Crit Happens...@RISD

I LOVE Snow & I love DESIGN

On Friday, February 5, 2016 I awoke to a snowstorm. Fluffy flurries disco dancing outside The Dean Hotel in downtown Providence, RI...delicate drama.

Check email, via iphone @risd.edu, school is open...The Final Critique will Happen. RISD Final Critiques for Winter session 2016, Surface Design. Friday, February 5, 2016...11AM - 5PM (which somehow became 6ish).

10:30 @The RISDStore #ispyblack, a perfect RISD t-shirt “crit happens”... ah the legacy of final critiques and the creative manifestation of ideas, which leads us back to DESIGN.

10:45 @TheRISDCafe Iain Wong, guest critic, Surface Designer from CA, RISD, NYC alla [a la ?] East Village and pres-ently, Providence, RI. Deadline Design Experience Ready & Willing! Thank you, Iain Wong.

Critiques require presence...minds full of fact and commentary, body of artwork and soulful speak. Over the years as a guest critic, design instructor and most recently teaching critic of Surface Design at RISD, I always remind students about the function of mentor critiques: “Take what you want and leave the rest.”  

Ultimately designers must design “good” work, which originates in thought, vision and skill to develop ideas to a point of presentation; hence the ultimate critique. Work can be assessed from personal opinion and/or predetermined design criteria. Surely work must sing too, that invisible music of rhythm, when the design language moves seamlessly across the surface...it is good.

11AM - 6ish @RISD I am reminded how extraordinary design-driven students just make their crits happen. Color, pattern, reference, iphone pics, laptops, paint, paper, collage, watercolor, revisions, enviable solutions, unfinished messes and presence of creative mind to engage, articulate and listen to me, myself and Iain Wong.
Thank you, students.

7PM @DavidWintonBellGallery, “The Curious Occurrence of Taxidermy in Contemporary Art”, (including Damien Hirst). Thank you, Brown University.

P.S. February 1: Funny Fabric Foreshadowing...the mother of The Dean Hotel’s owner, Ari Heckman, introduced herself at the Fortuny showroom in NYC. While choosing swatches for my RISD Surface Design students, she had overheard me talking in between Fortuny fabric wings of printed metallic and saturated color. Fast forward, upon arrival @TheDeanHotel, post six hours of the last pre-crit class, a very special Providence welcome from The Dean of Hotels (#oldschool meets #newschool). Thank you, Linda Heckman.

Next up, pickled eggs at Faust and Oysters on Atwells with Francesca Dow, including chowders. People of presence are indeed quite genuine.