Yesterday I had the opportunity to visit the open gallery reception for “Field Ecology / Design Foundations” taught by Prof. Colgate Searle and his colleagues. Just a few weeks back when I was attending a ceremony at the White House celebrating design, I recall being in line and mentioned to honorees and principals of Olin Partnership that I had recently become the President of RISD. They could not be more complimentary of RISD’s “incredible Landscape Architecture program.” Their eyes went way wide with enthusiasm when I mentioned RISD and they said that the program was a “true gem of our nation.”

At the closing reception, Provost Jessie Shefrin (pictured here speaking with the students) asked one of the attendees, “What are three of the things that you now do differently from this course?” A student answered that it was the ability to: 1) ask the right questions, 2) to see the world through Colgate’s unique vantage point, 3) the skill to articulate the reasons for having a conversation, 4) … (the student cheated a bit by going on after three points).

Prof. Searle finished the session with an eloquent close, “In any class you take, don’t wait for the perfect answer to come from the faculty person. Take an idea … and run with it!”

We know conceptually that RISD alumni are all over the world, but seeing is believing.  If you check out the alumni exhibitions page, you’ll see what I mean: exhibitions in Turkey, Taiwan, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy, China, the Netherlands, and Serbia.  And I’m sure there are more that we haven’t heard about! The good folks on our communications team update the listings with information from a variety of sources;one of the best sources is you. Let us know what you are doing at risdviews**at**risd.edu.  And when you are on the go, check out the exhibitions pages for a show near you!

This week during the Democratic National Convention in Denver a group of RISD students, faculty and alumni, led by adjunct professor Charlie Cannon, is presenting Partly Sunny: Designs to Change the Forecast, a project (on view at the Denver Pavilions August 24-29) meant to spur grassroots action on climate change. It’s just one component of Dialog: City, a public arts program sponsored by the Denver 2008 Host Committee and curated by Seth Goldenberg ‘03 PT.

RISD’s presence in Denver has received ample advance press (the Associated Press and The New York Times covered aspects of the events) and that will likely be the case for the rest of the week. Charlie and his team are also spearheading the August 25 Green Constitutional Congress, the  Bruce Mau-moderated symposium on the future of environmental action. The 6pm event is free and open to the public at the Denver Performing Arts Center, but if you’re not in Denver, you can keep up with the week’s events on the Partly Sunny blog.

Also in Denver this week, Assistant Professor of Film/Animation/Video Daniel Pelz is staging Karaoke Convention ’08, “a post-partisan, trans-political, artist-led campaign to create a platform for public ‘re-speech’ at the 2008 Democratic National Convention” — people in bars, clubs and restaurants across the city use digital media to translate a dozen Republican and Democratic Presidential Candidate addresses from the 2008 campaigns into karaoke formats.

And… Shepard Fairey ‘92 IL has organized the Manifest Hope Gallery in Denver at the Andenken Gallery (August 24-28) and online. Designed to celebrate the pivotal role that art plays in creating cultural momentum, the gallery “shines a spotlight on artists across the nation who use their voices to amplify and motivate the grass roots movement surrounding the Obama Campaign.”

Jan Yager MFA ‘81 JM is one of several artists featured in the Peabody Award winning Craft in America episode titled Landscape. The segment considers the physical landscape, as well as the political and social influences on artists, and how they translate into the objects they make.  Jan talks about her  City Flora/City Flotsam series, inspired by urban flora growing in vacant lots near her Philadelphia studio. Click here to hear Jan talkabout her work.

Jan’s work has been recognized with numerous awards including a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and a solo show at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.

Yesterday I had a visit from Dr. Lawrence Neeley who recently completed his PhD at Stanford and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at MIT. I met Dr. Neeley at Harvard last month and am extremely grateful for having the chance to have a chat with him on his area of expertise … which is expertise. With such a formidable younger mind before me, I couldn’t help but ask the question that everyone seems to ask me these days, “What do you see as a future imperative for RISD?” Lawrence sat and stewed for a moment, looked in the air for about five seconds, and came back with the following items:

• To realize that creativity is not some “loosey-goosey” activity but an extremely disciplined and rigorous approach built upon foundational skills and knowledge.
• To understand “focused expertise” as both narrow and broadening. In other words, the challenge being to engage in a single arena of thought deliberately while exercising ability to “focus broadly” onto a greater context simultaneously.
• The above said another way, “To connect a practiced skill set with higher level thinking.”
• An admonition to not pre-assume that a purely skill-building approach to learning is devoid of important and disciplined thoughts. His point being that deepening and broadening thoughts do naturally occur within the context of building concrete skills. He said this in relationship to what he called the bad label that “vocational education” has gotten in our country.

My takeaway from our conversation is the fact that every first-year RISD student undergoes an extremely rigorous year of foundational studies intermixed with liberal arts courses to give a humanistic context coupled with tremendous opportunities to build skills in a wide spectrum of art-thinking and design-thinking arenas. Neeley’s desired base is certainly right here at our RISD. Thank you, Lawrence, for your thought provoking ideas.

Prof Michael Lye’s work appears in the first magazine I ever owned: Popular Science [you can download the article here]. Design is a critical factor in every decision made today — not just limited to the virtual world but extraterrestrial as well. Perhaps some day we’ll be hosting RISD studios on the moon!

The September issue of O, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, calls risd|works “the new design source […] where design insiders shop”. With a circulation of nearly 2.5 million, the magazine is sure to draw even more attention to the already successful store, which features work by “some of the world’s best-educated artists ([RISD] alumni and faculty)”. The O piece is illustrated with a “Duck” mirror by David Dear ’85 ID and a “Frida” necklace by Donya O’Brien Kaufer ‘94 JM and Adam Kaufer ‘93 JM — and of course you can buy them both at risd|works, which next month is moving from its current location at 10 Westminster Street in Providence to the new Rafael Moneo-designed Chace Center (20 North Main Street).

I often wonder about the nature of art, especially in a natural setting. We are all trained to need a piece of paper and a pencil/pen to let the creative juices flow. Yet when faced without any implements to draw, what does one do? The ability to make a human mark is something timeless and rests unimprisoned by the norms of our prefab reality of what constitutes conventional “art supplies.” When Paul Rand introduced me to his love for the caves of Lascaux I never really got what he was saying to me. Sitting outside with just a stick and the ground before me, it all finally made sense. Thanks, Paul.

I could listen to artist and Professor Mairéad Byrne’s lyrical voice all day. Catch her closing remark at the end of the above video snapshot: “… think of the artist as a collaborator, working for change.” Words and letters are like pigment and paint to the RISD community because of our strong commitment here in the liberal arts.

The Alumni Relations Office has launched a new blog designed to address all things relating to RISD by Design, RISD’s alumni reunion and parent weekend, on October 10–12. Parent and alumni guest bloggers will share their experiences at past weekends, and answer questions about the upcoming one, while other alumni celebrating reunions can connect with fellow RISDoids planning to return to campus this fall. Parents can get the inside skinny on how to prioritize and organize their visit, so be sure to join in the conversation rolling at rbd.risd.edu!

Other things you can do at the RISD By Design blogsite: view the daily schedule of events with last minute additions, link to lodging information, and print out registration information to send by mail, as well as register online ( beginning August 13).