About
I trust my hands more than my software.
I'm Marisol Fenn, a visual artist and designer working between print, ceramics, and installation out of a converted print shop off Westminster Street in Providence. Before design school I apprenticed for two years at a bookbindery, which is probably why everything I make eventually gets stitched, stamped, or fired.
My studio practice and my client work borrow from each other constantly — a glaze test becomes a packaging color, a client's typography becomes a zine layout. I like projects where that boundary gets a little blurry.
Approach
Start with the material
Paper stock, kiln temperature, pixel grid — the constraints of the medium decide more of the design than the brief does.
Leave the seams visible
Registration marks, exposed stitching, a visible brush stroke. Evidence of the hand is the point, not a flaw to sand down.
Design for the second look
The first glance should be clean. The second glance should reward someone who stays with it — a hidden fold, a typographic joke, a number that means something.
Selected history
- 2024Undertow, three-channel installation — AS220 Project Space
- 2023Nine Rooms wayfinding system commissioned by Ledger Hill Residency
- 2023Marginalia issues 1–4 self-published, risograph
- 2022Faultline Review redesign, issues 14–19
- 2020MFA, Graphic Design — Rhode Island School of Design
Tools & materials
- Risograph
- Letterpress
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Processing
- Glaze chemistry
- Figma
- A very old Nikon FM2