We were now a month into the school year and for this installment of the series I will place greater emphasis on the visuals than the words...

 

A sketch I made of Providence as seen from my living room window that had been my roommate's bedroom before he decided not to return to RISD in the fall of '76:

 

A photo silkscreen print of Maria I printed in mid October:

 

 

While this song from The Rippingtons is from long after 1976, the spirit, music, and visuals remind me of that very creative environment in Providence that we were now in our last year of. For artistic license purposes I am thinking of the title as Affair in Providence. (Flashforward about 32 years later and my brother's sound company had handled the audio for at least one Rippington's concert in the NY metro area.)

 

 

With an art history class already a month underway, the doodles I did in class while looking like I was taking notes started to add up:

 

The sketch below was a strange foreshadowing of Grad School Tales:

 

Having fun one day I came up with a money making idea...Pretty Providence Prints $5.00. I told Maria she could get in on the ground floor of this plan with her photos, too.

 

Rent an Artist...another idea from doodling in class.

 

More and more art history doodles...

 

 

 

 

More photos taken for another idea I had for my "Gotta Match" assignment in Graphic Design III class. These photos would be silhouetted and placed as artwork in the poster I was working on. All told there were about 30 photos she shot of me in various poses:

 

 

 

 

A visit to one of the photo stores downtown results in Maria shooting a couple of candid shots of me (The Candid Camera Shoppe??).  

 

In many of these photos I was shown in my favorite shirt (green and black were the colors) of the time which my grandfather had given to me in the summer just prior to my leaving for school:

 

One of the first lectures we attended that fall, this one presented by the Glass Department and Dale Chihuly. Ludwig Schaffrath was the stained glass artist who presented his work that afternoon to a packed room:

 

We attended about 75% of the lectures presented in October. The field trip sponsored by the RISD Museum looked interesting, but we skipped that. Almost all lectures were all free and never disappointing in terms of the materials presented. This being my last year I was especially interested in soaking up as much of the art world from these lectures as I could find time for.

 

 

 

A few shots of my apartment which was basically one large workspace now. Some hexagonal 3-D studies on my desk that related to what my degree project was turning into at that point.

 

A class in weaving included making the long loom shown in the photo below. In addition I was working on pieces on a conventional loom in the weaving studio at school. The large poster on the door was a contest entry I made for a Worcester, MA radio station that was giving away a $1500 stereo system for the best poster. I thought my poster looked great but it didn't even come in third!

Also, behind the door on the left was a walk in closet that I had converted into a basic darkroom with dry sink and 35mm enlarger which gave us the ability to enlarge and print up to 11" x 14" prints on a 24/7 basis.

 

Below is the bedroom decorated with full color silkscreens of the clock I had designed. More work spilled into this room.

 

A corner of the kitchen with even more work around the area.

I was no super neatnik as one can tell from the photos, and fortunately Maria did not have a problem with hanging out here when she wasn't busy with her own work. With a relationship and so much work for school to create, of which I have only touched upon slightly here, the days and nights were really full of love, life, and creativity!

 

Parting shot for this installment, another trip to Foster, RI at the end of October for some photography of non-roadkill subjects. By this point in time she had all of the roadkill photos she needed. Maria shown below with her rugged Nikon F:

 

Previous installments:

Part one

Part two

Part three

 

 

 Photos, drawings, and text are © 2012 by B+Co., Inc.