On Saturday evening, the Rhode Island School of Design’s branch of TEDx hosted its annual conference. This year’s event, titled “Recipe,” featured six speakers whose talks explored how their interests and experiences made them unique.
The conference opened with a talk from Gresh Chapman, a senior at RISD majoring in industrial design.
Chapman began his talk by recalling the first time he remodeled a car.
“Cars feel like hidden territory, only to be messed with by manufacturers or mechanics,” Chapman said during the talk.
While studying abroad in Japan, Chapman met a man who saw gardening as a constant work in progress. Chapman learned to see object maintenance as a “process of growth and change rather than a constant battle against degradation,” he said.
Through this belief in “repair over replacement” and a series of modifications, Chapman took the car from a fuel efficiency of 24 miles per gallon to 36.
Chapman encouraged the audience to reflect on the mundane objects in their lives that many may replace when they break. “Don’t just maintain it, foster it, grow with it and make it last a lifetime,” he added.
Angelo Baca, an assistant professor in RISD’s history, philosophy and social sciences department, focused his talk on artificial intelligence and how concerns over intellectual property affect Indigenous communities.
Baca, a member of the Navajo Nation, spoke about the “intergenerational connection of both our stories and our homelands” in his talk, voicing a belief that misleading AI-generated material is threatening the respect and image of Native communities.
To Baca, protecting the image of Native tribes from being erased or convoluted calls for communities to “go back and evaluate these new technologies,” he said.
Michelle Charest PhD’12, a senior lecturer at RISD in the theory and history of art and design, discussed how family traditions allowed her to create a path for her future. She recalled growing up in a family of Italian immigrants in a small town that lacked a significant Italian community at the time. Unable to buy traditional ingredients at a grocery store, her family would often forage for them instead.
Charest talked about how she developed a gluten allergy while working on her PhD at Brown, where she focused on beer and brewing. Now allergic to the main topic of her dissertation, she did what her family had done for decades: “We look at the resources we have available to us, we roll up our sleeves and we make it work,” she said.
She turned the focus of her PhD to the familiar act of stew-making from her childhood. Using plants to make dyes and other art materials, her new stew recipes weren’t intended for consumption. Instead, they were “food for the eyes,” she said.
Charest advised the audience to “go out, explore and experiment and riff with all of the methods and materials that are available to you in your everyday world.”
After a brief intermission, Valerie Mirra, a senior at RISD studying painting, took the stage. Her talk examined the way we interact with nature, as well as the meaning of “home.”
In 2020, Mirra was left questioning her relationship with nature. After wildfires burned down her house in Santa Cruz, she was left living out of an SUV with her mom and sister. Mirra went on to travel across 21 states and 33 countries, practicing a concept known as “plein air” — the act of creating art outdoors, using one’s surroundings as a reference.
Mirra emphasized the importance of paying attention to the world. “We may never see the world like this again,” she said. “It is our duty to look closely.”
Ryan Cunningham, a writer and director who graduated from RISD in 2002, focused on the importance of neurodivergent representation in the media in her talk.
Cunningham told the audience about her daughter, who started talking later than most children. “Her eyes were always full of frustration because she couldn’t communicate with me,” she said.
In an effort to find connection, Cunningham and her daughter started watching movies together. Over time, her daughter started using dialogue from movies to communicate.
At four years old, Cunningham’s daughter was diagnosed with autism, leaving Cunningham anxious that any future she had imagined for her daughter had “disappeared.”
Over time, she understood that her daughter’s autism was “not a limitation, (but) a new perspective,” adding that her daughter saw patterns, connections and details that many others would not.
“The world is a whole lot more fun when we stop pretending we’re all the same,” she said.
Isaiah “Prophet” Raines, a RISD senior majoring in sculpture, said he and his family were displaced from their home in Fall River, Massachusetts in 2023 as a result of gentrification.
“We take pride in the fact we can survive that,” Raines said. His talk focused on the act of “artwashing,” or the practice of using public art sanctioned by city officials to distract from gentrification.
He encouraged audience members to embrace their identity. “Be proud of where you come from, wear your clothes, talk how you talk, blast your music,” he said.
Katherine Kim ’28, who attended the event, said she found it “insightful and entertaining,” adding that it encouraged her “to reflect on our own backgrounds and what brings us joy.”
