Category: Public Art

State Arts Council puts out 2 Calls for Artists for RIC’s Feinstein School of Education and Human Development

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Applications close Feb. 20, 2023

Link to the plans

The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) has issued a call for two new public art commissions– an exterior work budgeted for $100,000 and an interior commission for $35,000. The artwork is for the Feinstein School of Education and Human Development, Horace Mann Hall, at Rhode Island College.

Through a competitive selection process, two artists or teams of artists will be chosen to create artwork that is welcoming, celebratory, inclusive and evokes learning, play, childhood, knowledge, intellectual growth, teaching and RIC’s diversity. There is no fee to apply; the deadline for the calls is Feb. 20.

During 2022, Horace Mann Hall, a 46,000-square-foot building and home to the School of Education, received a major makeover. The building’s three-story tower has been renovated to include six classrooms, three new seminar rooms and a reconfigured computer lab. It houses the departments of Elementary Education, Special Education and Educational Studies.

Click here to learn more about the Calls.

“From our classrooms to our galleries to our public spaces, art has an important and enriching presence on our campus. This new work of art will be the signature element of a modernized, reimagined Horace Mann Hall and will serve as an inspiration to all who teach and learn there.”

–RIC’S PRESIDENT DR. JACK R. WARNER

“We are proud to once again partner with Rhode Island College to enhance the campus with public art. Horace Mann Hall will be the epicenter of education for Rhode Island’s aspiring teachers. We are excited that these projects will be part of this important renovation.”

–RISCA’s EXCUTIVE DIRECTOR, LYNNE MCCORMACK

Rhode Island College is a regional comprehensive public college that serves approximately 5,800 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students through its five schools: the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Feinstein School of Education and Human Development, the School of Business, the Zvart Onanian School of Nursing and the School of Social Work. Established in 1854, we are Rhode Island’s first public institution of higher education. The college is located on a beautiful 180-acre suburban campus in the vibrant city of Providence, and has satellite locations at the Rhode Island Nursing Education Center in Providence’s Innovation District and the Rhode Island College Workforce Development Hub in Central Falls, RI. We are known throughout the Northeast for high-quality academic programs, small class sizes, personalized, hands-on learning experiences, world-class faculty, and high value compared to other four-year institutions.

How We Built This: A Conversation about a pubic art mural 

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You’re invited to an informal chat about what it took to create this large mural!

Sunday, Sept. 18, at 1 p.m. at AS220, Providence

How We Built This– join us for an informal chat with Keir Johnston and Linda Fernandez of Amber Art and Design, discussing what it took to create their monumental mural, Del Passado al Futuro~ From the Past to the Present, as commissioned in 2022 by RISCA and the Rhode Island Convention Center Authority through the State’s Percent-for-Art law.

The lead artists, alongside their assistants and fabricators Ysanel, AGonza, Nila Devaney, and Heryk Tomassini, will talk through the process from the request for qualifications to completion. This event is live and in person and will be livestreamed by AS220, and is co-produced by RISCA and Providence Arts Culture + Tourism.

Event Details

What: How We Built This
When: Sun, September 18, 2022, at 1 p.m.
Where: AS220 Main Stage and Gallery, 115 Empire St. , Providence.
RSVP: Space is limited. RSVP ASAP. Click here to sign up.

Raimondo names the artist to paint her official gubernatorial portrait

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 Patricia Watwood chosen from a field of 350 applicants

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Headshot-WATWOOD-678x1024.jpgFormer RI Governor Gina M. Raimondo has selected Patricia Watwood, of Brooklyn, N.Y., to paint her official gubernatorial portrait.

Chosen from a field of 350 applicants, the official portrait selection committee of State Arts Council members and community representatives initially narrowed the applications for the commission to 11.

Brooklyn-based Watwood is a leading figure in the contemporary figurative movement. Her subjects are primarily women and figures, incorporating myth and narrative. She has been exhibited at the Beijing World Art Museum, The European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), The Butler Museum, and is in the collections of The St. Louis University Museum of Art, and The New Britain Museum of American Art.

Upon hearing of the commission, Watwood said, “It is a great honor to be selected to portray Rhode Island’s first woman Governor. In creating this work of art for the State House, I look forward to celebrating her inspiring service, and show young women, girls, and the people of Rhode Island that there is a place in leadership at the highest level for all of us. ”

Previously, Watwood’s commissioned portraits include two mayors of St. Louis for City Hall and two historical portraits of pioneering women, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and Ida B. Wells, both in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums. Other institutions that have commissioned her work include Weill Cornell Medical Center, St. Louis University, and Washington University. Originally from St. Louis, she has created portraits for many families in the St. Louis area as well as around her current home, New York.

Watwood is a member of the Salmagundi Club of New York, where she is the current First Vice President (2021). She is also a Signature member of the Portrait Society of America and named a Living Master by the Art Renewal Center. She’s represented by Portraits Inc. and Dacia Gallery, and others.

Watwood earned her MFA with honors from New York Academy of Art and studied with Jacob Collins as a founding member of the Water Street Atelier. Watwood has produced instructional DVDs including “Creating Portraits from Life,” with Streamline Art Video, has been a professor of drawing at New York Academy of Art.

She has created several online drawing courses, including Seven Days of Drawing, with the creative streaming platform Craftsy.com. She has written articles for American Artist, American Arts Quarterly, and Fine Art Connoisseur magazines, and teaches painting in Brooklyn, online with Terracotta.org, and in workshops around the country.

Her first book, “The Path of Drawing,” is coming out with Monacelli Studio Press in late 2022. Learn more about Watwood at www.patriciawatwood.com.

State law requires that an official portrait be commissioned for each Governor by the Secretary of State’s office. The Secretary of State has requested that the State’s Arts Agency oversee the process.