Hard to believe that the time has come to plan again for reunion and parent weekend.  We are looking at making some changes to the weekend to enhance the experience for both alumni and parents, so stay tuned for updates as details become confirmed.  Of course, now would be a great time for you to share any thoughts on the type of programming you would like to see as well, and if it’s something we think we can pull off we will make every effort to!

If you missed out on being a part of this year’s RISD by Design, or if you just want to relive the fun, visit our photo gallery. It was a beautiful weekend and an exciting time to be back on campus!

Hey, are you interested in purchasing a fine art print of those fabulous campus maps by Aaron Meshon ‘95 IL you saw on our materials, around campus, and on t-shirts (even our banner on this site) ?

Well, they’re still for sale, for $120 ($100 for the print and $20 for shipping).  Just contact me at crobinso **at** risd.edu for more information on how to go about getting your hot little hands on one!  For more information about brilliant artist Aaron Meshon, click here.

Alum and Alumni Council member Joe Gebbia ‘05 ID/GD set up a table at the Alumni and Student Art Sale this past weekend to promote his newest venture, AirBedandBreakfast (something we’ve mentioned on the site before) and produced some pretty interesting promo boxes:

In his words, “The limited edition boxes were produced by the team at AirBedandBreakfast.com; the peer-to-peer travel site that encourages hosts to provide breakfast for guests each morning. 5% of proceeds on Saturday went to support the RISD Student Leadership Scholarship. As the first recipient of the award back in 2003, it was a welcomed cushion to my tuition payments. You can imagine it felt good to give a little something back.

The project was art directed by myself and AB&B co-founder Brian Chesky (ID ‘04). We collaborated with illustrators, photographers, copywriters, a design shop that includes Scott Thorpe (MFA GD ‘05), and a very cool printer, General Printing, run by Fred Fassett (Arch ‘69).  He’s on the alumni council.

More images, and the hilarious jingles, can be found at http://www.airbedandbreakfast.com/obamaos and http://www.airbedandbreakfast.com/capnmccains”

If you didn’t get a chance to make it to the inauguration of RISD’s 16th President, John Maeda, do the next best thing.  Visit our Inauguration Station at the old risd|works, at 20 Westminster Street (across from the library) this Saturday from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm.

We’ll have lots of gorgeous materials with the START HERE theme, put together by Michael Rock’84 GD and other alums at 2×4, a NYC-based award winning design studio, including START HERE t-shirts and screen printers, so you can have your own personalized version of our shirt.

We’ll also have photos from the day, so you can see what you missed, hot coffee to perk you up, tables to sit at and rest your aching feet, and an Ask Me station, to pick up any materials you might have forgotten to grab at registration.

Come join us!

If you’re planning on parking in or around the RISD campus this Saturday, be aware that Saturday evening, beginning around three, will kick off the annual Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Foundation Flames of Hope, an annual Waterfire event sponsored by the Foundation to raise awareness about breast cancer.

While we’re thrilled to have a Waterfire going on for visitors to enjoy, Waterfire also comes with street closings and lots of increased traffic to the area.  Please be aware that after 4:00 pm it will be increasingly difficult to navigate the area surrounding the river.  Organizers have let us know that the Rhode Island Convention Center offers parking that is nearby, convenient to the highway, out of the way of blocked streets, and generally NOT prone to being filled to the point of unavailability.

How does our work at RISD function in the world once we leave? If you were speaking with children interested in art & design, what would say about your experiences in this field? How does our work draw us to opportunities we cannot anticipate? Come hear recent graduates Brooks Hagan ‘02 TX, Naomi Kaly ‘06 D+M,Carmen Montoya ‘07 D+M and Meredith Pingree, ’03 SC, start the conversation on Friday, October 10th, in a panel discussion moderated by Interim Dean of Graduate Studies Chris Rose. The discussion, along with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, will take place in the newly designed internal atrium at the Westminster Lofts in the Peerless Building (150 Union Street), a half block away from Tazza, from six to eight pm.

I just came back from a VERY exciting weekend at RISD and…I’m not exaggerating…you’ll hate yourself if you don’t get up there and see the new Chace Center (where the parking lot was on Main St), and the special Chihuly show and David Macaulay show. 

The spaces created by the Chace Center are so beautiful, functional and remarkable I want to sign up as a student again. There is now a gallery for student work, classrooms for freshmen, a spectacular gallery for contemporary art, special exhibits, an auditorium, works on paper….and the stairs up to Benefit St. are bigger and already are a collecting place for students. The back wall of Mem Hall has been exposed and is a work of art in itself. The views out the windows frame the Providence landmarks. I was really impressed ! 

The Chihuly exhibit is something that you can get immersed in. The lighting, colors, shadows and shapes surrounded me with such drama and beauty. There’s a wall of his drawings which are masterpieces in themselves.

Here are two iPhone photos…..one of my classmate, Stuart Murphy ( Sorry, Stu, I didn’t consult you! ) at the Chace Center opening last week and one from the Chihuly exhibit.

See you next week !

Liz Collins  ‘91 TX/MFA ‘99 just gave us a little update about her Knitting Nation project for RBD weekend, and I can’t wait to see it! She spent part of last weekend testing a method to incorporate mylar balloons into knit fabric as it was being constructed. Here is what she had to say about the results: “The look of it is amazing, hanging down, with the balloons looking like giant metallic floating polkadots on a white knit ground. They move in the wind, yet are securely and closely attached by their connecting ribbons, which are knit right into the base cloth. We will be constructing a large piece, which is made of of 5 vertical lengths of continuous knit yardage and the balloons, that slowly grows and falls down the building.”

In case you missed the earlier posting, Liz and her army of knitters will be located on the roof of the Radeke Building at the RISD Museum on Saturday, October 11.  When you are on campus, be sure to look up!

Clay Gordon ‘83 PH, author of Discover Chocolate, The Ultimate Guide to Buying, Tasting and Enjoying Fine Chocolate, celebrates his 25th reunion at RISD By Design this year, and will speak to parents and alumni on Friday afternoon as a panel of alumni talk about Life After RISD.  As alumni, we all have our own stories, and can share those of friends, who have traveled some unexpected paths since graduating from RISD, and that is what this panel is all about.  In this video of a talk at Google last year, Clay talks about his own journey from photography major at RISD to his current passion, The Chocolate Life. Check out his website at http://www.thechocolatelife.com/. Come to RISD BY Design to hear more stories of exploration, creation and adventure!