Mike Green’s Strip Door Chandelier, a striking work that suggests a giant glow-in-the-dark jellyfish

Warren Patterson

In these recessionary times, many Americans have found ways to make do with less. They spend more time at home, stretch their budgets by buying no-frills products and materials and express their inner handyman (or handywoman) by doing more of their own home repairs and improvements. Some intrepid types have even embraced newfangled concepts such as green design and sustainability.

Judging by this year’s RISD graduate show — or, as it’s officially known, the Annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition — artists, too, are feeling the economic pinch. Indeed, the show, which runs through the end of the month at the Rhode Island Convention Center, brims with work that both embodies and comments on the new austerity. Artists, it seems, have discovered the joys of Recession Chic.

Need a new sofa? Check out Pete Oyler’s comfy (if slightly bruised looking) loveseat made from layers of distressed cardboard. A chandelier? Try Mike Green’s Strip Door Chandelier, a striking work that suggests a giant glow-in-the-dark jellyfish. (Actually, it’s make from strips of plastic flooring material.) How about jewelry? The pieces in Yong Joo Kim’s “Reconfiguring the Ordinary” collection are made from an unlikely mix of Velcro, zip ties and dried beans. (And, no, I’m not making that up.)

In fact, that wonderfully simple phrase — reconfiguring the ordinary — could serve as the show’s unofficial title. Almost anywhere you look around the Convention Center’s cavernous Hall A, you’ll find artists and designers adjusting and adapting their work to reflect today’s leaner times.

In some cases, the references to economic matters are hard to miss. One of the first things you see as you enter the exhibit is Gabriela Salazar’s For Closure (Indoors, Providence), a towering installation consisting of dozens of old doors stacked together like giant playing cards. The result is not only physically impressive (indeed, it may be the largest single artwork in the exhibit), but it’s a fitting symbol for an era in which many seemingly solid things turned out to be as fragile as a house of cards.

The sputtering economy — and especially the ongoing housing and mortgage crises — also seems to be the inspiration for Kelly Goff ‘s The Crooked Timber of Humanity.

Located next to Salazar’s piece, Goff’s installation features an quirky group of building materials — a steel stud, a plastic downspout diverter, a cement cistern — that have been abused or altered in some way. (The steel stud, for example, was hammered into a ball, then bent back into something like its original shape. Like the economy, it came through its ordeal looking battered yet resilient.)

Painter Esteban Del Valle, on the other hand, takes a more apocalyptic view of recent events. His entry, a two-part mural that’s as darkly ominous as an Old Testament prophecy, consists of two scenes: in one, a giant ship loaded with cargo is making its way through stormy seas; in the other, the same ship, still weighed down by its cargo of consumer goods, can be seen sinking beneath the waves.

Other artists respond to the sinking economy by using inexpensive or recycled materials. Ellie Levenstein’s organically shaped floor cushions, for example, are held together with twine stitching and filled with dried buckwheat hulls. The result: Amish simplicity meets avant garde design.

Another artist, Erin Perry, turned a pair of old easy chairs into lifelike animal sculptures. The pieces, which depict a pair of snarling bear-like creatures, are so realistic you may never look at your old sofa set the same way again. (You might say Perry’s work puts the bark back in Barcalounger.)

Even some of the show’s multimedia artworks have a do-it-yourself vibe. Living Reflected in Water, a jittery video by Rosalind Murray, features homemade “water bugs” that playfully skitter across the screen. (Unfortunately, Murray’s entry also gets my vote for Most Annoying Soundtrack — a kind of keening electronic whine that makes it difficult to spend more than a few seconds in her booth.)

Other examples of what might be called DIY-goes-high-tech include Kara Dunne’s The Living Room and Benjamin Wright’s Lessons in Letting Go. (Interestingly, Dunne’s piece which recreates the look of an old-fashioned sitting room, is as neat and tidy as Wright’s is messy and chaotic.)

Of course, the economy isn’t the only thing on people’s minds this year. In a show this big — there are more than 120 contributors representing everything from jewelry-making and landscape architecture to printmaking and industrial design — you’ll inevitably hear many different voices.

Some, in particular, are worth pointing out.

I’ve already mentioned Esteban Del Valle, whose dark (literally and figuratively) mixed media works treat the recent economic storm as a kind of latter-day Flood. Also worth seeking out are works by Erin Zona, who contributes a pair of wonderful free-form ink drawings, and Maricruz Velasco, whose spare, semi-abstract paintings evoke architectural details such as doors and windows.

Other highlights include Luke O’Sullivan’s Foundations (9 Boxes), an installation whose playful array of stilt-supported houses that suggests a pop-up book come to life, Emma Hogarth’s 3,600 Seconds, which features some of spookiest picture frames you’ll ever see, and the work Jesse Shaw, whose sharp, politically charged linocuts are among the show’s few overtly political artworks.

Finally, while the stormy economic climate has certainly had an impact on this year’s graduate show, there are plenty of signs of hope and even humor sprinkled around the exhibit. A section devoted to RISD’s landscape architecture program, for example, features an array of eco-friendly initiatives, from home-based bio-diesel production to bike-powered electrical generators.

Meanwhile, bragging rights for the show’s cleverest entry belong to Mary Bana, whose Rhode Island School of… installation invites visitors to replace the final word in Rhode Island School of Design with one of their own choosing. On the day I visited, the responses (most, obviously, coming from Bana’s fellow students) included the Rhode Island School of Sleep Deprivation, the Rhode Island School of Tears and the Rhode Island School of Day Dreamers. No doubt all are accurate in one sense or another.

The Annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition runs through Aug. 30 in Exhibition Hall A at the Rhode Island Convention Center, One Sabin St. in Providence. Hours are daily noon-8. For more information, visit www.risd.edu/gradshow.