Fall Course: Investigating Water

The first time I had been exposed to a liberal arts professor who directly asked us to produce studio work instead of writing a final paper was this fall with Nicole Merola in "Investigating Water: Connecting to Narragansett Bay."  While always being assumed by students and faculty alike, the thought of responding to liberal arts courses with studio work had never been directly initiated by a RISD professor.  Being a witness to the process, I can say that it was an extremely effective learning tool.  

The process to the final project was unique.   Nicole created a multidisciplinary environment, drawing from field trips, readings, class discussions, and journaling.  With so many different informing mediums, we discovered our personal relationship and passion in regards to the subject of water and the environment.   A sense of freedom allowed us to cultivate our growing interests, culminating in the studio with a final project.   In John Maeda’s surprise critique, all responses were geared towards how positively the multidisciplinary style can work for art and design students.   The style applies to how we would work in the real world, by gathering source material from several different places and using it directly in our work, which happened in this course.  

The course was unusual in the way it addressed the invisible boundaries that are rarely crossed by the professor or student in the normal flow of life at RISD. Our class was required to engage with local organizations through field trips and also create final projects in our studios, instead of in the usual Word or PowerPoint. While our professor, Nicole Merola, seemed to think it the natural path to incorporate studio practice with liberal arts, it had never been done quite in this way. On the night of the gallery opening, it was clear that there was fascination with the atypical nature of the course. We experienced John Maeda initiating a video recorded critique and response from students in the class and others who were attending the opening.

It was also great to see how other people, from different departments, worked along side myself. The design majors’ processes aren’t so different from our painting processes. The only difference is the source material we normally look at. Overall, it unified different material and different people through a final exhibit, where none of these have been integrated before.