Kellie MacGarrigle Riggs, a senior jewelry and metalsmithing major at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, RI, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study and work in Italy for a year.
Riggs’ Fulbright project will be devoted to bringing together traditional application and conceptual artistic validity. It will include formal study in Rome at various educational institutions, contemporary art galleries and with practicing art professionals exploring the role jewelry and metalsmithing play in the contemporary and fine art world. Six months of her scholarship study will be spent at Le Arti Orafe, Contemporary Jewelry School and Academy in Florence, where she will take technical and traditional Italian jewelry classes, including stone-setting and engraving.
Riggs is an honors student at RISD and a multi-year merit scholarship recipient, student alliance department representative and earned a spot in RISD’s European Honors Program in 2010. She is the co-founder of RISD’s first student-run gallery.
Riggs graduated with honors on June 4, earning a bachelor of fine arts degree with a history, philosophy and social studies concentration in gender studies.
She is the daughter of Robert M. Riggs and wife Colette Ward Riggs of Freeland and New Orleans, La.
The Fulbright is the largest United States international exchange program of its kind, and approximately 6,000 Fulbright awards are presented each year to students and scholars worldwide.