Rob and I went back to Providence for Parents' Weekend at RISD. No, to our knowledge, we are not the parents of any student currently attending RISD. We just really like Parents' Weekend so we went anyway. We begged Claire's friend, Andrew, if we could adopt him for the weekend. Turns out his father was coming on Saturday, so Andrew cleared us for Thursday and Friday only. But his girlfriend (and Claire's former roommate), Kate, was in town, so we got two for the price of one. Frankly, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun if we didn't get to spend time with those two.
On Friday we went to the new Chihuly exhibit on campus. Dale Chihuly is a great example of finding your niche after graduating from college. In the 60's, he majored in interior design at the University of Washington, then got enrolled in the first glass program in the country, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He then came to RISD and earned an M.A. in ceramics. RISD asked him to start up a glass program for them in 1969. He taught there until the late 80's. Now his work is a part of over 200 museum collections around the world. I love that he has a massively beautiful ceiling in the Wynn hotel in Vegas, as well as a chandelier in the entry of the Victoria and Albert in London. That's a broad appeal. The following are works from his students:
And here are the site-specific pieces he designed for the new Chase Center at RISD. I had Rob stand in front during a few of the photos so you can see how large the pieces are.
This is the most glorious one of all. Look at the reflections on the wall and on the floor....
It wouldn't be a Parent's Weekend without Rob and Anne visiting classes, so we went to
Shanth Enjeti's class in character design. Shanth is one of Claire's favorite professors and if you follow my blog, you will have seen similar photos from last year. This was our third time visiting his class so the professor even called on Rob to answer a question. There were at least 5 of Claire's friends there which made it even more fun.
Then, not knowing what to do next, we were invited to Andrew's class in cinema lighting and watched him as the cameraman on a shoot. We're very proud of our temporarily adopted son.
Shanth then drove us out to Monica and
Nick Jainschigg's home. Nick is the other favorite professor. It wasn't until we saw his studio that we completely understood the connection with Claire. I will illustrate with photos.
On Saturday we went to the alumni sale. It is by far the most wonderful art fair I've ever been to. We bought another mechanical bug (a dragonfly this time) but it's being finished so I'll post a photo when he arrives at his new home. Below is the mass of humanity that is the alumni sale.
And in the midst of the mass of humanity, we managed to find Shanth and his wife, Lauren, and the twins. Shanth says that every night as they go to sleep he tells them, "One of you is my favorite and I'm not going to tell you which. But it's close!"
And finally, we say good bye to all the folks at Kate's mom's booth - Red Rover Clothing. There's me, Andrew, Kate, and Kate's dad, Chris. We had to leave early to catch a plane to DC to see Em. More on that in my next post.
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