RISD Bookstore

You know you're an artist when looking at art supplies fills you with a shivery ecstasy, as did these images on display in the windows of the RISD bookstore. Art supplies, perfect in their untouched form and at the same time exploding with potential. The RISD bookstore was a small store next the mail room when I was in school, and has since expanded into a space that stretches the length of a city block. It also has an online store and RISDpedia, where you can learn more about how to actually use those materials.


I had a sensible plan at the end of high school, all those years ago. I would go to UVM, where my dad worked, I would take art classes there until I was good enough to apply to art school. But I also applied to art school anyway, just to see what would happen. When I walked to the end of our long dirt driveway and opened the mailbox to see a thick packet instead of a thin envelope, and the button inside the packet that said Rhode Island School of Design, Class of 1990, I was gone.


"Once in a Lifetime," by famous RISD alumni the Talking Heads, blared overhead as we streamed into the auditorium for orientation wearing combat boots and miniskirts, mohawks and leather jackets, purple high tops and horn rimmed glasses, fishnets and chunky black shoes, ripped jeans and paint splattered t-shirts. It was just the beginning and we were the ones who had made it. We were the chosen ones, young, powerful and full of possibility.


Time isn't holding us, time isn't after us...