Student Work
The Glass Department offers training to undergraduates through its four-year BFA program, and to graduate students pursuing professional studies in its two-year MFA program. The Glass Department also offers individualized training in glass to students preparing for graduate and professional studies through its one-year Post Baccalaureate Program. Since 1968, RISD has been dedicated to the development of glass art, and its glass department has been widely recognized as a leader in preparing artists for careers in glass.
The Glass Department considers glass to be both an artist’s material having remarkable and complex expressive range, as well as a studio discipline with limitless potential and a unique history that incorporates sculpture, architecture, design, craft, and decorative art. The department is a media-specific visual art program that combines this rich and diverse heritage with an unending material and process investigation of glass, and a corresponding commitment to conceptual development and artistic criticality. Glass majors are asked to value and nurture their native curiosity as the basis for a personal aesthetic that engages a wide world through continual experimentation and artistic striving. Advanced students are encouraged and assisted to broaden their perspective and experience through internships, travel and exchange programs, and workshop participation. The department provides its students with a thorough technical foundation and broad resources for specialized material exploration.
An essential feature of the Glass Department curriculum is an extensive roster of visiting artists and critics who represent a rich diversity of views and art activity, both within and apart from the contemporary glass movement. Visiting professionals present lectures and workshops, engage in studio collaborations with department students, participate in group or individual critiques, and share in conducting the weekly department assembly.
Undergraduate
Browse through selective works of the Undergraduate Glass students.
Graduate
Browse through selective works of the Graduate Glass students.