RISD EDU – Nearly four years ago, sculptor Jim Drain 98 SC worked with an interdisciplinary group of students over Winter session to create a site-specific work for the new US embassy then under construction in Rabat, Morocco.

Board of Trustees Vice Chair Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn 83 TX (above right) supported the Art in Embassies: Morocco studio, which stemmed from a commission from the US State Department’s Art in Embassies (AIE) program.

Earlier this month, Drain had the opportunity to travel to Morocco to help install the final 12-foot-tall terrazzo, glass and stainless steel sculpture at the US Embassy in Rabat.

“Working with RISD and the State Department has been an incredibly special experience,” says Drain, who is back at RISD this fall as a visiting artist in Textiles. “I’m happy with the direction the work took as we developed the ideas from that original Winter session class: examining iconography shared by Morocco and the US, utilizing the repeated geometry of Moroccan mosaics and using materials in new and unexpected ways.”

“Walking around the backstreets of Rabat,” Drain adds, “I saw a rawness and subtle complexity of design that comes through in the sculpture.”

See the full RISD article with photos: http://our.risd.edu/post/131625282619/morocco-mission-accomplished