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  Faculty Exhibition Post-Ocean | Max Pratt

  Max Pratt, RISD Color Lab, and Industrial Design Department

  In an effort to evaluate the Rhode Island area’s fishery as it currently exists and highlight innovative approaches to the future of our interaction with the ocean, Post-Ocean details coastal New England’s unique approach to sustainable aquaculture and wild fishery management. This archive and body of work aims to build a model for others to follow as we look to create global stability in our food systems and human-ocean interactions. For the March 2025 installation at the RISD Color Lab, we are highlighting the unique approach of this work in its engagement with research through the use of color photography. Leveraging highly accurate color analysis, we create photographic data sets, document the quality of seafood through color, and attempt to instill in the viewer a curiosity and deepened desire to learn about the ocean and its inhabitants. The content of this show is supplementally showcased via a web-based document, allowing viewers to be guided through our vision for the future of food.

  View the Post-Ocean exhibition here.

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  Faculty Fellow Shawn Greenlee | HSL Grains: Graphical Sound Field Displacement

  Shawn Greenlee, Color Lab RISD, Digital + Media Department, and Experimental and Foundation Studies Division

  Shawn Greenlee presented his ongoing research toward the creation of a computer music performance system that links the 3D spherical coordinate system of the Hue, Saturation, Lightness (HSL) color model with High Order Ambisonics (HOA), a method for producing immersive sound fields. The talk and performance will be held in-person at RISD’s Studio for Research in Sound and Technology (SRST) using its 25.4 channel loudspeaker array.

  Greenlee, Professor in Digital + Media, is the recipient of a 2023-24 Color Lab Faculty Fellowship that supported this work.

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  Faculty Fellow Timothy Veske-McMahon | Fugitive Color: Sensing the Fade

  Timothy Veske-McMahon, RISD Color Lab, and Jewelry + Metalsmithing Department

  January 22, 2025 virtual presentation accompanying the exhibtiion, Fugitive Color: Sensing the Fade, on view November 25, 2024–January 31, 2025.
  As a Color Lab Faculty Fellow in Fall 2022, Timothy Veske-McMahon (Associate Professor, Jewelry + Metalsmithing) explored fugitive pigments and dyes—colors that fade or transform over time. His work, featuring large-scale automotive air fresheners, evokes a desire for renewal while signaling lingering effects—whether stale, rotten, or mysterious. Through hues that shift and lighten under UV exposure, these pieces highlight the impermanence of histories, identities, and environmental connections as they fade and transform. Placed within the academic space, the installation invites viewers to reflect on the role of institutions in preserving—or neglecting—cultural memory. It challenges us to reconsider how we engage with and acknowledge our histories, suggesting that fading color, like a dissipating scent, becomes a metaphor for loss, distance, recognition, and the call for renewal.

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  Faculty Fellow Eric Anderson | What is a Color Lab? Sites and Practices of Design Research

  Eric Anderson, Global Arts & Cultures (GAC), and RISD Color Lab

  April 23, 2024 virtual presentation accompanying the exhibition What is a Color Lab?, on view April 8 - May 9, 2024. Starting with the question What is a Color Lab?, Color Lab Faculty Fellowship recipient, associate professor of Theory & History of Art & Design (THAD), and graduate program director of Global Arts & Cultures (GAC) masters program Eric Anderson proposes an interdisciplinary historical study of facilities and techniques for exploring color in design. The RISD Color Lab occupies a lineage of institutional spaces in which scientists, designers, makers, and theorists have carried out technical experiments, creative work, and scholarly research aimed at producing knowledge about color. Through this project, Anderson situates the Color Lab historically to consider the possibilities and limits of color research for design.

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  EFS Critic Felipe Shibuya | Invisibilia

  Felipe Shibuya, Experimental and Foundation Studies Department, and RISD Color Lab

  February 6, 2024 virtual presentation accompanying the exhibition Invisibilia, on view December 13 2023 - February 23, 2024 by Felipe Shibuya, Critic, Experimental & Foundation Studies. In nature, every color has a meaning, from flowers that convey messages to their pollinators, to frogs that display their venomous potential with vibrant colors, and the color of the sky that signals climate changes. However, humans are capable of seeing only a small portion of the light spectrum, leaving many messages from nature unread. For example, many species, such as birds and insects, can perceive the UV spectrum. Furthermore, there's an entire palette of colors that are only evident when certain conditions allow organisms to display them, as is the case with bacteria. When bacteria multiply, they synthesize pigments, establishing a visual connection with other species, including humans.

  In "Invisibilia," Shibuya (Experimental & Foundation Studies) offers the audience the chance to see, through photographs, 16 species of bacteria that have grown to the point of showing their natural colors. His intention as an artist and ecologist is to show humans that when they are able to see other species, especially through their colors, the perception to understand how humans are part of an entire ecosystem is broadened. This understanding allows for the creation of opportunities to preserve nature and ensure a sustainable future.

  View the Invisibilia exhibition here.

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  Faculty Fellow Meg Callahan | Color Scraps

  Megan Callahan, Furniture Design Department, and RISD Color Lab

  November 15, 2023 virtual presentation accompanying an exhibition from November 12 - December 6, 2023 by Meg Callahan, critic in Furniture Design and one of the two Color Lab Faculty Fellows for the 2022-23 academic year. As part of an ongoing project supported by the faculty fellowship, Callahan explores how color can be a guide in approaching the accumulation, organization, and composition of scrap materials and waste-based making. This presentation was introduced by Margot McIlwain Nishimura, Dean of Libraries.

  View the Color Scraps exhibition here.

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  Faculty Fellow Hope Leeson | Colors of the Land

  Hope Leeson; History, Philosophy, + the Social Sciences Department; and RISD Color Lab

  April 4, 2023 virtual presentation accompanying an installation by Hope Leeson (botanist and part-time faculty for Liberal Arts Science and Landscape Design and Architecture), funded by a Color Lab Faculty Fellowship. The body of work represents a year-long investigation into natural dye colors given by plants indigenous to South Kingstown, Rhode Island. The color palette is an expression of the land’s changing seasons, the terroir, and presents the visual dialect of the land to viewers.

  View the Colors of the Land exhibition here.

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  Faculty Fellow Rachel Berwick | A Near and A Far: Rubies, Cobalts, Opals, and Crystal

  Rachel Berwick, Glass Department, and RISD Color Lab

  September 27, 2023 virtual presentation accompanying an exhibition of Glass artist and Professor Rachel Berwick’s ongoing research of structural color in crystal and hummingbird feathers. Conducted with the support of a RISD Color Lab Faculty Fellowship and work within RISD Glass, The Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab, and RISD Prints. On view in the Picture Window Gallery at 30 North Main St.: September 1-October 10, 2022. Fellow’s zoom presentation took place September 27th, 2022 at 6:30pm moderated by Fleet Library Visual and Material Resources Librarian Mark Pompelia, in conversation with Textiles Associate Professor Mary Ann Friel, William Pearson, Glass Department head and Professor Jocelyn Prince, and Dean of Libraries Margot Nishimura. For more info visit color.risd.edu.

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  Faculty Fellow Daniel Lefcourt | Query: Evidence of Color Research

  Daniel Lefcourt, Experimental and Foundation Studies Department, and RISD Color Lab

  April 26, 2022 virtual presentation accompanying EFS Associate Professor Daniel Lefcourt's exhibition Query: Evidence of Color Research on view in the picture window at 30 N Main St. April 4 - 29, 2022. Query is a set of large-format digital prints which accumulate long-term color research into digitally rendered scientific displays. The displays, which create a “laboratory” of real objects and digitally fabricated images, undermine the concept of scientific authority using humor and deception. For Lefcourt, presenting evidence of research isn’t only a requirement for recipients of academic funding; it is an opportunity to play with the very idea of ‘evidence.’ Fellow's zoom presentation was moderated by Fleet Library Visual and Material Resources Librarian Mark Pompelia. For more info visit color.risd.edu.