Shana Cinquemani
Department Head + Associate Professor
PhD, University of Arizona
MA, University of Arizona
BA, Bard College
401-454-6133
Shana Cinquemani
Shana Cinquemani is an early childhood/elementary art educator and researcher. Her research interests are grounded in ethical research practices with children, relationships between children and adults in the art classroom space, curriculum inquiry and theory in early childhood art, the conceptualization of children’s art as a meaningful socio-cultural practice, and ideas about motherscholarship in art education. She has worked as a museum educator, a preschool teaching assistant and an elementary and middle school art teacher. She is the founder and director of the Mini Makerz Art Studio, a community-based program that offers free, high-quality early childhood visual arts programs to young children and families in the greater Providence, RI area.
Shana has published her research in various peer-reviewed publications and edited collections,and is currently co-editing a book on motherscholarship, young children and the arts. She has presented her work at local, national and international venues and is past president of the Early Childhood Art Educators Interest Group for the National Art Education Association. Additionally, she is serving on the inaugural editorial review board for a new peer-reviewed journal titled Childhood Art: An International Journal of Research.
Nancy Friese
Professor
MFA, Yale University
Diploma, Art Academy of Cincinnati
BS, University of North Dakota - Grand Forks
401-454-6667
Nancy Friese
Nancy Friese is a painter-printmaker who works in open-air. Friese’s paintings and prints have been exhibited in 30 solo shows and 170 group shows, nationally and internationally. Friese was elected as a National Academician in the National Academy Museum and School in New York City and received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and the Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellowship.
She was granted a Yale University Summer School of Music and Art at Norfolk Fellowship, Anne Bremer Award, and Wilder Traveling Fellowship during her artistic studies. She received a six- month Lila Acheson Wallace Giverny Fellowship, a Blanche E. Colman Award, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award and a George Sugarman Foundation Grant for painting. Artist’s Resource Trust (ART) funded her exhibition and residency at Trustman Gallery. Her works are in 50 corporate and museum collections and over 100 private collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum UCLA, the Spencer Museum of Art, and the Portland Art Museum. Her paintings and prints are represented by Cade Tompkins Projects. She has been represented by six galleries from New York to San Francisco. Tamarind Institute, Oehme Graphics, Mimosa Press and Sundog Press have published her works. Most recently she was an artist in residence at Andy Warhol's Montauk Nature Preserve administered by The Nature Conservancy.
In addition to earning BS and MFA degrees, Friese studied in the graduate painting program at the University of California, Berkeley, and studied painting and printmaking at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She came to RISD with a joint appointment as head of Printmaking (1990–98) and as a member of the Painting department faculty and served as graduate program director. She initiated a teaching collaborative between RISD’s Graduate Studies division and Brown University during her subsequent tenure as dean of Graduate Studies (1998–2004). That collaborative has contributed to the advancement of collegiate-level teaching in the fields of art, design and architecture, has awarded teaching certificates to hundreds of RISD graduate students and faculty and was the precursor to TLAD’s Graduate Certificate in Collegiate Teaching.
Friese has served as a board member for the College Arts Association, the RISD Museum, North Dakota Museum of Art Foundation, FirstWorks Providence and Buxton in Bloom North Dakota, and has been a repeat juror with the National Endowment for the Arts and Japan US Friendship Commission in Washington, DC.
Courtnie Wolfgang
Associate Professor
PhD, The Ohio State University
MAE, The University of Georgia
BFA, The University of Georgia
BFA, The University of Georgia
401-427-3033
Courtnie Wolfgang
Courtnie Wolfgang’s research and practice focus on the intersections of poststructural, feminist and queer theories with critical and radical pedagogies in and through art and design. Since the start of her career in art education in 2001, she has taught high school visual art in public schools, conducted community art education workshops and arts-based workshops with incarcerated juveniles and adults, developed curricular and pedagogical workshops for community teaching artists, and since 2011 has been a faculty member in higher education working with future artist educators. She joined RISD TLAD in 2022.
Her work has been published in Visual Arts Research (including guest-editing an issue on Queering Art Education), The Journal of Art Education, Studies in Art Education, the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, The Journal of Prison Education and Re-entry and the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, among others. Her artistic practice includes monotype and Risograph printing, zine making/collaborative small publications and garment making and textiles.
The majority of her life and career has been spent in the deep south of the United States, which fundamentally shaped her perspectives on equity and justice in arts and education. She earned her BFA in photography and MA in art education at the University of Georgia and a PhD in art and visual culture education at The Ohio State University.
Caitlin Black
Lecturer
PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University
MA, Boston University
BA, James Madison University
Caitlin Black
Caitlin M. Black is a visual arts and design educator currently based in Providence. She has a variety of professional experiences in museum, community and classroom settings. She worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and taught visual art in public schools for eight years, working with students grades PreK–12 in New Jersey and California. Most recently, Caitlin taught undergraduate and graduate art education courses at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
Her research focuses on the transformational power of the arts in cultivating more inclusive communities. She is interested in the significance of community engagement and accessibility in creating meaningful arts opportunities that promote empathy, connection and healing rooted in social justice.
Her work has been published in the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education and Studies in Art Education, and she has a forthcoming co-authored chapter in Restorative Practices in Education Through Art. She earned her BA with a major in studio art and minor in art history from James Madison University, an MA in art education from Boston University and a PhD in education with an emphasis on art education from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Janice DeFrances
Senior Lecturer
EdD, Boston University
MEd, Rhode Island College
MA, University of Rhode Island
BA, Rhode Island College
Janice DeFrances
Janice DeFrances is an experienced school leader and mental health advocate with a proven history of innovation, effective program development and team building for meaningful change in learning environments. She has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors as a school principal, special education director and CEO/president. She holds two master’s degrees in special education and counseling, a doctorate in administration/special education and a post-doctorate in neuropsychology.
In addition to her administrative duties, DeFrances continues her work as an educator and researcher, with a focus in the areas of child development, holistic education, trauma-informed practice, arts and healing and the promotion of positive mental health, applying theory to practice and developing effective programs to serve children, youth and families. She served for eight years on the North Kingstown School Committee and held the position of state director of Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families. Currently she is an instructional coach for Southside Elementary Charter School and a grant writer for St. Mary’s Home for Children.
Lilly Manycolors
Critic
Lilly Manycolors
Lilly Manycolors is an interdisciplinary self-taught artist specializing in painting, sculpture and performance art. Manycolors’ works draw heavily on her life experiences, and her artistic journey has been unconventional in that she has not attended schooling for any of the art forms she practices. Rather, her learning has been guided by “non-human” and rooted in her cultural and spiritual traditions. The visual pieces Manycolors creates are deeply personal, lending her own stories to the canvas as ways of building intimacy and bonds between herself and viewers. As a mixed-raced single mother, Manycolors makes works that pull and tug on the confines of colonial identity politics. Her performance pieces are intense and demanding of the audience in that their required participation with her erodes away colonial notions of consuming Manycolors and her art. Manycolors utilizes her artistic practices to research topics such as race and gender violence, eco-aquacide, Indigenous liberation and sovereignty, and what it means to be human. Often her works are responding to questions such as “Where is my place as a mixed-raced/culturally dislocated person? How can I exist in a good way when I am the product of colonial violence? What is humanness outside of colonial-western notions?” Her current works are focused on inter-relationality between humans, non-humans and what awaits us beyond colonization and decolonization with a centering of land and Indigenous community sovereignty.
Manycolors earned her BA at Goddard College with a focus on decolonization and psychology. Her BA thesis was a seven-piece, large-scale painting series accompanied by a 60-page written work that investigated the systems of colonial conditioning within the arenas of child rearing and trauma integration. Manycolors received her MA from RISD in the Global Arts and Cultures department where she produced a 107-page thesis titled Colonial Mapping, Heteropatriarchy and the Remaking of the World, which was accompanied by a large-scale, mixed-media painting that speaks to sympoietic mapping practices.
Kristina Lamour Sansone
Critic
CAGS, Lesley University, Graduate School of Education
MFA, Yale University
BFA, University of the Arts
Kristina Lamour Sansone
For more than three decades, Kristina Lamour Sansone has built bridges between graphic design, teaching and learning—creating applications to support access, engagement and comprehension for students from early education to adult learning. In addition to teaching at RISD, she is a professor of design at Lesley University College of Art and Design and is also pursuing an online PhD in education and organizational change and leadership from the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. Sansone earned a BFA in graphic design from the University of the Arts, an MFA in graphic design from Yale University College of Art and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in curriculum and instruction from the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University.
Paul Sproll
Professor Emeritus
PhD, The Ohio State University Columbus
MA, The Ohio State University Columbus
BA, The Open University
Paul Sproll
Paul Sproll led RISD’s Department of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design (TLAD) for nearly three decades and spearheaded its move to the Division of Liberal Arts. His professional work as a teacher educator centered on developing a progressive paradigm for curricular and pedagogical practice that deepened learners' understanding of the nature of art and design as conveyors of meaning. Throughout his career, a central focus has been articulating inquiry-based teaching practices that promote discovery, creativity, innovation, personal voice and play. In June 2021 Sproll was presented with RISD’s John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award recognizes RISD faculty who have had an enduring influence on student learning.
Sproll’s longstanding commitment to engaged practice within K-12 contexts was inextricably linked to his college teaching. Throughout his career, he maintained an enduring interest in matters of social justice and access to education and displayed a passion for work at the intersection of formal and informal education. Dismayed by the inequities regarding students’ access to quality visual arts programming throughout Rhode Island’s urban-core city public schools, Sproll founded Project Open Door in 2005, a college access program for creative teens attending the state’s most under-resourced public high schools. And in 2015, the nonprofit Providence CityArts for Youth recognized his community-based practice with its Sister Ann Keefe Award for Creativity and Social Justice. His programming designed for K-12 educators and students attracted significant governmental and philanthropic grant support totaling over $2 million. Further, his expertise in reimagining curriculum, pedagogy and policies for art and design education within elementary and secondary schools led to numerous consultancy opportunities, including travel to Qatar, where he co-authored a set of guiding principles for the establishment of a high school for the visual arts and design in Doha. Sproll retired from RISD on July 1, 2022.