Manual / Issue 6

An assemblage is both an act and a result-the work of gathering and conjoining as well as the state of having been gathered and conjoined. This issue of Manual pieces together works made out of practical necessity and others that marry dazzling embellishments for optimal effect, examining how history (or one version of it) was (and is) pastiched from disparate sources, how fashionable textile samples were collected, and more (always more). An assembly of assemblages, an assortment of intended and unintended interrelationships, Manual issue six is the sum of its parts and the parts themselves, a dynamic gathering of artists and authors, objects and interpretations, mash-ups and remixes, lemons and lightbulbs, vibrantly inter-animating each other.

Manual: a journal about art and its making, a new twice-yearly journal, uses the collections, exhibitions, and collaborations of the RISD Museum as an impetus for essays and interviews, artist interventions, and archive highlights. A fusion of academic arts journal and design magazine, Manual is a resource for engaged conversations about art, design, and the impact of creative making by curators, artists, scholars and educators.

RISD Museum director: John Smith

Manual Editor-in-chief: Sarah Ganz Blythe with S. Hollis Mickey

Editor: Amy Pickworth

Graphic designer: Derek Schusterbauer

Photographer: Erik Gould (unless otherwise noted)

Printer: GHP