This week RISD’s Interactive Media team launched a redesigned homepage for risd.edu. The new homepage allows visitors ready access to articles, slideshows and videos that tell the unique stories of our students, faculty and alumni and celebrate the important work being produced by RISD people in the studios, around campus and out in the world. You can subscribe to the homepage news feed via RSS - and be sure to check out our new Brightcove video channel.

A bit of history: the original version of risd.edu was conceived in 2000 by R/GA. Although over the years it has gone through some modifications and improvements, as we all know, it was wildly outdated, both aesthetically and functionally. This is the first step in revising RISD’s online presence: the old interior pages remain for now, but - don’t despair! - later this year the rest of the site also will be completely overhauled (promise).

We are pleased with this beginning and really looking forward to rehabbing the entire site soon.

A big congratulations to Hayley Morris [RISD ‘08 Film/Animation/Video] for winning the Grand Jury Award for Best Animated Short at the 15th annual Slamdance Film Festival, which just wrapped up in Park City, UT. Hayley won the honor for Undone, a stunning, six-minute, stop-motion film she produced last spring as her RISD Degree Project. Inspired by her grandfather, she created the short of an old fisherman struggling to keep the objects he catches from slipping through his hands as a visual metaphor for the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. More good things are sure to come for this extraordinary film and its talented filmmaker!

A “high-tech humanist” who provides “rapid, straight-to-the-bloodstream access to his mental life” is how The Boston Globe Magazine and The New York Times Magazine, respectively, described President John Maeda this Sunday. In its “Best of the New” issue, the Globe cited his Twitter feed and our digital bulletin boards as examples of the president’s advances toward making RISD a truly open campus. The Times’ Virginia Heffernan, a confirmed “TED addict,” singled out “Simplicity Patterns,” President Maeda’s 2007 TED talk, as one of her favorites. (On the same site you can also watch this more recent Maeda presentation: “My journey in design, from tofu to RISD“.)

It all started for Jan Wampler ’63 AR with “very little money, a bunch of egg-salad sandwiches, and a terrible car.” Jan, an acclaimed MIT professor, was reminiscing about his RISD senior thesis project – designing houses for struggling boat builders in Nova Scotia – in this recent Boston Globe interview, and how the project led him towards an egalitarian approach to the field of architecture. Since then, Jan has helped to build affordable homes, schools, orphanages and community centers in far-flung places. His latest project, part of an international workshop he teaches at MIT, is a collaboration with the people of Arcahaie, Haiti to build a sustainable village that will include a school, gardens, centers for the arts, health and community, dorms and a cafeteria.

Upon interacting with a few students yesterday, I was reminded of a life-changing episode that happened to me two years ago while at MIT which I entitled, Perspective, or Porsche. It was through that awakening experience that I learned the importance of listening to the truth that can only come from a student’s perspective and saying it like it is.

At institutions of higher education, we pride ourselves in our ability to engender the power of free speech – and I find this especially so in our young artists and designers here at RISD. At the same time, I continue to be humbled by the inverse of the act of free speech … which would be called “free listening.” Listening is no different than the artist’s skill to see, and I see that at RISD the skill of listening is developed through the extensive critical thinking exercises that every student here undergoes.

There are so many ways to learn from the environment that surrounds ourselves. I think back to the facilities person I spoke with last November that turned my mind. And to the faculty I engage here at RISD, and sometimes Brown as well. Or even the random people that I may encounter on the street. To see, is to learn. To hear, is to learn. And to feel, is to learn … deeply.

I now go back to my ongoing task of listening to RISD. Listen. -JM

It’s awards season in Hollywood, and we’re proud to see RISD alumni on the lists of nominees for their creative work in the film industry. Tune in to the Academy Awards ceremony on February 22 to root for Gus Van Sant ‘75 FAV and Danny Glicker ‘95 ID, nominated in the directing and costume design categories, respectively, for their work on Milk. This is Van Sant’s second nomination - his first was in 1997 for Good Will Hunting. Milk is also in the running for the coveted best picture award.

Their names don’t appear officially on the nominee list, but Jeremy Lasky ‘97 FAV and Angus MacLane ‘97 FAV, (director of photography and animating director, respectively) had a lot to do with the amazing visuals in WALL-E - and its nomination for top animated feature film. It’s already scooped up the Golden Globe in the same category (and will most likely have Lasky’s vote for the Oscar: he was recently invited to be a member of the Academy, based on his work at Pixar on blockbusters including Finding Nemo, Cars and Monsters, Inc.).

Keep your eyes peeled, too, for more local, though not RISD-affiliated, talent: Viola Davis, nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in Doubt, is a native of Central Falls, RI, graduated from Rhode Island College and acted with Providence’s Trinity Repertory Company; and Richard Jenkins, up for best lead actor for his work in The Visitor, is another Trinity veteran, with 15 years as an actor, director and artistic director under his belt.

Congratulations and good luck to all of RISD’s and Rhode Island’s nominees!

In an eight-page profile in this week’s New Yorker (January 26, 2009), painter Walton Ford [RISD ‘82 Film/Animation/Video] says that once he came to RISD, he discovered that the things he could do “were valued! I went from being fairly invisible in high school to being a star. And I knew I was going to be OK then.”

Walton’s hunch proved to be right. That first year at RISD he fell in love with painter Julie Jones [RISD ‘82 Painting], who still shares a studio with him in Great Barrington, MA, and since then he’s gone on to make a life as an artist - painting huge narrative watercolors that are inspired by natural history, shown at the best galleries and museums, and sold for six figures. In The New Yorker piece, Calvin Tomkins notes that Ford’s “technical facility is dazzling” and that “no one else, to my knowledge, has ever done watercolors of this size and ambition.” Still, Walton himself says that even though “I’ve never been better at what I do, I’m not pushing the language of making pictures in any new direction.” In other words, he says, he’s not quite “there yet.”

Yesterday’s Boston Sunday Globe ran a lengthy feature on Shepard Fairey [RISD ‘92, Illustration] and his upcoming retrospective (opening February 6) at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. This is just the latest in extensive coverage of Shep and his work - the presidential inauguration last week drew even more attention to his iconic Obama posters, which entered the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in time for the January 20 festivities in Washington. Also in the last 10 days or so Shep has appeared on the The Colbert Report and with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air. Congratulations - again! - Shep!

Twenty years ago, two RISD ID graduates, Stephen Lane BID ‘85 (above) and Aidan Petrie MID ‘85 launched Item, a full-service, product development enterprise offering expertise in research and strategic planning, industrial design, mechanical, electrical and manufacturing engineering. Their work in developing medical devices has evolved into the new Item Group company Ximedica, specializing in the design, development and supply of innovative new medical devices. Ximedica works with companies to commercialize new technologies, to improve human factors for both providers and patients, and to innovate new solutions that allow for improved health care and better economics. Featured recently in this Providence City News interview, Steve shares some of Item’s business philosophy: how he and Aidan work to create a stable, growing business that challenges and engages his ever growing staff of designers, why they developed GreenCard, a methodology for assessing products and concepts to minimize effects on our environment, why the knowledge economy is flourishing in Providence, and how Item has found ways to successfully navigate - and thrive - in these difficult economic times.

In my informal sit-downs in random cafeterias around RISD, I’ve noted that whenever I ask a RISD student how their classes are going they will first of all say how tired they are from working so hard. Affectionately consistent with the reputation of students here at RISD with a “Reason I‘m Sleep Deprived” … Secondly however, they will gleefully add how much they love their teachers — I mean absolutely love their teachers. The thoughtfulness of the above video gives a wonderful sense of the intense community of critical thinking, learning, and doing here … only at RISD. -JM