Faculty Fellowships
Thanks to funding from the Provost’s Office/Academic Affairs, the RISD Color Lab is accepting proposals for two semester-long faculty fellowships for the coming academic year. Since the start of the program, the fellowships serve as funded opportunities for studio or scholarly investigation of the subject. Inquiry and creative projects that engage with all aspects of color—its history, scientific properties, cultural significance, material dimensions, chemical processes, etc.—are welcome and encouraged.
Our fifth year of fellowships will have some variations: It comes with one TU release (or, for part-time faculty, a cash stipend of $6,000) for focused exploration and inquiry for either fall or spring semester, up to $2000 for materials and technology, the opportunity for a library space exhibition of the fellowship work, and a culminating public program.
To apply, the form asks for an abstract of 500 words or less for the proposed project. The application also requires separate descriptions for how you plan to use the picture window gallery on North Main Street to exhibit the results of your fellowship and a public program to accompany the installation, in addition to a detailed budget for the up to $2000 in materials and technology funds to support the project. (The only catch is that whatever your needs, they should be tangible and enduring: equipment, materials, and other items that may be shared with others after the completion of your project, in order to stock the lab with helpful resources for future faculty and student use. Things like airfare, conference fees and items that can't be left in the lab for future and continued use are not eligible for funding.) Your application also needs to include approval from your Department Head for the TU release.
The Academic Council review the proposals and inform applicants of the outcome.
2025-2026 Faculty Fellows
Next application period opens in 2025Dates
Deadline: January 17, 2025
Notification: February 7, 2025
Application Form
Access the application form via InfoReady.
Faculty are also encouraged to propose non-fellowship exhibitions for the 2024-25 AY in the Picture Window Gallery at 30 North Main Street.
Click here to apply.
2024-2025 Faculty Fellows
Andrea Dezsö (Illustration)
Toward Place-Based, Sustainable Art Practices: Creating Artist’s Pigments from Foraged Plants and Minerals
Fall 2024
Sara Ossana (Furniture)
Imperialist Amnesia: Nocheztli Cochineal and the American Imagination
Spring 2025
2023-2024 Faculty Fellows
Eric Anderson (Theory and History of Art and Design)
What is a Color Lab? Sites and Practices of Design Research
Fall 2023
Shawn Greenlee (Experimental and Foundation Studies)
Color Models for Sound Field Displacement
Spring 2024
2022-2023 Faculty Fellows
Timothy Veske-McMahon (Jewelry + Metalsmithing)
Fugitive Colors
Fall 2022
Megan Callahan (Furniture)
Color Scraps
Spring 2023
2021-2022 Faculty Fellows
Rachel Berwick (Glass)
A Near and A Far
Exhibition Fall 2022
Hope Leeson (History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences + Landscape Architecture)
Color: A Language of Plants and Humans
Exhibition Spring 2022
2020-2021 Faculty Fellows
Craig Taylor (Painting)
TESTS:Variants
Spring 2021
Sara Jordeno (Film / Animation / Video)
Chromatic Justice and Poetic Restitution in Kodak’s Ektachrome
Exhibition Spring 2022
2019-2021 Faculty Fellows
Odette England (Photography)
Coloring Our Time
The project, led by faculty member Odette England, started with this question: As a global arts and design community, how will RISD see color in 2020? Read more about the project here
Daniel Lefcourt (Furniture)
Query: Evidence of Color Research
Two extensions for Photoshop that grew out of the research Lefcourt conducted for the Color Lab faculty fellowship:
- Paint Machine Plugin – a color picker tool that uses a paint-pigment mixing simulation algorithm (in consultation with the developers of the original algorithm). The tool is mostly just a helpful teaching aid but it may be useful for planning physical paintings.
- OK Color Picker Plugin – a color picker that displays an visually equivelant lightness value for the selected color. It’s also useful as a teaching aid, since students have difficulty understanding the relationship between lightness and hue.
Color Served Daily
The RISD Color Lab is a multiplatform space where faculty and students can engage with the one aspect of art and design that draws us all together : COLOR
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The RISD Color Lab is a multiplatform space where faculty and students can engage with the one aspect of art and design that draws us all together : COLOR
︎ ︎
Visit the Color Lab
Our exhibition space is viewable from the street at 30 North Main. Our physical materials collection may be requested through the Visual + Material Resource Center at Fleet Library.
colorlab@risd.edu
Our exhibition space is viewable from the street at 30 North Main. Our physical materials collection may be requested through the Visual + Material Resource Center at Fleet Library.
colorlab@risd.edu