Creative loafing

By MARION DAVIS | September 3, 2009

THE NEXT BIG THING, IN 20 SLIDES

So you want it all. You actually want even more: a bit of art, a bit of design, cool high-tech projects, but most of all, cool ideas of all kinds, practical and esoteric, even bizarre — as long as they're intriguing and thought-provoking. That is what Pecha Kucha Providence (pecha-kucha.org/cities/providence — and pronounced, for the record, p'CHAH ku-CHAH) aims to deliver every month.

Started in Japan in 2003 and now held in more than 110 locations globally, Pecha Kucha was created to allow designers to network and share their thoughts and projects with one another, but it now extends well beyond the design community. Each event features a series of presenters who are each allowed to show 20 images for 20 seconds each, for a total of six minutes and 40 seconds in the limelight.

The Providence gatherings, held monthly at local bars and other locations (the next one is September 23 at Bravo), attract local artists, techies, social and business entrepreneurs, and more, and they're a great way to meet creative people and find out about new projects in the community and at the colleges.

WANT MORE?

Check into half the stuff above and you'll be busy through the rest of the year, but if you want to keep abreast with everything that's going on in town, there are a few key places to find announcements and event listings. Some of the best include Providence Daily Dose (providencedailydose.com), a local blog with a good eye on the arts in particular; Connect Providence (connectprovidence.org), geared, as its name suggests, to connecting people and groups across the city; Greater City: Providence (gcpvd.org), a blog focused on urban issues and ways to make the city more livable; and for all things techie, RI Nexus (rinexus.com), which has a comprehensive calendar and also features articles on local companies and upcoming events.

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Firehouse 13 gets a facelift
The walls of the Firehouse 13 cultural center are a deep red now, split by a long, white stripe on the northeast wall, with a bit of black below.
Limits of non-traditional leadership
John Maeda arrived at the Rhode Island School of Design a year ago pledging a different sort of leadership.
Brave new RISD
The Rhode Island School of Design, for all its artful ambition, is a conservative place. Students draw. They mold clay. They are awash in taxidermy. So there was more than a little anxiety when John Maeda — sneaker designer, MIT professor, digital media rock star — took over as RISD president last summer.
Photos: The Brilliant Line at RISD's Museum of Art
Photos from artwork at the Rhode Island School of Design in T he Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480- 1650, exhibit.
Celebration of sensation
The Rhode Island School of Design’s “Annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition” typically has too many people doing too many different things for any common themes to emerge. But prominent installations in this year’s showcase at the Rhode Island Convention Center of more than 170 students receiving graduate degrees give the shindig a carnival vibe.
A ’stache grows in Providence
Beards are easy. Almost any guy can grow some scruff, and in some circles, it's almost de rigueur. But a mustache — that takes work, and it takes guts. A mustache is bold.
Wild about Harry
What I want to do — what most photographers want to do — is write Harry Callahan a love letter. At the very least, he deserves an elaborate thank-you note for innovating or validating 80 percent of the successful photographs we ever took.
More closings and a question: Can galleries survive here?
More closings and a question: Can galleries survive here?
Visions of hope
Shannon Heuklom of Providence spent the past two summers helping at a rural clinic, serving some 2000 HIV-positive patients, that is run by the nonprofit Hope Through Health in the West African nation of Togo.
Breakfast of champions
The Slip have been a fixture on the jam band scene for 15 years. Over the past six years, the Slip’s core members — bassist Marc Friedman, guitarist Brad Barr, and his brother Andrew behind the kit — along with pianist Marco Benevento and singer/songwriter Nathan Moore occasionally whip up a little something on the side they like to call Surprise Me Mr. Davis.
Summer times
First off, a huge THANK YOU goes out to all the bands and fans who attended our inaugural Best Music Poll Awards Show last week, and congrats to all the winners.
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Topics: Lifestyle Features , Visual Arts, Brown University, A Better World By Design, More

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ARTICLES BY MARION DAVIS

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AT RISD: 2X4S, TAPE, AND 'CO-HABITATION' | February 09, 2011
In photographs, it looks like a giant spider web. But up close, it's shiny and transparent under the golden light. It's big enough for a person to climb into and crawl through — or you can poke your head in from a hole underneath or on the sides.