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New (very new) RISD alum Casey Lynch MFA ‘09 SC has just been named a winner of the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award for 2009. Casey and his 10 fellow honorees will participate in the prestigious Grounds For Sculpture fall/winter exhibition, which will be on view from October 10, 2009-January 10, 2010 at the ISC headquarters before traveling to other venues. Their work will also be featured in the October issue of Sculpture magazine and on the ISC website. (That’s an installation shot of Casey’s Sometimes sculpture - above - from last month’s Annual Graduate Student Exhibition.)
The experimental work going on at RISD recently caught the attention of The International Herald Tribune/The New York Times, which mentioned it in a recent article referring to the spring semester “g-speak studio.” Taught by Digital + Media faculty member Amber Frid-Jimenez and research assistant Kate Hollenbach MFA ‘11 GD, the studio (actually called Embodied Computation: Design for Fashion, Information and the Body) introduced grad students from different disciplines to the world’s first spatial operating environment (SOE), which allows users to do amazing things with computers by merely gesturing with their hands. The g-speak (g is for “gesture”) SOE is being developed by Oblong Industries, which approached RISD about beta-testing it with art and design students and generously donated one of the first systems to the school. You can find out more about the project here.
With all of the recent press on Bing, it gave me a chance to catch up a bit and try out WolframAlpha (I’m always trying to play catch-up). The “Spock”-like data presentation is interesting, and I definitely prefer it to the B(l)ing-y design style of Microsoft’s new endeavor in this area. Have tried to acclimate to using Ask as it’s only 3-characters instead of 6-characters for Google. Luckily for me I know where “rhode island school of design” is … it’s right here in Providence, RI!
RISD’s Continuing Education program had its Class of 2009 graduation ceremony this evening. Among many of our new CE alums, there I met Mr. Irving Washington who earned his certificate in “Art Appraisal.” I asked Mr. Washington what he was going to use his certificate for, to which he responded, “… to appraise … art.” Congratulations to our many CE alums for their hard work across many evenings and weekends! You did it! -JM
RISD students have a special affinity for zombies that in my first year I’ve begun to vaguely understand. At the recent senior receptions organized by Institutional Engagement VP Beth Garvin together with our Student Affairs Associate Provost Barbara Fienman, I had the chance to meet Mr. Andrew Fogel, one of our aspiring young film directors in the Class of 2009, who directed the above piece on zombies which I had the pleasure of watching on my ATV with the students from our Film, Animation, and Video department headed by Prof. Dennis Hlynski. Thanks to this opportunity, I don’t think I will ever take a zombie for granted. -JM
It was a privilege and a joy to participate in a new tradition just begun at RISD with graduating students: Senior Receptions at the President’s home. Co-sponsored with Student Life, these events brought graduating seniors and grad students, department technicians and coordinators, staff, faculty, curators, and more together to reflect on the time they’ve spent at RISD, acknowledge relationships they have made here, and talk about their hopes and dreams. It was a chance for me to remind them that there is an active network of alumni out there, ready and willing to provide encouragement and support, who now include them among their numbers!
I love this piece that I first caught on Twitter. It made me think of the recent story in the NYT about President Obama:
When it comes to dealing with the Middle East, the president noted, “There is a Kabuki dance going on constantly. That is what I would like to see broken down. I am going to be holding up a mirror and saying: ‘Here is the situation, and the U.S. is prepared to work with all of you to deal with these problems. But we can’t impose a solution. You are all going to have to make some tough decisions.’ Leaders have to lead, and, hopefully, they will get supported by their people.”
and how leaders today need to design mirrors with which society can see itself more clearly. Only by knowing and acknowledging how we act/behave can we have a chance to possibly modulate our own behavior. Artists create mirrors all the time, as is literally seen in the elegant piece above. -JM
A month ago I visited Mary Boone Gallery to see what was showing, but also to see RISD alumni Mary Boone herself. Mary’s career arc leaving RISD shows an incredible drive to be truthful to the core of her creative pursuits — which turned from making art, to the art of showing artworks. I find that RISD’s network of entrepreneurs is similar to that of MIT’s. Passion and creative thinking are the same raw materials – the difference I’m finding however, are that the resultant enterprises are distinctly unique.
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.”
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