Manual / Issue 5

Loose threads unknotted. Ideas unrealized. Outlines left bare. Function unperformed. Patterns uncut. Luster removed with time and wear. We rarely examine unfinished things. The unfinished is easily overlooked in favor of the fully rendered and complete, but consider those sketchy lines, those fraying ends: the unfinished has potency. The unfinished offers evidence of process, reveals traces of technique, trembles with latent possibility. The essays, images, and projects presented in the fifth issue of Manual attend to the fluid potential of objects that are in some way incomplete.

From the Files: curatorial assistant A. Will Brown discusses Richard Long's instructions for Mountainside Ellipse

Double Takes: curator Laurie Brewer and artist Jean Blackburn shed some light on the shadowy figures in Von Kobell's Woman in the Window; curator Maureen C. O'Brien and artist Dennis Congdon consider an Ingres study in three parts; curator Jan Howard and poet C.D. Wright talk about Fiona Banner's Shy Nude behind her back

Object Lessons: RISD professor Bolaji Campbell discusses the aesthetics, meaning, and interrupted function of a Pende mask; curator Emily J. Peters studies Gossaert's unfinished Adam and Eve; Gina Borromeo, curator of ancient art, recovers the identity of an incomplete Roman portrait bust from the first century CE

Portfolio: the jotted down and in-process, the left off and worn out

How To: curator Kate Irvin discusses a group of unrealized dresses from the 1920s

Artists on Art: Jen Bervin sews an excerpt from the opal seas; Jeremy Deller imagines an Iggy Pop life drawing class; Siebren Versteeg makes a declaration about never finishing school

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: Jay Buckley at Meridian