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

 How does an idea take shape as an object, a structure, or a sculpture? What can the making of meaning through three-dimensional forms teach us about the physical and spatial world? In this hands-on, techniques-driven studio course, we will pursue answers to these kinds of questions and creative development using traditional and non-traditional sculptural materials, methods, and tools. Our collective goal is to develop our capacities to see, interpret, and create interesting work out of the technical processes and magical possibilities intrinsic to sculptural methods of negotiating physical/material form and space. 

As a participant in this class, you are asked to look closely and think openly about the fundamentals of form and space, and to work on projects that explore the basic properties of sculptural materials and three-dimensional structures. Throughout the term, we will use a range of materials and methods to study and build new relationships with spatial and physical phenomena such as shape, balance, joint, scale, body, light, and motion. In addition to making use of everyday, accessible materials like cardboard, molding clay, papier-mâché, and fabric, we will also focus on basic woodworking, metalworking, and casting techniques. 

The skills we explore in this course are relevant not only to artistic practice and intellectual life, but also to day-to-day practical experiences. For example: knowing how to safely cut and join pieces of wood and/or steel, effectively using adhesives and fasteners, creating durable and structurally sound sculptures, accurately reproducing physical objects, tying knots, and more. After laying a foundation of experience in physical modeling, use of analog tools, and “drawing in space,” with planar and linear materials, we will touch on digital fabrication processes and 3D modelling. In addition to furnishing experience in three-dimensional design problem-solving and spatial practice, this course will prepare students to enroll in advanced sequences in sculpture, fabrication, design, architecture, socially/environmentally engaged art, and more. 

Course objectives and learning outcomes: 

  • Gain foundational experience and understanding of the safe and effective use of the tools, techniques, and materials in sculpture and three-dimensional design.
  • Articulate and analyze the basic visual elements and principles of three-dimensional design present in sculptural artworks.
  • Demonstrate the ability to use the visual elements, principles, and fundamental techniques of sculptural practice to create three-dimensional compositions and designs.
  • Create original works of sculpture that explore a variety of formal and conceptual problems, demonstrate a visual vocabulary, and make effective use of constraints of the physical world and materials
  • Explain and evaluate personal artwork and the work of others through critique



Student work samples: