I sat down with Department Head of Printmaking at RISD, Prof. Henry Ferreira, and we talked about the future and past of putting images onto paper. My favorite moment was Prof. Ferreira’s reference to having an “in the belly” feeling — it was a great way to describe that odd feeling of having a visceral, artistic instinct. -JM

I once wrote about Prof. Mike Fink who comes up in conversation quite a bit with our alumni. Last week I sat down with him at breakfast to do a quick interview and found it quite an experience. You can find it on iTunes or it’s available right here. -JM

At the recent START San Francisco HERE event I came across RISD Architecture alumnus Angel Steger and found the “missing link” I was looking for in my personal excitement for 23andme. As a 23andme customer, I was particularly impressed with the way the health informatics are designed and was happy to find and meet a RISD hand in their captivating model for preventive healthcare. -JM

Yesterday we held our first “START CITY HERE” event in Los Angeles at the beautiful new Heath Ceramics space (video on Vimeo of the space is here) thanks to RISD alum and studio director Adam Silverman. More photos will come up shortly on to our Flickr site, but in the meantime I want to thank the 80+ alumni and parents for making it out to triangularly engage y(our) RISD community! -JM

Last week I visited the RISD Graphic Design Senior Show among other events I hope to report on sometime this week. By coincidence a few weeks ago I was looking to connect with graduate students as I heard on campus that the number one rumor about me among that population is that, “John doesn’t go to graduate exhibitions.” Indeed, my schedule hasn’t allowed me to go to every possible event on campus. But I’m always willing to try in some shape or form. So once I heard of this rumor and because there were no exhibition openings that evening, I went to see graduate students instead. There’s always a great conversation to be had on campus.

Yesterday at the recent RISD New England Alumni Exhibition I enjoyed this sculpture by RISD alumni Victor Pacheco. Just watching it (in HD here) made me feel as though the back itch that I didn’t have was at least being scratched. More photos of the exhibition are available off of alumni Aaron Tang’s photo feed.

In all conversations I have with RISD alums, I find myself re-learning something about the nature of the creative act. There at the show I enjoyed a conversation where I remembered that how something is made doesn’t matter. This short sound capture is (as always) available on iTunes.

I’ve know that a brand new year takes a little time before your brain warms up after the winter holidays. Today I had the honor of addressing a great bunch of visitors interested in coming to RISD for graduate school. They asked good questions — always a good sign.

Best wishes to all visitors to Our RISD and good luck to those who wish to make it yours in the coming academic year.

After a few false starts I finally figured out how to post podcasts on iTunes. So if you’re on your iPhone somewhere in the world and you’d like to hear about what’s happening at RISD, just search for ‘maeda’ in your iTunes app and the free podcasts should pop up there for easy download. Podcasts seem like an easier way to access information on the Web instead of clicking and reading. I’ll try to develop this direction further as a way to disseminate emerging info about our RISD.

I visited a gallery at Brown with radio host Christopher Lydon a few weeks back before the recent election. Lydon wanted to connect the Russian poster imagery being exhibited there with RISD alum Shephard Fairey’s popular graphical image of Obama. Lydon’s podcast is audible here.

I had a nice chat yesterday with RISD Museum Director Hope Alswang about the nature of museums. The RISD Museum is an incredible resource for our students here at RISD, and in addition serves the local community of Providence and practically all of Rhode Island.