Founders Spotlight: Jordana Martin MFA 01 PT/PR
Celebrating RISD’s alumni founders and entrepreneurs
We celebrate RISD founders by remembering their work and shining a light on the entrepreneurial spirit that remains strong in our students and alumni. In this series, alumni founders share thoughts on getting started, taking risks, and how their education prepared them to create something entirely their own.
Jordana Martin MFA 01 PT/PR is the founder of Tatter, an ongoing art installation and academic research library that houses 6,000 books, journals, exhibition catalogs and objects that examine and celebrate the global history, traditions, makers, craft and beauty of textiles.
Textiles have a unique capacity to cultivate empathy and celebrate culture. There are precious few spaces that do this intentionally in general, and even fewer that are textile focused.
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A founder needs to have vision and courage, but also always remain open to evolving while continuing to listen to what the world is working on. Tatter is a constant balance of community and curation.
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RISD's ethos of cross pollination between disciplines definitely plays a role in my work. Tatter is an organization based in the intersection of many things.
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If you want to be a founder, I would say develop a thick skin, stay humble, and form an advisory board of people that inspire you and know about different things than you do!
The ideas that led to the founding of RISD were nurtured by a small group of women who had joined forces to raise funds for Rhode Island’s contribution to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. In 1877—four decades before women in the US gained the right to vote—Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf and the 34 other members of the Rhode Island Women’s Centennial Commission invested their group’s surplus in founding a school of art and design.
In 1877, 35 women, armed with $1,675 and a vision, founded RISD. Understanding that a school for art and design could produce world-changing critical thinkers and makers, the founders were innovators whose impact stretches across the globe.
