Rhode Island School of Design - Portfolio Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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I've read that you're the generation that buys fresh flowers and vintage champagne for yourselves (not for each other). An excellent sign and an admiriable priority. Posies and bubbly are pleasures of the senses that don’t last—lovely! You're also supposed to be a conservative group. Not bad! You have learned to restore and conserve old buildings, and how to maintain arts and crafts taught through traditions. In our mobile and wasteful society such forms need to be protected. Artists are charged with the privilege. In this regard, our museum, our library and our campus are united with all our studios—united with you in your taste for civility, As a member of the commencement planning committee, [ have been urging, with no success and to no avail, the name Jacques Cousteau of Calypso fame—as possible commencent speaker. He’s scholary and romantic, but also, a conservative, that is, a conservationist. At the Ocean State Theatre (formerly the Lowe’s State, a recycled and restored showboat in a salty state) what more appropiate theme than the need for courtesy toward our ultimate past source, the Ocean? Others may criticize the caution they perceive among you. I applaud it. Artists not only seck to create “ new ” ways of seeing, they also remind us that we see with the eyes, hear with the ears, understand with the words, of artists before us. Have we worshipped the production of unconsidered novelty? Many of our students and graduates have added immensely to our RISD neighborhood by rediscovering what is here, stripping away formica from good masonry walls, seeking roots in space as well as time, things as well as concepts. Art like nature is made not only of generosity but also thrift. Not only of change but stability. Not only of idea but of matter. Not only of the present but of the past. 1985 is the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Leaders of the West have been strangely reluctant to conserve a historical moment. They are mistaken to ignore it. The sculptors who marked the liberation invested rock with meaning and memory. We betray the stones and their inscriptions. If you are a conservative generation, revel in it. Pursue it. Explore it. The world over, people cry the need for protection of arts and buildings, land, air and water, from ravages of what we too often call “progress.”” We have become nightly cautious of political slogans and promises. Artists trust the work of their own hands and the truth of their own hearts. Flowers on your tables and champagne in your glasses are not a bad symbol of humility with style—a down-to-earth humor about the day you seize, grasp, and celebrate. Your class has charmed me and taught me that your conservatism is really an exciting and challenging philosophy. You will not abandon the word “‘conservative” to people with no regard for art, nature and history. You will claim it for yourselves and deepen its meaning. Maybe knowledge, sympathy and respect may be found within the word and you can live richly and spiritually with it. With this hope and faith, here’s Dom Perignon and orchids in Lalique to you all! Love, Mike Fink Vil

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