Keith Campbell BARCH ‘78 hosted a reception for President Maeda at RTKL Architects in Chicago last night.  It had been some time since the Chicago alumni had gotten together, and the air was full of the energy created by alumni and parents connecting with each other. The President shared some of his thoughts about his paths of discovery as he looks to articulate RISD’s core beliefs, and his experiences meeting new alumni, many of whom do not fit into traditional molds - words that resonated with many of the alumni in attendance, among them an artist residency administrator, a painter and fashion designer who teach in an after school arts program, and an architect turned architectural photographer. Proof that a RISD education allows for endless possibilities!

Photos by John Weinstein ‘77 PH

Partly Sunny, an environmentally focused design showcase originally conceived and produced by 125 RISD students for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, is being exhibited today through Sunday as part of Bioneers by the Bay, an international gathering of environmental, industry and social justice innovators focused on saving the planet. Yesterday’s excellent Design Observer review of the showcase pointed out that “as a body of work, Partly Sunny invites a reading that is greater than the sum of its projects.” The entire initiative – involving five departments at RISD – was a huge undertaking led by Associate Professor Charlie Cannon, who will be running a workshop at Bioneers tomorrow, along with student designers who worked on the project. Even if you’re not attending Bioneers, you can visit the exhibition through Sunday at UMASS Dartmouth’s Crapo Gallery.

When Scott Clark ’96 IL first did a Wintersession internship at Pixar his senior year, he had no clue that more than a decade later he’d be leading the world’s best animation crew and helping the company produce one extraordinary hit after another. Now, with an incredible line-up already behind him – A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, Cars and that great Academy Award-winning short Geri’s Game – he’s excited to have played a pivotal role in Up!, which opened last week and has already started getting rave reviews.

As supervising animator on the film, Scott managed the efforts of three directing animators and a team of nearly 70 at the peak of production. As with other Pixar projects, he appreciated the challenges involved – in this case, making a film starring a curmudgeonly 78-year-old named Carl Frederickson (voiced by Ed Asner).

“As soon as we had Ed on board to do the voice, we had Carl,” Scott says. “You heard him and you had the character. It gave us something to hang the animation on.” But when co-writers and directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson wanted their protagonist to look like an old man “who had literally shrunken in his suit and was swimming in this thing,” Scott explains, the animators came up with a guy who “didn’t look like he had any knees or elbows.” So he worked with his team to lengthen the old man’s limbs so that people could see a break in the cloth where his arms and legs bend.

“Carl is probably the most caricatured animation we’ve ever done,” Scott says. “But it’s a real testament to our animation crew that they could actually get complex emotions other than just cute or happy out of Carl and Russell [his 8-year-old cohort]. They do some pretty heavy scenes, with great acting.”

I just heard form Illustration Department graduate Joe Elliot who tells me of a new venture he is launching in NY with some partners. It’s an online gallery which is just getting off the ground. Please visit online, or offline at the space above mentioned to see and/or acquire some great RISD work! -JM

When Aaron Perry-Zucker ’09 GD got together with Adam Meyer ’09 ID last summer to launch a website called Design for Obama, the two seniors had little idea of the ripple effect that would follow. One such ripple led them to Green Patriot Posters, a new initiative produced by The Canary Project. Also launched last summer, the Green Patriot site was designed by RISD Graphic Design faculty member John Caserta and his Yale grad school friend Dmitri Siegel, who worked with Ed Morris, Canary’s founder and executive director, to create a site that welcomes submissions of posters designed to mobilize people to help create a sustainable economy. As soon as Morris saw the Design for Obama site, he realized the RISD students had devised just what he needed to encourage more poster submissions for the Canary effort. So he commissioned Adam to modify his poster-submission programming for use on the Green Patriot site and will introduce the new feature on the year’s most auspicious day for change: January 20. The plan is then to select the best designs and produce them as bus ads, billboards, an exhibition and a book. “And we really want to encourage RISD people to submit their designs,” Morris adds.

Meanwhile, some of the best posters rounded up through the Design for Obama site are on view this month in Politics by Design: The Art of Inspiration at Dissident Display in DC, the MANIFEST HOPE: DC juried exhibition organized in part by Shepard Fairey ’92 IL and CAN & DID at Danziger Projects in NYC. For more on the ongoing ripples, read this Q&A with Aaron.