PrattMWP Alumni Newsletter Fall 2020

Fall 2020/Issue Eleven

ALUMNI NEWS There’s 20 Years and a lot to Celebrate!

Twenty years ago, a small art college nestled in between neighborhoods in the heart of Utica, formed a partnership with Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Since then, PrattMWP College of Art and Design has become nationally recognized for providing students with a strong foundation to create great work, and now it’s time to celebrate our acheivements!

A special multi-media exhibition, 20: PrattMWP Celebrating 20 Years, opening October 1, 2021 in the PrattMWP Gallery, will feature works by 20 alumni from the past 20 years. One artist will represent each class as an homage to the success of the PrattMWP program. This is an opportunity to support and celebrate our talented alumni. We will launch the exhibition with a big party and kick off Family and Alumni Weekend.

When Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute joined forces with Pratt Institute, it gave students another option for their art college experience. Students who chose to spend their first two years at PrattMWP were provided with an intimate upstate campus, small class sizes, one-on-one time with the talented faculty, and a tight-knit community. The combination of Munson-Williams’ distinguished arts community and Pratt’s strong reputation and curriculum has developed into a focused, passionate, and supportive learning environment that attracts artists from all over the world.

Come and get nostalgic with us by joining us back on campus in 2021!

More information will be posted on these sites soon.

PrattMWP Alumni Anniversary website

Taisha Carrington, Class of 2015 Spiked Earring from Woke in the Wake series, 2018 Various Materials

PrattMWP College of Art and Design Family and Alumni Weekend website

Colleen Doody, Class of 2013 Bendix Fluid Power Division, 2019 Oil on cradled tondo panel

ALUMNUS PROFILE: TRACY ROBIN WILKINSON, 2002 Floral Artist at Village Florals in New Hartford, NY Utica native Tracy Robin Wilkinson has always found ways to incorporate artistic elements to her life. She studied fine arts with a sculpture concentration as a member of the PrattMWP Charter Class of 2000.

She gravitated towards welding metal sculptures under the tutelage of Professor of Sculpture Daniel Buckingham and saw it as an exciting counterpoint to her more traditionally feminine side.

After receiving her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2004, she became the Gallery Director for PrattMWP and learned how to set up shows, select artists, and manage gallery exhibitions. While in college she had worked as a floral assistant and while finding it fulfilling and challenging, sculpture had Tracy Robin Wilkinson

always been her main focus. When her Gallery Director position ended, she returned to her floral assistant position before eventually landing a job at

Chester’s Flowers in Utica. Her skill gathered from assisting in floral design blossomed at Chester’s and she began to experiment more with the medium and discovered that she loved it as a profession. She is now working at Village Florals in New Hartford and won both best in show and juror’s choice for her floral interpretation of Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation # 23 in Munson-Williams’ Art in Bloom exhibition in 2018. Tracy plans to participate again in the 2021 Art in Bloom.

Tracy Robin Wilkinson Floral Art interpretation of Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation # 23 flowers, rush

What makes you passionate about your work?

I fell in love working with flowers at an early age and have been in this field of work for the past 18 years. I like it because I don’t have to create according to formulas, and it’s exciting and emotional work. I like to use anything other than a vase for a design.

Tracy Robin Wilkinson The Ecstasy of Life acrylic painted flower with thickening medium, glitter and markers

For you, what was the relationship between sculpture and floral design?

The relationship between sculpture and floral design didn’t happen overnight. After graduating from Pratt, I returned home to Utica where I resumed my job as a floral designer while looking for jobs in the art world. I had a temporary job at PrattMWP as the Gallery Director, but it wasn’t full time. After spending time in the floral design/ floral art world, I developed a passion for flowers and what can be created with them, and attended several floral seminars and had a few great mentors while working at Chester’s Flower Shop. I really liked how I felt and how the flower world was opening up to me. I had an untapped skill that I was unaware of—sculptural floral art. My work was shaky at first, but like any new craft, it took time to develop on a level where I felt confidant. I started using my knowledge of art and sculpture and applying it to floral designs, breaking barriers, and defying gravity. Floral art is more challenging because of how delicate and breakable flowers are, unlike metal and wood, and I love a challenge! My work is always filled with color, whimsy, textural elements, movement, and fun whether it is expressed with flowers, sculptures, or paintings. I find all three mediums can use the same principles and can be expressed in similar ways.

As a floral designer, what was the Art in Bloom experience like?

I was thrilled two years ago to have participated in the first Art in Bloom event at Minson-Williams, where both my loves and passions for sculpture and flowers came together to create a floral sculpture piece representing an artwork at the Museum. It was amazing, I was in my element. I’m hoping to do future projects like that one and others too. This was one of the highlights of my floral/art career. As we are so often our own worst critics, it renewed my confidence in what I do and being a floral artist is exactly what I love to do by making people happy with flowers and creating not only beautiful floral arrangements, but also making floral art utilizing my sculptural background by applying it to the flower world. I believe my interpretation captures the true essence of Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation # 23 using bold bright blooms, movement, and using a black painted floral medium called Rush to showcase the harsh black lines throughout the artwork and floral art.

Tracy Robin Wilkinson, Contemporary Floral Arrangement

What are your plans for future projects?

I’m hoping to have my own flower shop or incorporating flowers and art in some other way, perhaps for large events and special openings. I love using my entire body, designing large-scale pieces both in sculpture and flowers to have a “wow” factor. My 10-year plan is to start small, but I’m hoping to have a small staff that can allow the floral/art business to blossom. I feel that there is a need for something like this not only in this community but everywhere, nature is so magical and can impress. I also love that floral art is temporary. It’s not like a sculpture that you can have and view indefinitely. Floral art is only viewable for about a week or so that it makes it much more desirable in my eyes, because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

See Tracy’s work

Tracy Robin Wilkinson Tropical floral arrangement foliage, and yellow cubed oasis to the container to look like cubed fruit

Q&A WITH TARO TAKIZAWA VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR Taro Takizawa is an artist focusing on printmaking, wall vinyl installations, drawings, and 2D designs. Born in Japan, he focuses on creating images connecting his experiences in Japan and in the U.S. since he moving here in 2002. His works contain western and eastern aesthetics, with appreciation of traditional printmaking processes and mark making. He is fascinated with blending the boundaries of contemporary studio practice and traditional processes, printmaking and installations, influenced by traditional Japanese patterns from textile designs, architecture, and crafts. He received his BFA with a printmaking emphasis from Central Michigan University in 2011, and his MFA in printmaking from Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts in 2017. While working on his master’s degree, Takizawa participated in multiple short residencies and exhibitions, including the student exhibition at Chautauqua Institution School of Art at the Fowler-Kellogg Art Center, the

Taro Takizawa

PARADOX European Fine Art Forum and at CK Zamek in Poznan, Poland; and ArtPrize 10 at Grand Rapids Public Museum. He recently participated in the Haystack Art School Collaborative conference at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine as well as in the artist-in-residence programs at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, NY, and the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, OH. Tell us about your personal artwork!

My work is an intuitive process of making patterns by drawing, painting, carving, cutting, and printing. I am constantly engaged with how I want to move forward. I look for formal reactions, ideas between the contemporary and personal history, perspective, thought, reflections on my Japanese heritage, and permanent memory. My work is about my fascination with water, its ripples, and its reflections.

I am re-creating my emotional reactions to how water seems to flow freely and continuously, by using recursive printmaking processes and mark making techniques to imitate that movement. The patterns on the installation works and prints are forever repeating patterns in my head. The process of creating these images is also a forever-repeating process of drawing, cutting, carving, and printing.

How does your work impact the way you teach?

I think a lot about producing work, and I try to make work as much as my time allows me. There are a lot of times that I am distracted, with my time divided up with responsibilities rather than creating work.

Printmaking creates no instant gratification. I have to be prepared, I have to be patient, I know that there are going to be failures. I’ve created room for calculated failures in my studio practice, when I am in a rush, I can mess up. These come from my studio and teaching experiences, and countless days and nights spent in the studio. Learning the hard way, I’ve learned to be patient, and to be prepared to say yes to opportunities.

Taro Takizawa After a Light Rain, 2018 relief print, 17” x 24”

What is your favorite part about working at PrattMWP? The students are fun to work with and I love getting to know them throughout the semester with discussions, presentations, critiques, and examining their work. They are a diverse group of young energy, carrying different ideas and backgrounds, and they are brave to share their thoughts.

What do you hope for PrattMWP Alumni?

Stay connected with your cohorts. Based on my own experience, it’s been wonderful to see what my friends are doing even though we are far apart.

It takes energy, but wonderful things can happen as long as you are putting some effort in checking in with your friends, and learning about what they are doing whether they are artists or designers. You will be surprised how these relationships will become very valuable in your career.

Artist Website

Artist Instagram Taro Takizawa Kiseki, 2019 stone lithograph, 16 x 11

Taro Takizawa Patterns of Thought, 2020 wall vinyl installation, 9’ x 9’ window Hairpin Art Center, Chicago IL

Save the Date!

Celebrate PrattMWP’s 20-year affiliation with Pratt Institute with our special exhibition, 20: PrattMWP Celebrating 20 Years, opening October 1, 2021.

Continue the celebration through Family and Alumni Weekend, October 1-3, 2021!

More information will be posted on these sites soon.

PrattMWP Alumni Anniversary website

PrattMWP College of Art and Design Family and Alumni Weekend website

Update your Alumni information here

Join the Alumni Group on LinkedIn here