RISD’s fair city had its day in the New York Times this past Sunday, named as a “Town They Don’t Want To Leave”.  They being graduates, of course.  Rhody shared the stage with other creative hubs like Athens, GA and Chapel Hill, NC, and was singled out as a destination for visual artists.

Professor Dean Snyder is showing his lusciously organic work in a one-man show at Skidmore through August 31. If you’re in Saratoga, NY do check it out! If you can’t go ahead and visit virtually.

I sat for lunch the other day with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rafael Moneo who designed the soon-to-be-opening Chace Center here at RISD. During our conversation we spoke about street grafitti with RISD Museum Assistant Director James Hall. A variety of ideas to stem the growth of grafitti were proposed, with Rafael presenting the most radical idea. He suggested that by simply putting the name of a building on a building … that the building would be less likely to be defaced. In essence Moneo was saying that that once an anonymous artifact becomes “outed” as having an identity that it somehow becomes more invincible to an external challenge.

An abstract object is easy (and free) to interpret by nature of its being abstract. Once it becomes concrete, it loses its interpretability. One might say in defense of objects left “un-texted” that they remain as free citizens without prejudice or constraints imposed by a perceived norm.

Open to criticism versus closed to opinion. It’s better to be labelless … is how I summarize this free thought today.

In April RISD President John Maeda moderated a conversation on the theme of “Simplicity” at the Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, CT. Since last year the Glass House (1949) — an icon of modernism — has been operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a center for the preservation of modern architecture, landscape and art, honoring the legacy of Philip Johnson and David Whitney [RISD ‘63, Interior Architecture], both of whom died in 2005.

The Glass House Conversations are meant to preserve the house as a “living museum” with ongoing salons emulating those that Johnson himself hosted. Among those participating in President Maeda’s Conversation were Diego Rodriguez of IDEO, Jason Fried of 37signals, Ambra Medda of Design Miami, Michelle McMurry of the Aspen Institute and Linda Tischler of Fast Company.

In the video below President Maeda shares his impressions and talks about how the Glass House relates to his theories of “simplicity”.

This week was a particularly saddening one upon hearing of my friend, Professor Randy Pausch’s departure from our world. Thank you, Randy. You’ve given all of education and academia great hope for remembering what teaching and mentoring is really all about.

I visited GM’s headquarters for design in Michigan where I saw one of the most ambitious projects out there — the Volt. In our current climate of high gas prices, any sign of possible relief is an important one … I recall a few years back coming close to buying a Toyota Prius to join the hybrid revolution. The Volt differs from the Prius in that it is not a hybrid gas-electric vehicle, but instead it is a purely electric vehicle with a gas-engine that can charge the battery when it’s supply goes low. You can also recharge the Volt by simply plugging it into the power outlet of your garage. So whereas in the Prius the electric engine runs at low speeds while the gas engine kicks in at higher speeds, the Volt runs purely on electrical energy for 40 miles and then the gas engine kicks in to recharge the battery as needed. Although the Volt (and Prius) are miracles of technology, they survive and thrive on their design and I was impressed with the design thinking that is going into the Volt and other projects ongoing at GM.

My takeaway was that even the most advanced technological companies today need new perspectives on our world that can benefit from the powerful conceptual framing power of an art and design education.

Dean Snyder, assistant professor and head of RISD’s Sculpture Department, was commissioned by the 2008 Olympic Committee to create an enlarged (2 m. diameter) version of his 2001 rawhide sculpture Boogle for exhibition in conjunction with the summer Olympics in Beijing. One of 130 works in the Beijing International City Sculpture Exhibition Beijing Olympic Art Dream, the carved marble piece is sited in the new Beijing Olympic Aquatic Center and is intended for permanent installation.

Last Friday, Professor Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab invited me to speak about the challenges in crafting an intersection between technology and art+design together with Prof. Geetha Narayanan of Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. The context was his new programming system called Scratch and the question I left with was how we might craft a new understanding of the possibilities afforded by Scratch in the context of core studies that can develop new thinking in art and design based upon fundamental/non-digital principles.

I was particularly struck by what Prof. Narayanan reiterated in her talk, “Seeing is not knowing.” To me it epitomized the challenge that is faced by the fact that the computer is an entirely non-visual medium, yet by the images we see on our computer screen we are fooled into believing that it’s just what we see. But it’s not. Her talk was deep, human, and filled with possibilities for the use of Scratch in changing children’s lives in India and the entire world. I was especially heartened when she mentioned one of my favorite writers, Italo Calvino.

From feedback by e-mail related to my own presentation, it is clear that some of the audience wondered if I was being critical of Scratch and its relevance to art and design. I think it was then that I realized that my tendency of sitting with creative people is to engage in critique as practiced at RISD — critique being the act of forming an open opinion subject to debate and discussion:

“A common misconception is that the chief point of a critique is to pass judgment on the work presented. There could be some value or fairness in acknowledging that someone put in a great deal of effort on an assignment or accomplished something very skillfully. The real point, however, is to dig deeper, to gain an understanding of why a drawing is powerful or moving in some way, or to suggest stronger emphasis of a given quality.”
— Prof. Fritz Drury / RISD Illustration Department

Artists and designers are first and foremost self-critical, so some of the time during my lecture was spent in my own head evaluating my own work within the same critical framework of questioning the way we do here at RISD. Also in general I tend to really wonder what the role of technology is in our evolving world. The questions continue to get more complex, and I continue to ask them out loud. All answers are welcome as part of the ongoing conversation.

So in short, I left the Scratch conference believing more than ever that Scratch is “powerful and moving” in important ways that will transform our future. That Geetha’s vision is one of empowerment, and that Scratch is a real enabler. Look out Adobe! Here comes Scratch!

Eleven members of RISD’s Class of 2008 — Philippe Previl (Painting; at left), James Ewart (Sculpture), Sam Gray (Graphic Design), Naushon Hale, Henrik Söderström, Da Sul Kim (all Furniture Design), Leo Livshetz (Industrial Design), Brian Briggs (Architecture), Winn Bauer (Ceramics), Colin Lynch (Glass) and Andy Cahill (FAV) — are featured as models in the August issue of Esquire, in “Intelligent Design,” the magazine’s preview of fall fashions for men. In May these not-quite-yet-alums took time from their busy end-of-semester schedules to be photographed (by Mischa Richter/ESP) in their studios and classrooms, with their artwork and around the RISD campus. In addition to wearing very expensive clothes very well, they offered their thoughts about the future of their particular disciplines and of art and design in general. Said furniture maker Hale: “Watch for an explosion in biomimicry, in which designers take patterns from nature — the beauty and simplicity of those systems that have been developing for millions of years — and apply them to new design concepts.”

I had an alum visitor suggested to me by Colonel Dean Esserman of the Providence Police. JR Songwe collaborated with the Providence Police department on an innovative approach to vehicle design that he developed while a student in Industrial Design. Here is a 15-minute excerpt of our conversation.