by Samuel Emmet Over the weekend, scores of art students and gallery-goers descended on Providence’s Rhode Island Convention Center to see the 2014 Rhode Island School of Design’s (RISD) Annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition. The Convention Center, a stone’s throw from RISD’s campus in burgeoning Downcity Providence, represents a particular era in ’90s civic architecture. But upon reaching the third-floor gallery space, visitors are greeted by …
Massive, corporate hotels pepper downtown Providence, Rhode Island’s skyline, and these concrete structures are the first to greet visitors as their cars exit off I-95. The downtown area is prime lodging grounds, as the Rhode Island Convention Center and the Dunkin’ Donuts Center are steps away; Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design are also only a 15-minute walk up the hill. So …
by Hugh Hart Joseph Ari Aloi graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 armed with dozens of sketchbooks, self-described ADD, a set of tattoo implements and a headful of eye-popping mythologies inspired variously by Star Wars, Sanskrit calligraphy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock and Viking iconography. Working as a tattoo artist, Aloi (aka JK5) propagated his ornate letterforms by word of mouth, forearm, back …
