PrattMWP Alumni Newsletter Spring-Summer 2019

Spring/Summer 2019/Issue Six

ALUMNI NEWS

Quest-for-Light 2019, standing in the Edison Library Colette Bernard, Matt Saunders, Erik Nilson, Natalie Van Oyen, Mia McCormick, Diana Kichuk, Daniel Buckingham, Claus Dicovskiy

QUEST-FOR-LIGHT TOUR 2019 Daniel Buckingham, PrattMWP Professor of Sculpture

We recently returned to the PrattMWP campus after the 25th Quest-for-Light Tour 2019. Our nine-day adventure during spring break consisted of me and seven students traveling 1,966 miles through four states in passenger vans.

Our objective was to enlighten ourselves with cultural meaning and visual research, share and exhibit our work and build friendships with other faculty and students while embracing a safe and dynamic adventure.

The students I led on this year’s Quest-for-Light Tour included Colette Bernard, Claus Dicovskiy, Diana Kichuk, Mia McCormick, Natalie Van Oyen, Erik Nilson, and Matt Saunders. On Saturday, March 9, we departed Utica at 5:30 a.m. and arrived at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, West Orange, New Jersey. We gathered in the large library where Edison created his inventions and in 1879, illuminated the first incandescent light bulb.

During this trip, we were engaged in visual research at Corning Museum of Glass, New York; Ohio sites such as Noema Gems Rock Shop, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Akron Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Airstream Factory, Goodyear Airship; Pennsylvania sites including the Mattress Factory Art Space, Carnegie Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barnes Foundation; and, in New Jersey, Princeton Museum of Art and the Thomas Edison National Historical Park. We exhibited our luminous sculptures at Kent State University, Ohio, and Alfred University, New York. The tour highlight was learning to bend glass and create a neon light during our stay at Alfred University, to be used in a new project back at PrattMWP.

Our group was able to take industrial tour at Goodyear Wingfoot Three and Airstream so we could see products being fabricated on a large scale and observe the process as neutral material was transformed into a complex finished product. Colette remarked of the passion and skill of the workers, “Having the opportunity to observe industrial fabrication skills that apply to my career as a sculptor opened so many creative doors for me I didn’t know were there. I was shown directly that having big dreams about an artistic process can be reality.” Airstream and the Goodyear Airship are perfect examples of American industrial design; they are handmade objects, and express a unique skin structure relationship called monocoque.

Artist Alex De Corte, “Neon Cottage” 2018. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“Young-Neonologists!”, Museum of Luminous Phenomena/ Neon Studio at Alfred University, Alfred, New York.

Quest-Crew with Wingfoot Three. Akron, Ohio.

Natalie remarked, “Quest-For-Light was an amazing experience. I don’t think I will ever have such an opportunity to be exposed to so much art and the ability to network with such interesting people in such a small period of time. The trip was a nonstop art tour and provided so much inspiration that I hope to use in my future work. I was able to visit cities and places that I have never been to like Pittsburgh, Akron, Kent State University, and Alfred University, which offered many wonderful museums as well as being able to display our own work as a pop-up show.”

When we arrived back in Utica and were unloading the gear out of the vans, Matt exclaimed, “Light will not only be a visual experience, but will transform to envelop every aspect of your senses. By the end of the Quest, you’ll have sworn you even tasted light!”

Read the entire chronicle of the journey, as Daniel’s Quest-Diary entry, here: https://bit.ly/2M1lBtb Claus, Diana, Natalie, Colette, Matt, Mia, Erik, Daniel. Bloody Forever 2011, by Artist’s Sue Webster and Tim Noble. Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.

Family and Alumni Weekend: October 4-6, 2019 More information will be posted here: https://bit.ly/2uHSy2j

FACULTY Q&A: CLAUDINE METRICK ASSISTANT PROFESSOR 2D FOUNDATION Claudine Metrick was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and earned her MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where she studied painting.

She is an assistant professor of 2D Foundations. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout New England and across the country, most notably at Carroll and Sons and the Vessels Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts art galleries and cultural centers such as the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, the New Bedford Art Museum, the Cotuit Center for the Arts, AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island, Arizona State University, Morehead State University in Kentucky, The Painting Center in New York City, and Curious Matter in New Jersey.

Tell us about your own personal artwork.

Currently, I am working on a series of drawings that memorialize a dear friend who passed away two and a half years ago. The series consists of large charcoal drawings of sunflowers and sunflower seeds, ranging in size from 7 feet high by 4 feet wide to as small as 2 by 1.5 inches. I grew the flowers in my garden this past summer from seeds distributed at her funeral. I’m doing some further work with the small drawings, building extensive frames and hopefully, creating some small, relic-like, objects to hold the tiniest drawings. I’d like to give a shout out to studio techs at PrattMWP, Shannon Stockbridge and Erik Nilson, who have kindly helped me with metal and woodworking in order to realize this project. I’m hoping to exhibit the work next year and have a few applications pending (fingers crossed).

How does your work impact the way you approach teaching?

The more I can draw a direct connection between my studio practice and teaching, the more I can help my students. This means bringing my own experiences and solutions from the studio into the classroom, meeting the Sunflower #1/Back to the Garden, 2018 Charcoal on paper; 44 x 30

students where they are, and finding the best way forward together. If I wasn’t consistently working each week, the design and color problems that all artists encounter wouldn’t be as fresh in my mind. Impact goes the other way too, and

spending the last three years focused intensely on the drawing studio courses here has changed the way I think about my own work.

What is your favorite part about working at PrattMWP? Everyone - faculty, staff, and the student body - is actively engaged in this campus, and that resulting in a concentrated, positive, energy that is different from other places I have taught.

What do you hope of PrattMWP alumni?

Going forward, I hope they remember where they started. The foundations we instilled in them during their time at PrattMWP will always be there to help them in the studio. But this isn’t the only valuable thing about staying connected - remembering their beginnings can help them realize how far they’ve come.

Sunflower Seed #1/Relic, 2019 Charcoal on paper framed with cast silver seeds; 4 x 3” (image)

Sunflower #2/Back to the Garde, 2018, Charcoal on paper; 30 x 44”

Donate to the Class of 2019 gift, a water bottle filling station for the Studio Building: https://bit.ly/2FJX71l

ALUMNA PROFILE: BRITTANY MILLER Brittany Miller is an artist currently working mainly in sculpture, and a preschool teacher in a progressive school in Upper Manhattan. At PrattMWP, she majored in art education, relocating to Pratt’s Brooklyn campus in 2010. She was the featured speaker at the 18th PrattMWP Commencement Ceremony on May 15.

What do you remember as your most notable experience at PrattMWP? Professor Doreen Quinn took our sculpture class out into the woods one day and told us to make something out of whatever was around us. We were left to ourselves, an got back together at nightfall for critique. That project broadened my idea of what art could look like and what was possible. There was also something meditative about that day which showed me how important it is to make time to be alone with oneself, without noise from the outside.

What has been your greatest achievement since leaving PrattMWP? There are moments that feel important, where art and

MillerII. Bouquet VI. Cyanotype on deerskin

teaching become intertwined in a symbiotic and exciting way. These moments are becoming more and more frequent, where art ideas feed back and forth between my classroom and my studio.

What ideas are you exploring with your artwork now?

Recently I’ve been thinking about making objects that feel sacred, work that feels like it belongs in a place of worship. Right now I am MillerIV. Calantica Gold-wrapped silk embroidery on mosquito netting

working on the theme of wilderness, using embroidered hides, beaded snakeskin, and sequined cloth for a show at The Church of the St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan.

What is the role of artists today? How will artists today influence the future of the art-world and generations to come.

I believe that the role of artists is, simply, to make art. We won’t know exactly what will leak through to future generations. We can only dig deeper into ourselves and make work that feels important to us in the time we are making it.

MillerIII. Bouquet VIII Cyanotype on deerskin

www.bjmiller.nyc www.instagram.com/bjmiller.nyc/

MillerI. Onions I-XVII. Heat-oxidized copper and crystallized copper

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