Beginning midmorning Saturday, cars crowded onto Waterman Street in front of the sprawling fortress known on the Rhode Island School of Design campus as the "The Quad." The terraced brick complex houses the entirety of the RISD first-year class in four dorms - East, South, Homer and Nickerson halls.
The arriving 411 members of the RISD Class of 2009 filtered in throughout the day and were met by upperclassmen wearing red and black t-shirts that read "RISD Roadies - Orientation Tour '05." The new students were guided through the tunnel-like entranceway, past a gurgling tile fountain and up several flights of stairs to the upper level of the Met Dining Hall for check-in.
Jenna Martin RISD '09, pacing the Met terrace in pink, checkered Vans and glittery blue eye shadow, said she came to RISD because it is not far from her home in Kittery, Maine, and because she heard good things about the school from a friend who came to RISD last year.
Before coming to RISD, she took art classes in high school, as well as a drawing class at the Maine College of Art, a stone carving class in Vermont and a workshop at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Martin said. In the coming year, she will be attending foundation classes, which are mandatory for all first-years at RISD, and preparing for a major in painting.
Laura Shirref RISD '07, a resident adviser for the Class of 2009, met incoming students for the first time as they arrived Saturday. According to Shirref, the foundation class assignments for first-years include a three-dimensional design class, a two-dimensional design class and a drawing class, as well as basic level art history and English classes.
For the foundation classes, the RISD professors can vary greatly. "Some of the teachers are really hardcore - they give you so much work and demand a lot from you and are really strict. Others will demand a lot, but are more flexible in terms of work. Other teachers are just really bizarre and out there and give such open assignments that some people can interpret them as very easy and some people work their asses off still just because they love to do that," she said.
Samuel Keller RISD '09, who wandered out of his dorm in an orange T-shirt and aviator sunglasses to smoke a cigarette, said he came to RISD for its unique program and its reputation.
After participating in a semester-long program in California centered on art classes, the Brooklyn native looks forward to once again being in an environment where he can create art all the time, he said.
"I want to concentrate on painting, but only as a discipline. I think painting is maybe the best disciplined media, and I think that discipline can be applied to other arts such as sculpture or other media," he said. Keller enjoys working on art both in the classroom and out - he spent time restoring a vintage Vespa motor scooter this year.
A trip to Brazil gave Keller the desire to become fluent in Portuguese, and he said he would like to take language classes at Brown if he can fit the demanding five meetings per week into his schedule. But for the future, his goals lie primarily in the art world. "I would like to be self-employed doing art. It's sort of my idealistic goal that I would like to pursue," he said.
Taking a more pragmatic track in terms of career aspirations is Eugene Choy RISD '09, who has lived on and off in both Korea and New Jersey. Choy admitted to having little previous experience with visual art, having decided to attend art school only last summer.
He chose RISD for its good reputation and thinks that it will help him to get a better job in his chosen field of industrial design, he said. Choy hopes to design commercial items such as cars, cell phones or furniture. To further his business plans, Choy said he plans to take courses in business or marketing at Brown. But first he has to become acclimated to the intensive workload at RISD, side by side with classmates of all experience levels. "It's all kind of new to me," Choy said with a half-smile.
Anne Prentnieks RISD '09 just returned from a 10-month stay with a host family in Taiwan, where she said she had to get used to the rigidity of the society as she took a weekly oil painting class. "At the end of each class period the teacher would come around and correct everybody's artwork by literally painting over whatever work we had done. All the other students were very happy to have this done, and it felt completely frustrating and counterintuitive for me," Prentnieks said, adding that she is grateful to be at RISD, where she is no longer expected to learn merely by imitation of the teacher.
After her involvement in high school art classes and a pre-college program at the College of the Art Institute of Chicago, Prentnieks decided late in the college application process that she might as well go to an art school since her main criteria in choosing schools was the quality of their art programs, she said.
"I am most excited about living and working with all the artists. This to me is so exciting - an interesting, intelligent group of people all bouncing ideas around," Prentnieks said. But being surrounded by inspiring peers is not the only perk of attending RISD. Prentnieks said she hopes that lugging art projects up and down the hill will keep her from gaining the freshman 15.
After moving in bedding and mini-fridges, and before attending a first-year-only dinner with RISD President Roger Mandle, students were invited to "show your creativity through your festive attire" as the Class of 2009 trooped down College Hill to the RISD Auditorium to be welcomed by Blair De St. Croix, director of student life, and the executive committee of the Student Alliance. De St. Croix fielded various questions from the audience, including "What can we paint on in our dorms?"
When asked how RISD is related to Brown, he replied: "They want to be like us."
