Artists In Residence RIAS Studio presented A Product of Sand, an exhibition and participatory programming experimenting with site-specific glass.

2016 winners of an 'Art Space Is Your Space' residency award, Sam Ihrig and Anna Riley, also known as RIAS Studio, were at Wave Pool for the month of May 2016. While in Cincinnati, RIAS Studio experimented with creating site-specific glass using raw materials, which will be harvested locally and regionally, to explore the intimacy between maker and material, material and place. 

An exhibition featuring works related to this project opened on May 14th from 7-10pm at Wave Pool Gallery and will continue to evolve throughout the month of their residency with Wave Pool. They also hosted a two day workshop on May 22nd and 23rd where community participants used local Cincinnati materials to create glass, creating unique formulas together in the studio. Additionally, RIAS Studio worked with teenagers from Heartfelt Tidbits to create unique glass recipes. Each participant was able to keep their particular Ohio glass.

RIAS Studio (Research Institute of Analogue Sampling) is a collaboration between artists Sam Ihrig and Anna Riley, both currently living in New York, NY. Their practice is driven by material inquiry, in particular through the material’s geological and botanical origins. In recent months their research has led them from coasts to quarries, harvesting raw ingredients from the earth to manufacture site-specific glass recipes.

Sam Ihrig, Portland-native, studied Industrial Design at the California College of the Arts. Anna Riley, born in Birmingham, Alabama, studied Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design. After moving to New York they formed RIAS Studio, a collaborative practice emerging from a strong desire for material intimacy. Their current project explores the origins and production of glass.