Color Lab Faculty and Staff
The Color Lab – its resources, facility, and planning – is managed by a cross-divisional group of RISD faculty, staff, and graduate students who are passionate about color and sharing color’s many secrets with the RISD community. They meet regularly to oversee the operations of the Color Lab, address solicitations from faculty and students for new materials and resources, and develop the schedule for color-related classes, talks, and events that take place in the lab
If you have an idea or suggestion, please reach out.
Current Faculty, Advisors, and Staff
Mark Pompelia
Visual + Material Resource Librarian, Librarian IV | Fleet Librarympompeli@risd.edu
Mark Pompelia is a visual and object media librarian with an undergraduate degree in Art History and a graduate degree in Library Science. He approaches his tenth anniversary at Fleet Library.
Why color?
As an art librarian I find myself attracted to and motivated by color. This is true inside the museum gallery, when acquiring material samples, and in the spaces that I build such as my office and the renovated mill condo where I live.
Margot Nishimura
Dean of Libraries | Fleet Librarymnishimu@risd.edu
Margot Nishimura is an art historian and expert in the fields of medieval, Renaissance, and American art, architecture, decorative arts, and the history of the book. She provides leadership and oversight for the Fleet Library at RISD, the Nature Lab, the Center for Arts & Language, Campus Exhibitions, and the Color Lab.
Linda Sok
Graduate Research Assistant | Color Lablsok@risd.edu
Linda Sok is a visual artist working at the intersections of craft, sculpture, and installation. Her works access fragments of Cambodia's history and culture to recontextualize lost traditions through a contemporary decolonialized lens. She is currently completing an MFA in Sculpture at RISD.
Why color?
Color has the ability to transcend language, culture, time, and I am in awe of its ability to speak to so many different facets of life.
Past Faculty, Advisors, and Staff
Rob Brinkerhoff
Professor | Illustrationrbrinker@risd.edu
Rob Brinkerhoff joined RISD to teach Illustration in 1997, and has enjoyed many roles at the college, including Head of Illustration, Chief Critic for RISD's European Honors Program in Rome, and Dean of Fine Arts.
Why color?
Color is one of seven elements of art, and yet it may be the only one that commands such latitude of significance across a large numbers of contexualizing fields: history, science, psychology and, of course, art. This singular prominence of color in all disciplines at RISD is why we’re dedicated to calling it out as a supreme element, and supporting its study in the color lab.
William Miller
Critic | Paintingwmiller@risd.edu
William Miller has taught color in the RISD Painting Dept. for over 15 years. His "Color Studio" class has a broad interdisciplinary following as it makes color theory and its application accessible to painters, artists, and designers. He has lectured and conducted workshops on color and paint at numerous colleges, universities, and art schools across the United States. As an Education Adviser for Winsor & Newton, he has worked extensively with colors, pigments, and paint. Mr. Miller is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and has completed professional development work at the Munsell Color Science Laboratory at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Michael Kolendowicz
Technician | Illustrationmkolendo@risd.edu
Michael Kolendowicz is a landscape painter, carpenter, and amateur poet who graduated from RISD with a BFA in Painting in 2009. He has worked as Technician for the RISD Illustration Department for over ten years.
Why color?
It seems clear to me that color engages more within us than just our usual critical thoughtfulness or analytical mind. There is something about color that feels intelligent, uncharted, mysterious and very, very interesting; I want to follow that to see where it might go.
Shana Cinquemani
Assistant Professor | Teaching + Learning in Art + Designscinquem@risd.edu
Shana Cinquemani is an art educator and engages in research surrounding early childhood art education. Her work is grounded in ideas about ethical research and teaching pedagogy, play, creating meaningful curricular experiences, and relationships between adults and children.
Why color?
For young children, art serves as the first form of literacy - thus color is one of the primary languages they use to communicate. I am interested in thinking about the possibilities of color for children and youth as a way to explore artistic thinking and making.
Deborah Zlotsky
Associate Professor | Experimental and Foundation Studiesdzlotsky@risd.edu
Deborah Zlotsky is an artist represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in New York and Robischon Gallery in Denver. She received a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowships in Painting in 2012 and 2018. She lives in upstate New York.
Why color?
Color is multilingual. It can be understood in the languages of analysis and color theory; science and optics; psychology and perception; history and cultural usage/meaning; and memory and intuition. In addition to these areas which are endlessly compelling, I also know I engage with color synesthetically, feasting on its energy, interactions, intensity and variety.
Rebecca Nolan
Project Manager | Research Officernolan@risd.edu
Rebecca Nolan is a landscape architect and design researcher who has worked in the Research Office at RISD since 2018 helping facilitate interdisciplinary projects between RISD faculty, students and external partners.
I'm interested in the way color translates from a natural environment to built environment and how it is perceived differently by each individual.
Mark Sherman
Professor | Literary Arts & Studiesmsherman@risd.edu
Mark Sherman has been teaching earlier European literatures at RISD for three decades and counting.
Why color?
Color sits squarely in the material realm (think of hand-ground pigments about to be daubed on some surface) and it is the metaphorical foundation of all figurative representation ("colors of rhetoric," as the old phrase had it). What intrigues me about color, then, is the way one side of that pairing can function to illuminate something about the nature of the other.
Leora Maltz-Leca
Associate Professor | Theory & History of Art & Designlmaltzle@risd.edu
Leora Maltz-Leca is a critic and historian of contemporary art. She has worked at RISD since 2008, teaching large lecture courses on global modernism and contemporary art, and leading seminars on materiality, process, race, critical theory and the artist’s lecture.
Why color?
Artists and designers have long used color in ways that far exceed its formal remit, such that the technical and material dimensions of pigment cannot be detached from the histories, myths, and associations that colors trail with them. I am interested in the politics of pigment: in the shifting social and geopolitical nuances colors muster in different times and places, and in the histories and supply chains they can and can't shake off.
Marjorie Hutter
Executive Director, Corporate & Foundation Relations | Institutional Engagementmhutter@risd.edu
Marjorie Hutter came to RISD in September 2019, bringing extensive experience in foundation and corporate relations through more than two decades of advancement work in higher education.
Why color?
As a lifelong student of the liberal arts, I have always been fascinated by the enigma of color, the study of which spans mythology, painting, philosophy, religion, and science.
Daniel Lefcourt
Associate Professor | Experimental and Foundation Studiesdlefcour@risd.edu
Daniel Lefcourt is an artist and educator with a specific interest in painting as it relates to the history of imaging technologies.
Why color?
I am interested the history of color measurement as it relates to painting, photography, and digital imaging.
Hillary Good
RISD Alum | Graphic Design
hgood@risd.eduHillary is a designer, filmmaker, and arts educator. She received her BA in Cinema and Media Arts from Vanderbilt University, and her MFA in Graphic Design at RISD.
Why color?
Color is both deeply personal and universal. I am interested in how color can delight, engage, and unite.
Ineke Knudsen
RISD Alum | Paintingiknudsen@risd.edu
Ineke Knudsen is an artist from West Virginia working in painting, performance, installation, and video. She earned her BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from West Virginia University and is currently purusing her MFA in painting at RISD.
Why color?
I’ve always had a deep instinctual connection to color in my work. Choosing the colors for my paintings and videos is the easiest and most fun part about what I create. It’s to the point that my friends tell me that they can always pick out my painting in a room because of the insane color palette.
Hannah Winkler
RISD Alum | Paintinghwinkler@risd.edu
Hannah Winkler is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, video and installation. She graduated from Brown University with a BA in Visual Arts her MFA in Painting at RISD.
Why color?
Color is one of the best things about seeing and, I think, being alive. I am particularly interested in how cultural and social factors inform our personal relationships to and feelings about color.
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
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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