Art and Design Commons^™

A Wavering Line, Ginger Gordon

Masters Theses

Someone once told me it only takes a difference of ten degrees in temperature to change the entire course of the day.

I work with objects in collaboration with space, focusing on the intangible meeting point between visibility and invisibility.

Propelled by coincidence and temporal shifts, the transitory, the fragmented, and the found are all welcome, as are the methodologies of the Surrealists and Cubists. Born from a combination of fortuity and planning, curated fragment collages coalesce to represent acts of chance in three dimensions. Balanced forms weave and sway as small portholes direct a view. Form follows chance.

In This Form, Together, Elana Shvalbe

Masters Theses

Most of my memories consist of lively dinner parties. Hands moving in every direction when the food is brought out. The piano bench for the kids to sit on, the fold out table necessary to fit everyone around the meal, and always endless stacks of plates. These experiences and traditions were curated by my heritage and have a strong presence in the work I design. I intend to understand and create interlocking relationships of care, where ritual and romance lead the way to form a community; designing and making furniture and objects that reassert hospitality within the home.

Hospitality is …

Notes To Myself, Anna Dawson

Masters Theses

Immersed in the sun’s light, my body feels saturated, during a long day at the beach. When it begins to cool down and the day inverts into night, I watch the sun set on the ocean horizon. Bart Lootsma, the Dutch architectural theorist describes this experience of light as an immersion and inversion. Intangible, yet something to look at and something to submerge in.

This thesis is a personal journey, and an open exploration of the aesthetic and experience of furniture objects in everyday living. It is a collection of thought processes, observations, and speculations. Sometimes it’s just a note …

The Sky Is Falling, Alexis Tingey

Masters Theses

The ceiling would fall apart in my childhood home, it was an old house. Occasionally a piece of ceiling would clomp down on my head. In these moments, I would pause, and close my eyes until an image of some fabulous, beautiful interior came into my mind, and then I would open my eyes and continue. Sometimes to escape a falling ceiling, I would find respite in my first ideal sitting spot, a post on our back fence; I would sit with the sky and think. Looking back, I believe these are the moments where I caught glimpses of the …

Mood Follows Matter, Maxwell Taylor-Milner

Masters Theses

Function is an invisible thing - what disappears when an object is used? Ornament has long been considered an obstacle, a roadblock to forgetting. Capitalist logics of speed, efficiency, and distraction militate against a material culture that might require patient observation, against acquiring the skill to make thoughtful objects or the knowledge to read and appreciate them. The result is the impenetrable trash mishmash spectacle of virtual flea markets like Amazon and Alibaba, of trackable yet traceless objects whose visual identity is algorithmically generated - commodity mystification as pure capitalist abstraction.

While I bow to the quixotic nature of yearning …

Just Enough, Amelia Greteman

Masters Theses

As a child, I never answered the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” with “a furniture designer.” Even though both of my parents are artists, making things never seemed like a job; it just seemed like something we all loved to do. Some of my best memories are of working in the studio alongside them - painting, smearing, building, and destroying, but always vigilantly coloring within the lines.

This thesis investigates my past and current relationship to making and the urge I have to simplify and reduce. It takes place in the form of furniture …

Miles And Miles And Miles, Shannon Rose Jones

Masters Theses

miles and miles and miles is a body of work that draws design inspiration from the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, a region unflattened by ice during the last ice age. The works are site specific extrapolations that have been abstracted in order to trigger a process of memory recollection in the viewer. Selections of atmospheric prose, furniture objects, illustrations, and imagery are presented as snapshots of a place in an attempt to memorialize and make tangible ephemeral memories collected by the maker traveling in this vast landscape. Attention is given to the distillation of form in order to contemplate its …

Slow Puzzle, Tzyy Yi Young

Masters Theses

One may argue that we all observe. It is this finely tuned capacity that allows designers to read context and to identify patterns. Since I was a child, I’ve been a carefully tuned explorer of the world, observing the world around me. Yet as a designer, I take this observational impulse to another level by recording my observations and then translating these impressions into form. What is seen, felt, and gathered is then edited, nuanced, and reformed. This act of translation becomes a slow puzzle as I look for cues, acknowledge every facet, and conceive of forms in such a …

Taking Care, John Dixon

Masters Theses

We’ve come to live our lives on a quest for what we deem as efficiency, but has our view on the matter been focused on the wrong measures? Taking Care investigates efficiency utilizing a variety of different comparative measures through the creation of 8 chairs. When our emphasis on certain variables is shifted, is mass production the most efficient means of making? What about one-off production utilizing local materials? Does industry’s approach to ergonomics focus on efficiencies benefitting the employer while sacrificing those of the employee? Working from a Wendell Berry quote contrasting care to efficiency as a point of …

Dress Your Chair, Yumeng Gai

Masters Theses

Upholstery is the dress for furniture. As apparel for humans, upholstery has the power to shape the identity of furniture. By changing different upholsteries, furniture will have fresh identities that bring vitality to both the furniture itself and the surrounding environment. And during the process of changing “cloth” for furniture, people will build a deeper relationship with the furniture they already have.

Making Meaning, Eric Loucks

Masters Theses

Making Meaning explores mental health through the lens of a contemporary craft-based design practice. Themes of identity, catharsis, connection, flow, teaching, and community create a framework for understanding the role craft plays in developing and maintaining a healthy mindset. The physical pieces that result from this approach are meticulously made, highly considered, and given the quality of contemporary heirloom: a piece that promotes a kind of emotional connection and wellness in their owner.

What Do I See Between 2 To 8 O'Clock, Youtian Duan

Masters Theses

We record our daily life, our daily emotions. But maybe we lie to ourselves. Or our expression is a kind of hope: what we want to look like or want others to think we are like. Unfortunately, it’s usually not our natural appearance, not the honest thoughts in our hearts. Maybe we don’t understand ourselves.

I like to record my dreams. In the dream world, sometimes I relax, sometimes nervous, and unconsciously wander around. That is the real me. In my unconscious dream state, I identify myself, know myself, again and again. I can live in peace with a world …

Polyrhythms, Kevin Costante

Masters Theses

This work strives to integrate seemingly ‘distant’ practices into a concept by emphasizing their differences. A syncopation between a maker and designer, a planner and improviser. A search for commonalities in the middle of what otherwise creates conflict. I cultivate a space to play alongside my inherent formalities by incorporating color and movement. I find rhythm persists uninterrupted through the discrepancies of my process and inspirations. I want to see it in the outcomes of my work.

How can I be compatible with this world of rudiments and structure and also comply with my reliance on ‘chance’?

An Evolving Process: Patterns And Objects, Shreya Tuli

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates my life experiences,inspired by the surroundings in New England and India.

My process is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach. I integrate diverse media moving fluidly between two dimensional and three dimensional work, creating multiple layers of pattern and objects.

Kitsch Study And Chinese Kitsch Market, Jiaqi Ellie Liu

Masters Theses

From the old industrial age to the new information age, the accumulation of capital has led to the monopoly of the assets and technology of large enterprises, and the pressure of the middle class is increasing day by day.

At the same time, informatization has led to a substantial increase in the next round of energy and material needs, and therefore human needs for thinking, physical and emotional needs have also increased. Kitsch can meet the thinking and emotional needs of the public. Therefore, it has become the mainstream contemporary aesthetics.

Kitsch art & design are easier to be loved …

Loose Threads / Hilos Sueltos, Estefanía De Ros

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I’ve collaborated with four artisans from my home country, Guatemala: Apolonio Vicente, Vinicio Vicente, Mario Poz and Manuel Otsojay. They all use traditional craft methods with natural materials: wicker, wool, and cotton. I interweave, overlap, and knot mementos from my childhood with current ideas and dialogues that contain loose threads to the work. All of the layers merge in fluid forms with texture and movement. The curtains let light in, the rug sets warmth, and the “cayuco” invites you to slow down.

I aim to push back against the devaluing of craft traditions, especially in …

This Trash Is Someone Else's Problem, Lauren Goodman

Masters Theses

This Trash is Someone Else’s Problem reimagines object design practices through a decolonial lens that embraces responsive approaches to the local environment and the communities that steward it. It advocates for design justice and social equality. The physical work was developed from discarded scraps of industrial waste harvested from the Providence area, such as wire fencing, oil drums, rebar and steel tubing. It was created without the use of expensive tools, machinery and materials in favour of a less extractive approach to design. In conjunction with the studio work is a series of community gatherings focused on low-fi ceramic pit …

Kainan Liu, Kainan Liu

Masters Theses

Selection of furniture is a very personal thing. Its scale and social attributes also determine that it is rarely sent as a gift. So, it seems to me, that furniture belongs to the category of personal goods, which is a concept worth pondering. What kind of relationship do these mere worldly possessions, these so called "mine" things, whether these are vehicles, houses, furniture, clothes or accessories, have with us? When we say the word "mine", it is a self-definition with confident possessiveness and the free extension of this definition in choice? Or is it a instinctive behavior that you need …

Slick And Lumpy : Heavy Cream, Emma Fague

Masters Theses

A conversation with myself. A look inside my mind, process, and feelings. Slick and Lumpy. Creamy, oozing, leaking, dripping. Poured, molded, and sewn. Not a body, but my body, big and bursting and spilling out. Two things placed next to each other and observed. Lots of dessert, frosting, squishing, covering. A conversation with a painting, with a building technique. Fetish and healing, leather, vinyl, latex. Private and public space. Identity, imposter syndrome, digital fabrication. Combining and subtracting and stuffing. Is it appealing, sexy, charming, or revolting, ugly and gross?

Erik Degiorgi, Erik Degiorgi

Masters Theses

Where I started two years ago is a very different place from where I am today. At the outset of my time at RISD I knew very little about what it meant to be a designer. I lacked confidence, yet still entered this program with strict ideas about the nature and outcome of my work.

Over the course of four traditional semesters and two winter sessions, I gradually moved away from my original, self-imposed fears and constraints. Not coincidentally, my work expanded into areas I had not conceived of previously. It has been an illuminating journey, and while I am …

This Feels Familiar, E. Winslow Funaki

Masters Theses

This is a book about in-betweenness. It’s an examination of how we identify people and objects, the categories we use to do so, and those that don’t fit squarely into one or the other. It considers the grey areas of identity--race, gender, species, function, living, inanimate. It slips and slides through the ambiguous and indefinite, forever moving, always simultaneously being “both,” “all,” “neither,” and “none.”

Internal Resonance, Xiangyu Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the interaction between my inside and outside worlds. It includes my discussion towards Zen methodology, homeostasis, nature, antiquity, inner order and the concept of Qi. It can also be seen as a process that scrutinizes my daily life and looks deep into those things which slowly echo in my body and push me to make my own response.

You Are Trapped., Will Chouinard

Masters Theses

YOU’RE TRAPPED. YOU CAN SEE THE EXIT BUT YOU CAN’T GET TO IT. EVERY TIME YOU MOVE, YOU RISK CUTTING YOURSELF ON THE SHARP EDGES OF THE TRANSLUCENT WALLS, SO YOU DON’T. YOU’RE STARTING TO SWEAT. NOT MOVING MAKES YOU INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE. YOU’RE BREATHING HEAVILY. YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE ABOUT TO PASS OUT, BUT YOU CAN’T BECAUSE IF YOU DO YOU KNOW THAT IT’S ALL OVER. SO YOU FORCE YOURSELF TO STAY AWAKE. THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN ON YOU. YOU HAVE TO MAKE A MOVE. TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH. IN AN UNHUMAN EFFORT, YOU REACH UP TO THE …

Utopian Fantasy, Yue Zhuo

Masters Theses

I design furniture and objects to express my utopian fantasy to people. I hope users can imagine the fantasy through the interaction with my furniture and objects. While people are interacting with my works, they become part of the fantasy. My works are the NPCs (nonplayer characters) of a game created by myself, called Utopian Fantasy.

My works are creature-istic, anthropomorphic, and always interactive. They are inspired by nature and everyday life. This series of works I created during my time at RISD express my appreciation for the underwater world and the Internet. My designs beg for interaction and play. …

Glurp, Glurp, Glurp, Zihe Gong

Masters Theses

My thesis is an accumulation of many different things. It contains a body of work that consists of furniture, objects, sketches, illustrations, and spontaneous thoughts, as well as improvised writings and images of a variety of things that have largely influenced my own making. For me, design is a discipline that does not come into being through a linear direction. Similarly, I believe that a thesis does not comprise just one single narrative, culminating from one starting point. The process of designing and making is more like the way one prepares a meal - all of the ideas and research …

Cross Your Fingers, Ayumi Kodama

Masters Theses

My work is warm, flavorless and light. Warm in the colors I use and the materials I choose. It is also the feeling of being at home or somewhere familiar. Flavorless because it is honest, humble and respectful of the material and its transformation it goes through into its final form. As a designer, I am the advocate for the material and its possibilities. I listen with my hands and let the material guide me. Light in its weight literally but in hue too. It is open, natural and subtle. My work has many layers, packed with many memories and …

Works And Process, Alex Hsu

Masters Theses

This thesis is a collection of furniture and objects that seek to embody the harmonious pleasantness of things through thoughtful consideration of their aesthetics, utility, and place. It reflects on the ownership and creation of objects and the role they play defining who we are. More specifically, it’s a reflection on how where I’ve come from and learning how to create have influenced these complex ideas. It’s a document that looks inward and serves as a manifestation of my developing process and its effects on my identity as a result. It grapples with my desire to create things that are …

Externalized : Origins Of Aesthetic Motivations, Tim Miller

Masters Theses

My thoughts and behaviors are influenced by a compulsive disorder. Observing this, I’ve learned how much my outlook can be shaped by my own ritualistic patterns. I live with a heightened sense of awareness toward my particular compulsions which has shaped how I see the world. In this thesis writing and collection of designed objects, I am seeking to further explore my own experience with compulsive thoughts and behaviors, unpacking how they manifest in the day-to-day, how they direct my perception, and ultimately how they serve as a driving force behind my design process. By observing these tendencies and articulating …

Sky Is Sinking Below The Trees : Two Years Of Documentation And Observations, Xuelun Li

Masters Theses

I see landscape through my own eyes, hands and body, and also through the lenses of Chinese poetry, calligraphy and ink painting. These art forms are rich in metaphor. The way they imagine and depict landscape is romantic, often including observations on dual concepts as lightness and heaviness, movement and stillness, change and stability, all of which have inspired this collection of work.

These furniture pieces include benches, tables and lamps. They are abstracted landscapes, to spark imagination about natural forces and transformations, both through the process with which they’ve been made and through their final forms. I engage with …

American Slavic : And Other Writings, Zac Banik

Masters Theses

My current cycle of work deals with the exploration, digestion and reinvigoration of traditional Slavic craft and material culture with goal of contributing to a contemporary design vernacular which eschews the idealization of Western-European forms and stands on its own: aesthetically discrete and externally respected. This line of inquiry arose from my own journey to understand myself as a Slavic-American; what it means to be such a thing; how to reconcile assimilation against perceived authentic identity and what value the voice of the diaspora can bring to the discourse of the old world. The outward mission of this project is …