For the past four years, Roger Williams University maintained two fully equipped art studios for its visual arts students. Today those studios sit inside a storage facility. The courses taught at the studios have been put on pause, and as students head back to campus for the spring semester, visual art students are left to wonder when the off-campus ceramics program will resume.

Both studios were housed inside former elementary schools owned by the Town of Bristol, but when the Bristol Warren Regional School District said it needed more space for social distancing a few months ago, all the tenants were told to vacate. Roger Williams packed up and moved out, but without a home, the studios and equipment are out of commission. So are some students’ ambitions.

Visual arts student Samantha L’Esperance is a dedicated wheel-based clay artist and a junior at Roger Williams University, double majoring in Visual Arts and Psychology while minoring in Arts Administration. Samantha is a passionate art student, for whom art is more than just a diversion. “The majority of students take ceramics classes for fun, but I want to make a career out of it,” she said.

As the studio remains in storage, she is not able to enroll in any upper-level courses for the spring semester. She’s taking six classes a semester to graduate on time, and she’s missing critical experiences.

“With any art form, you’re not good at it overnight; you need to dedicate time and experience ... And I’ve already lost a year now,” she said.

She intended to pursue an independent study learning more about the art of ceramics. “I won’t be able to do that at all now because I have to fulfill my course requirements as a senior. I feel that everything I had planned is slowly going down the drain.”

District displaced the tenants

Across the country, university programs continue to be affected by the pandemic, directly impacting students’ academic futures. In this case, the local public school system derailed the status quo — out of an abundance of caution. As the school district was planning for the end of its first term last fall, administrators become worried that if a lot of families opted to send their children back into buildings, they would not have enough space to spread the students safely in classrooms. So they moved preemptively to take back the empty school building, thereby displacing private business tenants who were renting spaces, and the university.

At the time, the public school district was worried that hundreds of students might return to in-person learning, but only a few dozen chose that option. So far, the space has not been necessary, and Reynolds sits empty, with no tenants and no students.

Roger Williams University established the off-campus clay studio during the summer of 2016 in the ground floor (basement level) of the Reynolds building. The visual art department also utilized two classrooms at the former Byfield elementary school building, located across the street from Reynolds, as a studio space for upper-level visual arts students.

The school district’s move to reclaim Reynolds had a domino effect on the arts space in Byfield. Because the leases on those Byfield spaces were expiring and the Town of Bristol was looking for new space for some of its own groups that were being bumped out of Reynolds, it opted to not renew those university leases. So Roger Williams was simultaneously knocked out of both buildings.

University says it’s working on plan

Professor Kura Nermin teaches courses in hand-building, and Denis Leonti teaches courses in wheel-throwing. The ceramics studio was equipped with four large work tables, 17 pottery wheels, shelving, four large electric kilns, and a pugmill for recycling clay. The Byfield studios gave upper-level students rooms to work and manage their own space, engaging and interacting with resident artists and the Byfield Design Group. 

Murray McMillan, chairman of the Visual Arts Department, provided a statement on the current situation: “Ceramics is a strong component of our Visual Arts curriculum. The Visual Arts Department is working closely with our Dean Cynthia Scheinberg and our Provost Margaret Everett to secure a new ceramics studio as quickly as possible to support our community.”

 The Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Education, Cynthia Scheinberg, also released a statement: “We have been able to relocate the student studios that were in Byfield to the Bristol campus for the seniors this semester.”

As students return for the 2021 spring semester, senior visual art students will have access to on-campus studio space. As for the clay studio, finding a new location is proving difficult and the university has not found a solution. Dean Scheinberg said, “We are looking into how to run ceramics classes for fall 2021, with a variety of different ideas on the table that we will be working on this semester.”

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Margaret Everett said, “We understood the need for the town to repurpose the space. Ceramics is a valuable part of our visual arts curriculum. We are currently exploring options to relocate the studio, as well as partnerships that might afford short-term solutions so that our students can continue to benefit from the excellent ceramics curriculum.”

While the administrators’ statements are reassuring, the current visual art students’ academic futures are still uncertain.