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  Ann Fessler

  Ann Fessler and Richard Goulis

  Installation artist, filmmaker, and author Ann Fessler has spent four decades using her platform as an artist to bring hidden histories and stories to light. She turned to the subject of adoption in 1989 and has produced three documentary films, numerous audio and video installations, and written an award-winning book, The Girls Who Went Away, based on 100 interviews with women who lost children to adoption in the 1950s–early 70s. Fessler has been the recipient of a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard and grants from the NEA, the RI and Maryland State Arts Councils, LEF Foundation, RI Foundation, and RISCA. Her work is in the collection of major museums including the Whitney and MoMA in NY. Fessler, who received her MA in Media from Webster University and MFA in photography from the University of Arizona, is a professor at Rhode Island School of Design where she has taught since 1993.

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  David Frazer

  David Frazer and Richard Goulis

  In 1978 David Frazer began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, and he is still there in 2016, as head of the painting department. Frazer received his BFA from RISD in 1970, and as a participant in the European Honors Program, he traveled in Italy and The Netherlands, becoming influenced by the painting techniques of Giotto and Piero della Francesca. He later became the chief critic of the RISD/Rome program, the first alumnus to do so. Frazer obtained an MA in painting from the University of New Mexico. Collage and abstract expressionist painting inform his aesthetic and structural process; although his paintings allude to printing or transfer techniques, they do not use them. His work is primarily abstract and improvisational and plays with symbolic images. Frazer’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in South Korea and China, where he has also been a visiting artist and lecturer.

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  Ilse Buchert Nesbitt

  Ilse Buchert Nesbitt and Richard Goulis

  Ilse Buchert Nesbitt was born in Germany and spent her childhood in Japan, absorbing the influence of sumi brush painting practiced by her mother. In the 1950s she studied at the Art Academies of Hamburg and Berlin, concentrating on typography and book design. As a personal art form, the woodcut seemed a natural progression from typography; both processes involve the relief technique. In 1960 Nesbitt moved to the United States to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. At RISD she met her late husband, Alexander Nesbitt, a calligrapher and type historian. They moved to Newport in 1965 and founded Third and Elm Press which, over the years has produced artists books and pamphlets. Nesbitt continues to create woodcuts, making her own paper in the traditional Japanese way. She has exhibited in the United States and Germany where she is also represented in private and public collections.

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  Jesse Burke

  Jesse Burke and Richard Goulis

  Jesse Burke is a New England native and currently lives in Rhode Island with his wife and their three girls—Clover, Poppy, and Honey. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he is a faculty member, and his BFA from the University of Arizona. Burke’s work deals with themes related to vulnerability and identity, as well as humans’ complicated relationship with nature. His monograph, Intertidal, was published by Decode Books in 2008. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad, including The Haggerty Museum, the Perth Center for Photography, and the Tucson Museum of Art, and is held in many private and public collections, among them the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the RISD Museum.

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  Lawrence Bush

  Lawrence Bush and Richard Goulis

  “Nature is my model, sometimes literally, always conceptually. With clay and glaze I imitate nature. With function and form; color and texture; history and need, I attempt a layering of forces and structures similar to that found in natural things like flowers.” Lawrence Bush is a potter, collaborator, and educator who has taught ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design since 1984, heading the department for twenty years. Bush fuses histories of art making and craft tradition to serve contemporary need. Freedom to move among handwork, mechanized production, and digital technologies is important. Originally from Seattle, Bush holds a BFA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the College of Ceramics at Alfred University. His professional activities and special projects at RISD are numerous. He has exhibited nationally, has work in the RISD Museum, the Museum of Ceramic Art at Alfred, and many other venues.

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  John Dunnigan

  John Dunnigan and Richard Goulis

  John Dunnigan is a designer, maker, and educator. A native of Providence, Dunnigan is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, with an MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work involves a range of contexts, materials, and processes, but it is driven by a consistent interest in things as an expression of the interdependent relationships among culture, technology, and identity. In his more recent work, he is motivated by the pursuit of what he calls “Practical Solutions to Oblique Problems.” Dunnigan’s furniture has been shown in over one hundred exhibitions, including ten solo exhibitions, and is included in collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the National Museum of American Art. He is a partner in DEZCO furniture design llc, a company dedicated to sustainable practices in design for mass production. Dunnigan is a professor and Chair of the Department of Furniture Design at RISD.

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  Julie Gearan

  Julie Gearan and Richard Goulis

  Julie Gearan enjoys exploring a narrative in her painting; she describes herself as “a painter of themes that connect human relationships of past and present, linking ancient myths with our current everyday lives.” She also is interested in the portrait as a genre, and has recently been selected to paint the official portrait of Governor Lincoln D. Chafee. Gearan received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, and her MFA from Indiana University in Bloomington. She has studied, worked and lived in New York, Philadelphia, Italy, Chicago, and Providence; she currently teaches part-time at the Rhode Island School of Design and Roger Williams University.

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  Michael Glancy

  Michael Glancy and Richard Goulis

  Extraordinary and elegant in quality and beauty, Michael Glancy’s sculptures reveal the artist’s exacting struggle towards perfection. Drawing inspiration from natural macro- and micro-environments, Glancy translates cellular landscapes into elegant jewel-toned sculptural objects. Made with blown and plate glass, copper, bronze, silver, and gold, his works reference science, biology, molecular physics, and mathematics. A native of Detroit, Glancy received a BFA from the University of Denver, a second BFA in sculpture, and an MFA in glass from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied with Dale Chihuly. He is a member of the adjunct faculty in the Jewelry and Metalsmithing Department at RISD and has taught at Pilchuck Glass School in Washington. Glancy’s career has included exhibitions in New York City and Switzerland and his work is in major museums and collections.

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  Peter Prip

  Peter Prip and Richard Goulis

  Peter Prip, the son of Danish master metalsmith John Prip, was born in Denmark, shortly before his father came to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design. Prip attended the Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen, and after an apprenticeship with Ronald Pearson, launched a career as a studio metalsmith and jeweler. Over the years he also did product development work for Reed and Barton as well as freelance design and model making for the jewelry industry. Today Prip acknowledges that he prefers the forms and shapes inherent in making sculpture from metal; in his words he “honors the material in different ways.” Prip has been an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Industrial Design at RISD since 1988 and maintains a fresh enthusiasm for working with new students.

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  Dean Snyder

  Dean Snyder and Richard Goulis

  Dean Snyder’s sculpture has been characterized as “uncanny ‘graphical’ organicism experienced through seamless assemblies of highly considered forming, molding, and lamination.” Drawing plays a large role in Snyder’s studio. A native of Philadelphia, Snyder received a BFA in photography and sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1974; a British Arts Council Fellowship for postgraduate work at Lanchester Polytechnic, Coventry, UK, in 1975; and his MFA in sculpture at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. Snyder is Chair of the Sculpture Department at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he has taught since 2000. He has received numerous artist awards, including the Guggenheim Visual Arts Fellowship and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. His work has been exhibited nationally and is represented in the collections of the Tang Museum and RISD Museum, among others.

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  Rosanne Somerson

  Rosanne Somerson and Richard Goulis

  Rosanne Somerson, president at the Rhode Island School of Design 2015-21, came to the institution as a freshman photography major but quickly discovered the joys and challenges of woodworking and furniture design. Studying with Tage Frid, she received a BFA in Industrial Design in 1976, eventually teaching in the program and helping to found the world-renowned furniture design department at RISD. Somerson’s studio work covers a broad range, from very personal pieces to commissions for museums, corporations, and individuals. She views furniture in relation to the interactive needs of people, from utilitarian and emotional perspectives. Her furniture is in the collections of the Smithsonian, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Smith College Museum, The Huntsville Museum, and the RISD Museum, among others. Somerson has lectured and exhibited throughout the globe, and has won numerous awards for her work.

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  Kate Blacklock

  Kate Blacklock and Richard Goulis

  Kate Blacklock’s early love of ceramics came from her viewing of the Pre-Columbian pottery at New York’s Museum of Natural History where her mother worked. Blacklock received her BA from the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MFA in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. In her studio art, Blacklock has moved from sculptural ceramics to painting to photography, currently creating illusionary still lifes using a flatbed scanner. She has often worked in series and has shown her work nationally. Blacklock currently is adjunct faculty at RISD; she has taught ceramics at many different venues and was an associate professor of art at Louisiana State University for nine years.

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  Nancy Friese

  Nancy Friese and Richard Goulis

  Nancy Friese obtained her BS in nursing from the University of North Dakota, in the state where she was born and maintains a farmstead studio. She changed her career course and studied painting and printmaking at different venues, culminating in an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1980. Primarily a landscape painter and printmaker, Friese is currently working in watercolor on large-scale landscapes. A recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and artist residencies, Friese has exhibited her paintings and prints nationally and internationally. She is a professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she has taught since 1990.

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  Andrew Raftery: Autobiography of a Garden

  Andrew Raftery and Richard Goulis

  Andrew Raftery’s roots were in East Providence, from where his first generation Irish father came. He grew up in Washington, D.C., made his first print at the age of eleven, and attained a BFA from Boston University and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. Raftery, a professor of printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he has taught since 1991, is renowned for his mastery of engraving. He has won numerous awards and fellowships and exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions at many major venues in the East.

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  Duane Slick

  Duane Slick and Richard Goulis

  Duane Slick identifies himself as a first generation urban Indian, born of a father from the Meskwaki Nation in Iowa— where Slick was born in 1961—and a mother from the Ho-Chunk Nation in Nebraska. He received a BFA from the University of Northern Iowa and an MFA from the University of California at Davis. Slick has distinguished himself as a national authority on contemporary Native American art and artists and since 1995 has taught painting and printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design where he is now Professor. His paintings have been exhibited nationally and are in the collections of many museums.

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  Esther Solondz

  Esther Solondz and Richard Goulis

  Esther Solondz grew up in New Jersey, receiving a BA from Clark University in 1975 and an MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1980. She also pursued graduate work in film at New York University. Solondz’ artistic life has been an evolution through many different materials. Beginning with photography and film, she moved to painting and then sculpture and installations. Over the last twelve years Solondz has gravitated to an exploration of the transformative processes that simple materials such as salt and rust undergo. She has taught at RISD and exhibited extensively throughout New England.

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  John Udvardy

  John Udvardy and Richard Goulis

  John Udvardy retired from a thirty-four year career teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design where he chaired the Foundation Studies program and taught three-dimensional design. A sculptor who seeks to make connections between natural and manmade forms, Udvardy collects and categorizes his objects in his studio in a way that indicates what an organized teacher he must have been. He was born in Ohio of Hungarian ancestry and received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and MFA from the Yale School of Art. On scholarship, he traveled through Europe and North Africa. Udvardy has exhibited his sculpture in solo and group exhibitions at many American museums and galleries. Among other honors, he received RISD’s Gold Sophia Medallion in recognition of his teaching career.

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  Erminio Pinque

  Erminio Pinque and Richard Goulis

  Erminio Pinque is the founder and artistic director of BIG NAZO, an international performance group and creature-making studio in Providence. Originally from New York, he has lived in Providence since receiving his BFA in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he now teaches a course in creature creation.

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  Donna Bruton

  Donna Bruton and Richard Goulis

  Born in 1954 in Wisconsin, Donna Bruton received a BFA from Michigan State University, an MFA from Yale University and a certificate in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago. She resided in Portsmouth, Rhode Island and was a professor of painting at the Rhode Island School of Design.

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  Yizhak Elyashiv

  Yizhak Elyashiv and Richard Goulis

  Born in Israel in 1964, Yizhak Elyashiv received a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Providence and teaches Foundation studies at RISD and Rhode Island College.

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  Malcolm Grear

  Malcolm Grear and Richard Goulis

  Malcolm Grear was born in Kentucky in 1931, trained as a welder in the Navy and studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He is Professor Emeritus in Graphic Design at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he taught for thirty-eight years, and is known for his “visual identity” work through his firm, Malcolm Grear Designers, in Providence.

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  Thomas Sgouros: 1927-2012

  Thomas Sgouros and Richard Goulis

  Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Thomas Sgouros is a fifty year veteran of the Rhode Island School of Design Department of Illustration, where he became department chair in 1975. Currently he paints “Remembered Landscapes” in his studio at the Fleur de Lys building, part of the Providence Art Club.

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  Jonathan Bonner

  Jonathan Bonner and Richard Goulis

  Making art is a marinade of questions. The questions concern everything from major concepts to small details. Solutions arrive from constant immersion in the marinade.

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  Jacqueline Ott

  Jacqueline Ott and Richard Goulis

  My current work consists of geometric shapes that are built by the systematic application of repeated marks to a visual lined structure. It is derived from my previous work where the marks were hung on a linear structure to create an allover painting or drawing. I set up a defined format within which to work because it allows me to concentrate on inventing unique markings and systematic methods of configuring the marks. The mark determines the structure and vice versa. The process of integrating the mark within the structure determines the image. The work follows the logic of the system on which it is based – nothing frivolous is included. Within the system, random actions can occur. The pencil lines that define the underlying structure are visible and important to the whole. I am occasionally asked if a computer is used to develop the work. The answer is no. The work is enhanced by the subtle differences that occur when the work is developed and executed by hand.

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