, and project management. Readings on theory and history will be given alongside discussions, studio visits and critiques. The semester will culminate in an exhibition of the first-year graduates individual works collaboratively curated in a off-campus space. Students will walk away with an understanding of contemporary curation's historical/institutional affiliations, a battery of concepts and theories with which to reinterpret curatorial practice, and concrete experience curating their own exhibition.

The second focus of this course deals with the use of text, language, and images as catalysts for constructing the Thesis Book for second year graduates. Students will examine and further develop a writing practice in conjuction with (and in support of) their studio practice. A variety of research practices will be emphasized as a significant part of the writing and thesis building process. The instructor will mentor the graduates on an individual basis as well as collective writing sessions. Emphasis will be made on how this process can open up unexpected paths of inquiry and how the Thesis Book can be a useful starting point for Professional Practice outcomes post-graduate school.

Graduate major elective; Sculpture majors only.

This course will explore digital design and fabrication within the context of contemporary art, design, and architecture. Through a series of technical demonstrations, students will make connections between CAD/CAM software, digital fabrication technologies, and the physical world. Students will undertake a series of projects exploring 3D model creation using various CAD applications, 3D scanning technologies, and experimental approaches to digital model generation. Simultaneously, digital models will be made physical through additive and subtractive fabrication technologies including 3D printing and CNC milling. Rhino 3D will be used as the primary CAD tool and students will need to provide their own laptop with Rhino installed.

Elective

Open to sophomores and above.

Open to non-majors as non-major elective.

Students present a body of work supported by a written thesis to a thesis committee for evaluation.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Students pursue individual work under advisement of resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. Individual objectives are clarified and professional practices are discussed. Group interaction and discussions expected.

Graduate major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

The Independent Study Project (ISP) allows students to supplement the established curriculum by completing a faculty supervised project for credit in a specific area of interest. Its purpose is to meet individual student needs by providing an alternative to regularly offered courses.

Permission of Instructor and GPA of 3.0 or higher is required.

Register by completing the Independent Study Application available on the Registrar's website; the course is not available via web registration.

This course is a continuation of the vital pathway into independent work in Sculpture. Thematically driven prompts will provide the scaffolding of three major work sessions that direct the conversation in the studio. These studio conversations will take the form of in-process critiques, formal group critiques, and scheduled individual meetings. Students may also expect intersecting projects with shorter timeframes when appropriate. The visiting artist lecture series is a vital component of this course.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Junior Seminar: Critical Issues is an intermediary level course designed to facilitate and support an intense study of themes relevant to art practices and conversations today. Through a series of readings, films, classroom discussion, group, and independent work, students learn to contextualize myriad discourses using the frames of art history, critical theory, philosophy, ethics, and politics. In this studio-centered seminar, students will develop a critical literacy that is applicable to their working practices and the attendant process of using materials to make meaning. This course supports discourse around the formation of the artist in an effort to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of sustainable artistic and intellectual practices.

Estimated Materials Cost: $50.00

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

This course explores questions and methods central to performance, and in particular the relationship between performance and sculpture. Temporal and spatial dimensions of both sculpture and performance will be discussed in terms of the performance "prop" as sculpture, sculptural outcomes of performance, and sculptural documentation of performance. We will examine performance in its social, political, formal, and corporeal aspects, engaging questions of ritual, labor, and movement. Approaching sculpture in both the conventional and the "expanded" senses of the term, we will pose the question of "immaterial" sculptural forms and actions. We will consider immaterial "sculpture" as performance while also considering traditional sculpture's material concerns as performative. Sculptural material concerns of process and technique; site and context; and objects and objecthood will all be examined as performance prompts. Art historical and political questions of power, agency, audience, gaze, attention, and passivity will take shape as we theorize and enact performativity and its relation to embodiment, display, and language. Through individual and collaborative work, students will create and critique performances. A range of text, sound, lens, and object-based documentation will be encouraged. Documentation will be considered both as representational and as generative.

Open to sophomores and above.

The swap meet is a gathering usually convened for the purpose of selling or bartering second hand objects. People representing differing cultural identities and values come into close proximity to one another at the swap meet, presenting their wares and hoping to find new value. The swap meet is also a site where things that have fallen out of use or no longer serve a purpose await reinvention. In this course we will explore the model of the swap meet as an opportunity to reinvent and alter existing objects and media from dominant culture with the express purpose of re-inserting what is created back into culture, at large. Some methods we might consider include sales, trade, e-commerce, and online platforms where users recontextualize content. In this course students will explore mold-making techniques for making multiples or duplicating existing forms, as well as gain an understanding of editing programs for the remixing of found footage. The course will culminate in a non-traditional exhibition.

Estimated Materials Cost: $100.00

Open to sophomore and above.

This course is structured according the notion that artists can use what is on hand to research and craft simple solutions to the complex physical, mechanical, and technical problems that must be routinely addressed in their making practices. This material and process based, hands-on, research studio will be structured in response to the issues that the advanced fine arts student is grappling with on a regular basis. Many of the issues that arise in the process of making provide the opportunity to transcend perceived material-based boundaries and thinking. Some of the questions this course attends to include: How do you defy gravity? How do you generate the hidden components required to physicalize the thing we can see in our mind's eye? How is the magic we need to create our work scalable to the resources we have readily available? Example working processes include: mig welding, tig welding, casting for prototyping, woodworking, and mold making.

Open to fine arts majors only; juniors and above.

Permission of Instructor required.

This is a hands-on introduction to robotics for artists class. Topics covered include: machine shop practices, electronic construction and theory, and computer programming. Students will build robots and utilize robotic technology. Students are free to choose their own microcontroller platforms. Peripheral technology will employ servomotors and sensors. Readings will explore the interface between art and technology.

Elective

Restricted to senior, fifth-year, and graduate students.

Permission of Instructor required.

Also offered as DM-7013; Register into course for which credit is desired.

This course is a continuiation of Sculptural Practices I. Students are introduced to the six major practices that are essential to the study of Sculpture. These practices include an introduction to wood, digital imaging, plaster, performance, installation, and metal. Over the course of the year, students will be exposed to four week intensives designed to augment their major studio experience. The course begins with wood to expedite the speed of moving from ideation to physicality. From wood, the group moves to digital imaging where basic skills in video editing, photographic documentation, and projection within the built environment are explored. Plaster as a medium is paired with performance as an activity, both of which underscore the importance of the body within the field of Sculpture. Once students have produced objects, videos, and performances, the group moves into considering the fundamentals of installation and metal fabrication so that the architectures that house myriad artworks can be understood as part of the modality of Sculpture. Students can expect to learn proficiency and safety in all of these areas. Students can expect to expand these skills in advanced studio electives in the Junior and Senior years. This course is required for all Sophomore Sculpture majors.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department; course not available via web registration.

Students are expected to continue the independent work developed in the fall senior studio. Over the course of the degree project semester students will present their work in the context of Duet shows". These "Duets" will be accompanied by a short video-taped interview between the partners based upon vetted questions germane to each others work. Seniors are expected to produce a significant group of work commensurate with the departments senior degree level criteria.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Prerequisite: Senior Sculpture majors in Good Academic Standing.

This course utilizes experiential learning and hands-on research to connect sophomore Sculpture majors to resources held in the collections the RISD Museum, the Nature Lab, and the holdings of the Fleet Library, including the Visual and Material Resource Center. Over the course of the semester, students will select, compare, research, and contextualize objects of study from these collections as part of the larger material and conceptual framework of their trajectory in Sculpture. In addition to supervised, hands-on study, students will deepen their relationship to the themes and discourses including the relationship between Modernism and Imperialism, politics and aesthetics, digital communication and global image distribution, museum collections and cultural appropriation, power and knowledge, economic superstructures and available material resources, among others.

Estimated Materials Cost: $150.00

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

The Spring semester of Sophomore Sculpture Studio is organized to continue training students to workshop their ideas and concepts while learning basic materials and processes of the sculpture studio. In this department we teach visual vocabulary on the basic principle of, "Thinking while making and making while thinking."

The assignment projects in the Spring studio parallels the exercises in technical skills taught in WOOD AND METAL SHOP PRACTICE II.

Advancing from basic fabrication methods learned in the previous semester, students will progress into workshops in modeling, molding and casting. Students will learn the basic language of form through the lens of basic mold-making methods working in wax, plaster and clay advancing to contemporary silicones and plastics. This workshop will culminate with lost wax ceramic shell casting in our foundry.

Major requirement; Sculpture majors only.

Registration by Sculpture Department, course not available via web registration.

Our eyes are nearly always drawn towards something moving over something inert. What innovative strategies can be employed to incorporate video, sculpture, and physical space into a single work, without one medium dominating the other? How can an artist resolve the fundamental differences between two-dimensional moving images and three-dimensional objects or space? This intensive studio elective will explore methods and issues of assimilating video, photography, sound, performance, objects, and space through studying and constructing multimedia sculpture and installations. Throughout the semester we will be presented with assignments that examine these different possibilities from multiple perspectives, including studio projects that deploy video in a sculptural context, and sculpture that is only activated through a video work. We will study the recent history of artists and designers who engage multimedia techniques and experiment with new formats and technologies. Students will learn the basics of DSLR camera technique, digital video editing, audio production, audio/video display technology, and installation techniques. Students in the course should have an understanding of sculptural materials and fabrication techniques, and should be ready to experiment with the fundamental structure of the presentation of media.

Estimated Materials Cost: $150.00

Open to sophomores and above.

Dreaming, pre-visualizing, observing, and recording objects in time and space are longstanding drawing practices. In this workshop we will explore methods of seeing the world in new ways with the intention of developing advanced, weird, wonderful, and even improbable graphical representations. Students will explore observational, technical, digital and photographic tools that may be harnessed, combined, bent and hacked in service of cultivating drawing practices that serve object-making. Throughout the course students will be encouraged to innovate and improvise between methods, materials and modes of presentation. Students will harness the foundational skills that comprise the advanced, companion drawing practices utilized by artists who work in three dimensions.

Estimated Materials Cost: $50.00 - $100.00

Open to sophomore and above