JOERILEY.WORK





joriley@ucsd.edu
@pleasedontfront
linktr.ee/joeriley
mailing list

Photo: Natalie Conn

 Joe Riley is an artist, historian, and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego Visual Arts in a joint environmental research program with Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation. 

  Joe’s research has recently been supported by the Getty Scholars Program, a UCSD Rita L. Atkinson Fellowship, and the UC Humanities Research Institute. His dissertation, Fixing the Sea: Case Studies Toward A Critical Environmental History of Ocean Art and Science since 1970, foregrounds and critically examines histories and practices of interaction between artists, oceanographers, and marine life situated within California’s university-military-research complex.

  From 2020–2025 Joe has been a participating artist and co-curator for the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Embodied Pacific, featuring projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in Southern California and the Pacific Islands. 

  Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Joe holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and has taught at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, Stevens Institute of Technology, and The Cooper Union.


HAR 111 Foundation of 3D: Form and Space
Fall 2018 - Spring 2019
Stevens Insitute of Technology

An intensive studio course with an emphasis on traditional and non-traditional three-dimensional studio and design tools, techniques and media. Students work on projects that explore the fundamentals of forms and space and investigate the properties of materials, structure, mass, scale, body, light, and motion. The course explores fundamental principles of designing for three dimensional space, introductory woodworking techniques, casting and mold-making, and physical and digital 3D modelling. Emphasis is placed on problem solving through design, criticism, and studio practice.

Course Objectives:

Continue learning the fundamentals involved in conceiving and creating 3-D works of art and design

Encourage research and awareness of various historical and contemporary 3-D artists and designers and their works

Instruct in the professional and safe use of hand and power tools

Develop analytical skills through critiques


Student work samples: