Photo: Rachele Riley, World Wide Water (Richmond), still from animation, 2021
This year, artist, designer and educator Rachele Riley (M.F.A. ’05) is trading her classroom in North Carolina for the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, one of the world’s top-ranked institutions for art and design. She’ll spend six months living and working in the UK, teaching design workshops, and conducting research for her World Wide Water project—all as part of her Fulbright-Glasgow School of Art Distinguished Scholar Award.
The Fulbright-Glasgow School of Art Distinguished Scholar Award is a highly competitive program for artists and mid-career to senior academics. As part of the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, it selects one recipient annually to conduct a research, professional or artistic project, assist in curriculum development, teach courses, and mentor students.
Riley’s research will explore water stories, ecologies, mythologies, technologies, phenomena and the expression of identity and letterform design in urban and rural areas in Glasgow and the Scottish Highlands. It’s the latest iteration of a multimedia, multi-site project that has evolved over more than 25 years—with roots tracing back to her time living in Germany and her graduate studies at VCUarts.
Building on an idea
Riley’s first World Wide Water project started when she studied at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle, Germany, after finishing her undergraduate degree in studio art at New York University. She initially focused on mapping the physical and emotional values of water from places around the world, as well as access to freshwater and drinking water.
Three years later, she enrolled in the Graphic Design graduate program at VCUarts to learn from renowned designers and scholars—people like Sandra Wheeler, Matt Woolman, Roy McKelvey, Rob Carter, John Malinoski, and John DeMao—whose work she admired and whose books she had studied.
A graduate studies fellowship her first year made her education possible, waiving her tuition and covering her living expenses. That support gave her the freedom to place her full attention on her creative work and research. Her second year, Riley had a graduate teaching assistantship and taught two new design courses: Managing Your Machine and Type Technology.
“Graduate school was a transformational time,” she said. “I immersed myself fully in my projects and worked with intensity and joy. I had time and support to experiment, to work with different materials, methods, image making, forms, and concepts. I was reading and writing a lot. I was exploring typography, design histories, and examining complexities in the world through my work. I absorbed knowledge from and formed friendships with my fellow classmates, professors, and students.”
Riley appreciated the program’s emphasis on research and experimentation, both of which shaped her creative practice in new ways. Design workshop courses were especially influential. In them, her professors would present a topic to the class, which each student would take in their own direction.
For instance, Wheeler prompted students to select and research a single photograph and create projects in response to it. With Carter, students chose an Indigenous culture to research and developed an archive, an object, and a monument. Henk Groenendijk asked the class to choose a segment of Broad Street and investigate the human element. Laura Chessin presented the topic of change and students worked from language as a starting point. Students also explored democracy and voting issues with Susan King Roth; design histories with David Colley; ways to diagram, translate, and design motion with Woolman and McKelvey; and sustainability and recycling in Richmond with Malinoski.
“As a cohort, everyone worked in connection—loosely or tightly—to the main topic, but in our own way. That way of thinking about the world, of researching a topic through design-making, that’s how I still work.”
McKelvey, associate professor of graphic design recalled Riley as “one of our best—very smart, talented and such a positive force. Her thesis work on Visualizing the Art of War is so memorable and very much stands the test of time.”
Shaping a career in arts and education
At the time of graduation, Riley was unsure about her next moves. She hadn’t yet begun looking for a teaching position like some of her classmates. She decided to apply for an administrative director role with the Department of Kinetic Imaging, one of four new positions created with M.F.A. graduates in mind. In addition to administrative tasks, Riley taught one class each semester and had a chance to collaborate with other exceptional artists and faculty members, including Bob Kaputof, Semi Ryu, Pamela Turner, Stephen Vitiello, Bob Paris, and Patrick Power.
“I’m so glad I could do that because it gave me more time and more experience,” she said. “I had four years at VCUarts, two in graduate school and then two with Kinetic Imaging. I was able to learn more about teaching and mentoring, and more about video, animation, sound and coding—all things I was increasingly interested in.”
Two years later, Riley landed her first full-time teaching role at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In the 20 years since, she also taught graphic design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is currently associate professor of new media and design at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Alongside other research projects—like The Evolution of Silence—she continued to work on World Wide Water. Each new version has a site-specific installment and focuses on new expressions and new data. The multimedia installments blend hand-coded animation, typographic design, digital collage, image making, archival inkjet and letterpress printing, mapping, and writing.
In 2021, she returned to Richmond for one installation as part of 1708 Gallery’s InLight exhibition at Great Shiplock Park. She created animations of water words and images and projected them onto structures at the former canal lock, connecting water industries from the past with today’s urban setting. The moving images, words, and collages evoked the shapes and directed movement of ships and flow of water tides and ripples, and combined visual references to water technologies and well-being.
The next iteration of World Wide Water
Riley always planned to apply for a Fulbright one day. From a young age, her parents encouraged her to learn about international worldviews. In addition, Riley’s work is often inspired by the cities, spaces and environments where she lived. She saw a Fulbright as an important opportunity to be immersed in a different culture and collaborate with an international community of artists and scholars.
In 2025, the timing finally felt right—personally—for her to be out of the U.S. for an extended period.
Riley researched different countries and Fulbright awards before deciding on the Fulbright-Glasgow School of Art Distinguished Scholar Award, which is given to experienced researchers and educators.
“I was drawn to this award because it is specific to art and design scholarship,” she said, “and because the Glasgow School of Art is an historic school and a significant leader in art and design education.” She applied in September 2025 and learned in April that she was selected.
For six months, Riley plans to conduct field, studio and archival research in both Glasgow and the Scottish Highlands. She will take inspiration from the histories and artistic innovations of the area to create a visual mapping and multimedia image series that focuses on how water connects people and environments.
“Water and sustainability, the preservation and continuation of cultural heritage, health, livelihood, and joy are shared global concerns. I hope my project will allow viewers to connect to their own experiences, and to imagine and understand other places—broadening world views and inspiring a sense of attentiveness, relation, and care.”
“It will be fascinating for me to explore the Rivers Clyde and Kelvin of Glasgow, the broader region’s rivers, canals, wells, lochs and bogs, the North Sea and Glasgow’s waterway to the Atlantic in person,” she added. “I will be learning and taking creative inspiration from water flow, and connecting these studies with research into the poetics of spaces, typographic texts, and lettering in Scotland. My World Wide Water project has been ongoing, but in this particular installment, I’ll be able to do deep research and work, a benefit that will come from being immersed in the culture of Glasgow and on site for longer.”
While her focus will be her own work and on connecting with the community, Riley isn’t fully leaving teaching behind. She’ll offer workshops and lectures on design at the Glasgow School of Art, intersect with their graduate and doctoral design programs, and share her work with the public—all with the aim of engaging in cultural exchange.
“Something that appeals to me about the Fulbright program is that it offers the chance to live and work abroad for a while, to teach somewhere new, to collaborate and build new relationships,” she said. “One gets into the groove of doing things a certain way, but with this opportunity I am looking forward to doing something new and different, to stepping outside of my comfort zone, and to being in new environments. It will be inspiring for me both personally and professionally.”
