Prattfolio Fall 2016

Pratt folio

Fall 2016

The Magazine of Pratt Institute

Story telling

Features

6 MEMOIR AND MIRROR Pratt Artists Rewrite Personal Histories in Images and Impressions 18 ACTIVATE THE TEXT For One Pratt Writing Alumna, Stories Are Made to Be Heard 24 BRIGHT PASSAGES Across Genres and Disciplines, Pratt Faculty Craft Narratives of Personal, Social, and Mythic Resonance Departments

2 PRACTICE A new series exploring the artistic and professional practice of Pratt faculty through visits to their studios and workspaces, with Scott Menchin, adjunct professor CCE, Communications Design

Prattfolio is published by the Division of Institutional Advancement for the alumni and friends of Pratt Institute.

Senior Editor Jean Hartig Creative Director Mats Håkansson

©2016 Pratt Institute 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205 Vice President of Institutional Advancement Joan Barry McCormick Director of Development Communications Charlotte Savidge

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Associate Creative Director Kara Schlindwein Graphic Designers Erin Cave Rory King Copy Editors Jaime Eisen Jean Gazis Brandhi Williamson

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4 CRIT A new series of conver­sations between faculty and students on the subject of student work, with Donna Moran, dean of the School of Art and Design at PrattMWP, and Kate Sherman (B.F.A. ’18) 36 NEWS Recent updates from campus and beyond 38 NEW AND NOTEWORTHY Items in the marketplace created by Pratt alumni, faculty, and students 44 SPOTLIGHT Dr. Schutte to Step Down as Pratt President 48 SKETCH A new creative exercise to share with the Pratt community

Staff Contributors Holly Graves Marion Hammon Jolene Travis Project Management Erica Dagley Galea Katie Ford Senior Production Manager David Dupont Photography Daniel Terna Read the magazine online at issuu.com/prattinstitute.

Questions? Suggestions? Thoughts on our new look and content?

The editorial staff of Prattfolio would like to hear from you.

Reach us at prattfolio@pratt.edu.

For address changes and obituary notices, please contact alumni@pratt.edu or call 718.399.4447.

Storytelling is fundamental to so much of the Pratt community’s work.

From designing spaces based on human narratives to making sense of personal experiences through images to creating fascinating new worlds in literature, stories help us relate, reason, and reimagine across disciplines. As we congratulated our first class of M.F.A. Writing alumni at Commencement last spring and welcomed the first students in our new Performance and Performance Studies master’s program this fall, the power of storytelling has never been more present on campus. This issue of Prattfolio celebrates Pratt writers, artists, and thinkers whose work captures the imagination, inspires progress, and deepens our cultural conversation through compelling narratives.

In this issue, we also introduce a refreshed design and brand-new content, incorporating comments and suggestions from Prattfolio readers like you. With enhanced visuals and new departments high­ lighting faculty practice and pedagogy and student work and process, as well as a continued emphasis on the artistic and professional journeys of our alumni, our magazine showcases the rich and varied narratives that shape Pratt’s story. We hope you will share your own unique point of view through our new creative prompt on page 48.

Meanwhile, I am setting the stage for the next chapter in my work with Pratt. At the end of this academic year, I will be stepping down as president of the Institute. As I plan for the changes ahead, I look forward to continuing my involvement in Pratt’s growth and thriving, and I am excited about a number of developments already underway on and around campus. This fall, the School of Art’s Master of Fine Arts studios moved from multiple sites to a single, unified location in the Pfizer Building in South Williamsburg. On the Brooklyn campus, we prepare to celebrate the opening of the redesigned Student Union and the new Center for Equity and Inclusion, and to break ground on a future residence hall.

As the search moves forward for the next president to lead our remarkable community into the future, I reflect on the extraor­din­ ary alumni, students, faculty, and friends whose vision, passion, and work have shaped my tenure and made our institution legendary.

I hope you are as inspired as I am being part of the ever-unfolding Pratt story.

Thomas F. Schutte President

Letter from the President

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From the studio of Scott Menchin, adjunct professor CCE, Communications Design, illustrator and children’s book author, NoHo, New York

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Menchin has worked in this studio since 1983, when he was starting his career as an art director. “In my late twenties, I got tired of giving out assignments to people I knew, watching them make art while I wasn’t. I slowly segued into illustration.”

1 The illustration process typically begins by hand at the smaller drafting table, equipped with light box, black ink, and a bowl of pens. Menchin used to use only bamboo pen and ink, but more recently has incorporated inexpensive fine point pens. “Cheap pens are much easier to use than bamboo.” He then scans his work to manipulate digitally.

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2 Menchin and his wife, Pratt alumna and illustrator Yvetta Fedorova (B.F.A. Graphic Design ’97), share the studio space and keep pieces of each other’s artwork hung above their desks (her desk is out of the frame). The top piece is an illustration Fedorova created for The New Yorker.

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3 Menchin is collaborating with writer friend Larry Beinhart on a “completely speculative” comic titled Alter Kocker about an elderly Jewish man who becomes a superhero. “I think it could be a monster hit, but convincing anyone else of that has been a challenge.” (He is also working on a children’s book, What Are You Waiting For?, out from Neal Porter Books in spring 2017.)

4 Commissioned to create the 2015 ComD Halloween Party poster, Menchin approached it as a collection of iconic faces with cutout lines around the edges to make masks. “I thought, how can we educate the students with several important artists’ and designers’ selfportraits and at the same time make a poster that could actually be used by students?”

5 “I mainly use the larger drafting table to display and look at artwork. It’s too pretty to use. I have artwork set out for a simple poem I wrote and am illustrating about a rock viewing the world from the beginning of time through the present and into the future. It was inspired by the rocky coast of Sicily, where my family has traveled over the last four summers.”

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DONNA MORAN: These are great— it’s like a sketchbook.

KATE SHERMAN: Yes, I’ve been compulsively sketching, and I’ve been obsessed with the trope of archways. I’m trying to push away from rendering things as they appear in reality. Last year I took classes with Laurel Sparks and Ben La Rocco, and they helped me embrace more abstraction in painting and drawing composition. I began to revisit things I’d left behind in childhood—things like grids and repetitive motions, which I find very satisfying.

DM: This piece is the most curious one for me [fig. 1]. Looking at that purple area on the left is like looking at clouds—I want to see something in it. The composition is anchored in an interesting way by the red-purple rectangle on the right, and then there’s the arch, like a mouth—there’s some humor to it. It’s very interesting not to want to fill up the white space, and hard, I think.

KS: This one, I think, is too full [fig. 2].

There’s not enough white space. It looks like a patchwork quilt.

DM: There are a lot of different things going on, without something that’s solidifying it. I think right now you are resolving better on the smaller scale. I wonder if you’re feeling that when the canvas is bigger, it’s more responsibility.

KS: It could be a problem of the medium size. The 24" x 16 " rectangle is so nondescript as a size that it is confusing to deal with compared to the smaller canvas, or even a square of any size.

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Kate Sherman (B.F.A. Donna Moran (M.F.A. Painting ’71), dean of the Printmaking ’18) School of Art and Design at Pratt Munson-WilliamsProctor, former chair of Fine Arts (2001–2012) and professor of fine arts (2012–2016) at Pratt

DM: The middle size for me is very hard.

Large isn’t necessarily better, but I’d love to see you working on something like 4 x 6 feet. It’s a really different challenge. It expands you. Going from small to large scale and then back again is a really good practice.

KS: My sculpture final was a big painting installation, a wall I painted with silkscreen ink. That was fun.

DM: What kind of paint are you working with here?

KS: Mostly oil. The bright red is acrylic silkscreen ink and water.

DM: I assume that you’re working with a lot of wash, or transparency, on purpose.

KS: Yes, I’m a big fan of that. I haven’t yet found a reason to incorporate textural oil paint into my work.

DM: In that one [fig. 3], I like the way those recurring lines are working, those little sparks, adding texture.

KS: I think that’s part of what I’m going to do this year—let my brush dip into bits of different colors and create repetition, something like an edition1 of little lines. I’d like to incorporate print methodology into painting and vice versa.

DM: What if you made a vocabulary of acetates with your “alphabet”2—the green lines, the pink area—then print them onto larger canvases, start painting, and see what happens?

KS: That’s a great starting point I hadn’t considered.

DM: One of the advantages of being a printmaker-painter is that you know how, technically, to incorporate different methods. If you hate something, you can paint over it. Some-

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times a little bit of the evidence comes through, and it leads to something unexpected.

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1 A group of identical prints struck from the same plate 2 A lexicon of images

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Pratt Artists Rewrite Personal Histories in Images and Impressions

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In reflections of the past, the story of the present unfolds—a sense of identity, of place in the mesh of family and society. The traditions and rituals, dramatic journeys and quotidian moments that have shaped us and the lives before us have the power to carry us back—but in the here and now, the story is ours to tell anew. Five Pratt artists create an original record of family stories, collective experience, and personal narratives using image to make sense of history— fragmented, layered, and distorted as it may be.

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TEA TIME, 2016, BY POLINA BARSKAYA. COURTESY HONEY RAMKA

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STILLS FROM WINTER NOTE, 2015, BY MIKA ALTSKAN

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Mika Altskan (B.F.A. Film ’15)

all white, ruining the continuity of the film. Only after radical editing and changing the script was I able to make the material work.

P: How did your experience at Pratt influence your approach to storytelling?

MA: At Pratt, we had a great formula for learning about the arts as a whole. I studied all aspects of filmmaking, from Setting out to tell an authentic story in his film Winter Note writing scripts to sound editing, and this helped me decide (2015), Mika Altskan revisited the scene of childhood summers on my concentration: cinematography. Ramón Rivera in Russia, where traditions and family lore were preserved in Moret (visiting assistant professor, Film/Video) taught me a quiet rural retreat. As a dreamlike reverie unfolds in the how to read a shot—how to uncover a deeper story in a deserted dacha in winter, the narrative breaks into a Russian single image. Deb Meehan (professor, Film/Video) played game of word association, ordinary expressions gathering an important role in Winter Note by encouraging my idea significance as they connect to one another against a stark and of making the film with little plot but instead a lyrical retranquil backdrop, evoking the mythic atmosphere of childflection on personal memories. hood itself. Winter Note was featured in several short film festivals and caught the eye of indie film director Madeleine Olnek. She invited Altskan—also a cofounder of Roll Gate Studio, a Brooklyn photo and film and production space—to serve as director of photography on her current feature film.

PRAT TFOLIO: How does storytelling play into your practice?

MIKA ALTSKAN: I see life through the frame of the camera, capturing images that reflect my sense of being, and then I tell a story by linking and sharing those images.

P: What led you to start working on Winter Note?

MA: The idea was inspired by my childhood memories of visits with extended family in Russia, which were drastically different from life in Washington, D.C., where I grew up. I had two contrasting worlds within me. Recollection of those visits served as the basis for the film and also enabled me to tell the story of a cultural tradition in Russia of memorizing poetry.

P: What is the significance of your cinematographic choices to the story?

MA: With the long observational shot, letting the camera “breathe,” I wanted to invite viewers to experience the space and the physical sense of footsteps and glimpses.

Meanwhile, the narration slowly reconstructs the past by naming off singular objects—a concept inspired by a word game we often played. Also, I love telling stories in black and white, for its power to emphasize the core of the image and message. In Winter Note, I wanted to recall colorful and playful summer emotions over white and still winter images, using the contrast to sharpen the recollections.

P: What challenges did you face in making the film?

MA: I faced all the challenges that naturally come along with attempting to shoot a film in a remote area, in a foreign country, with a tiny crew, in an extremely short time, during short winter days, in -10°C weather, and with nearly no budget. After resolving a whole separate challenge of renting camera equipment in Moscow, my group of three loyal volunteers and I arrived at the remote location, a dacha settlement built in the 1970s called Puteprovodnaya. I did not anticipate the impact of a single, obvious, infamous challenge one always faces in Russia: the cold. The summer house didn’t have heating of any kind—the crew ended up sleeping in a car. My initial script included a dramatic dialogue between two brothers trying to learn a poem, but there was no way to bring kids to the location with the lack of proper conditions. Also, for two days, we were shooting in a late autumn landscape, but when we woke up on the last day to complete the shooting, the first snow had fallen and the landscape was

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Polina Barskaya (M.F.A. Painting/ Drawing ’10)

Polina Barskaya’s paintings traverse time and distance to render the fractured stories of her past through the lens of today. The Brighton Beach–based artist uses snapshots as reference material to reconstruct narratives that lead back to her family’s former life in Cherkassy, Ukraine. Reinterpreting gestures, gazes, and scenes in various degrees of articulation and definition, Barskaya often paints on textured surfaces that blur and disrupt the clear impressions of the original images. History’s eternal elusiveness, but also its perpetual fascination, reverberates in the shadowy but richly colored tone of Barskaya’s vignettes. These paintings have recently been showcased in the exhibitions Image Makers at Novella Gallery in Manhattan and Family Affair at Honey Ramka in Brooklyn.

PRAT TFOLIO: What draws you to personal history as a source?

POLINA BARSKAYA: It feels very natural to me to work from what I know. My immediate family immigrated to the United States when I was five years old, and the only information I have about my family history is in the bags of photos that they brought and stories I’ve been told.

Everything else was sold or left behind.

P: What led you to work with the family photos?

PB: I have always worked very close to home and family members. Before I used photos, I would paint portraits of my family from life. When I went to school and I didn’t have them as models, I started using family photos, and that habit stayed with me. This way, I depend less on other people.

P: How does storytelling play into your process?

PB: The moment I’m painting is the most interesting to me, but I think it is easy to build a story around it. The characters I paint reappear in different periods of their lives.

A narrative is there if you piece the paintings together, and there is a story behind each image—though it is not necessarily a story I am aware of or need to know to be interested in painting that particular moment.

P: Are there specific experiences, people, or places that you find yourself returning to often in your work?

PB: I have been drawn to scenes at the dinner table because it

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is what the family centers around. Lately, I have also been taking my own photos to paint from. It’s usually the same characters but now they are much older. Every time I visit my grandparents, I try to take more images for future paintings. The work from my own snapshots is more active than the paintings from older photos because the way we take images and how people pose for them has changed so much.

Even my grandparents seem less aware of the camera now.

P: What challenges have you faced in encountering your subject matter?

PB: Sometimes working with images of family members who have passed can be difficult. Also, working from images of my parents as children can be a bit too much for the soul.

It feels like a person I have never met who is gone forever.

Also, the obvious fact of seeing so much proof of time passing by.

P: How did your experience at Pratt affect the development of your work?

PB: Professors like Linda Francis (adjunct professor, Fine Arts) helped me understand how to cut the bullshit in my work. Listening during other people’s critiques helped me to see the subtle difference between something that works and something that doesn’t. I also learned how not to overpaint something until I kill it.

childhood home. Every object was attached to a memory, but I couldn’t fit them all in my New York City apartment, so I would take a picture of each object and put it in the movie. Watching Mommy is a way of reliving these memories. A picture is worth a thousand words, so I wanted to work in video because it is worth more words.

P: That sense of urgency comes across in many parts of the film—with the speeding up, the layering of elements. What was behind those choices?

ML: These effects were a way to transmit an experience—the layering is a way of loading in information, and going back to the basics of collage and zine making.

P: What challenges did you face encountering the subject matter of the film?

ML: I wanted the film to be perfect. It was difficult to finish the film. I had to premiere it half-finished at Anthology Film Archives in New York City. I didn’t even finish exporting it, and brought my computer there to play it off the editing software. We had to make everyone wait 15 minutes so it would finish rendering. It was such a big deal and so exciting—everyone I knew was there and they didn’t know what to expect. Mommy was completed for the Los Angeles premiere at 356 Mission Road, five minutes before the screening.

P: Throughout your work, are there specific experiences, people, or places that you find yourself revisiting?

ML: Nostalgia is a thing of the past—I am here to create new ideas. But girl power is always a theme in my work, since age one.

P: How did your time at Pratt influence your work?

ML: It was the environment at Pratt that provided room for me to have my voice heard and grow as an artist. Living in New York City gave me the much-needed independence Maggie Lee has come up in her artistic practice chronicling the experience of the instant. When her mother passed away I longed for. I was just so happy to be around the right unexpectedly, Lee turned to video to capture the charged and people, friends, and teachers I could finally relate to. bewildering period that followed, with a return to her childhood home setting the stage for a recollection—a literal gathering together—of her family history. In her film Mommy (Beta Pictures, 2015), Lee traces her mother’s life through home videos, voice mails, found photographs, treasured objects, and an unfinished memoir. Using the cut-and-paste vernacular of zines and early digital media, Lee creates an image-rich biography and an indelible record of her own grief, forging a wholly new story from all that threatens to be lost.

Featured in the Whitney Museum’s exhibition Mirror Cells earlier this year, Mommy was recently acquired by the museum for its permanent collection.

For Maria de Los Angeles, personal narrative often begins with a central image—an iconic depiction of womanhood, the imPRAT TFOLIO: What draws you to personal history as migrant experience, ruptured identity—layered with auxiliary a source? texts alternately abstract, realistic, and mythological. The result MAGGIE LEE: My work has always been diaristic. In a way, is a distinctly personal story rendered from immediate expeit’s what I know best. I am inspired by what’s around me, rience, fragmentary memories, and collective realities. With and through my art, I try to record a feeling or what is rel- her recent sculptural works—paintings cut and shaped into evant or important at the moment. Over time, these art- wearable dresses—these polyvocal narratives further break works become an archive of my personal history. linearity in each garment’s distinct panels and three-dimenP: What led you to start working on Mommy? sionality. A collection of these dresses was exhibited at Front ML: My mother’s death was such a heartbreaking shock. I Art Space in Manhattan last spring, and three of the sculptures always thought she would be there. She passed away when were installed at the Pratt Library this fall.

I was 25 years old. My friend Asher Penn had just started a film production company called Beta Pictures and asked PRAT TFOLIO: What draws you to personal history as a me to work with him. Making the film was a way of processsource? ing everything that had happened. It was cathartic and MARIA DE LOS ANGELES: When you’re a younger artist, guided me in facing this unimaginable loss. you’re trying to find yourself. You think about “who am I, P: How did the video medium serve the story? what kind of work do I make?” I’ve had professors who ML: There was an urgency to clean out my mom’s house, my have encouraged the work to be an investigation of who I

Maggie Lee (B.F.A. Printmaking ’09)

Maria de Los Angeles (B.F.A. Painting ’13)

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STILLS FROM MOMMY, 2012 –2015, BY MAGGIE LEE. © MAGGIE LEE, BETA PICTURES, 2015

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THE READING DESK, 1999, BYÂ AURA ROSENBERG. COURTESY MARTOS GALLERY

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am. So for the last decade or so, I’ve been trying to figure out who that is—what kind of images stayed in my memory, what family moments, what words and tastes and sounds.

P: How does storytelling play into your process?

MDLA: For me, the major narratives are my story of migration and the role of women in my family. Some of my paintings have a major image in them, with other images woven around it. Some elements are extra, they’re mythological, or they’re referencing art history, and some are personal, so it starts to become a soup of images. The way I think about images, and the way I group them together, is much like I imagine one would with poetry. They’re fragments—I think of poetry as fragmentary—and sometimes I put words in them too.

P: What is the significance of the dress form?

MDLA: I was trying to get a portrait of myself done where I didn’t look like Frida Kahlo, whose work I love. I have all these shirts and shawls from Mexico, where I was born, and no matter what I do, when I wear one of those, I feel like a clichéd version of her—and others see it too. So I decided if I couldn’t use my ancestors’ garments because they are so attached to an image of someone else, I would make myself a dress. I thought wearing my own work, maybe I would look like me. I was having a cultural crisis, longing for “what am I?” Am I fully a Mexican? Am I from the States? What does my bicultural self look like? I think what you wear shows a version of who you are. The dress form is a good way to talk about being feminine, being feminist, motherhood, immigration reform, all those things, particularly because the rectangle of the canvas seems so formal. Painting on a rectangle, putting it on the wall, it’s so exclusive. Also, we talk about clothing all the time—it extends beyond fine arts. I hope it lets me link myself to my own culture, and to a history outside of Western art history.

P: How did your experience at Pratt affect the development of your work, in particular your exploration of personal narrative?

MDLA: I had to think about who I was outside of my home back in California—I’m no longer just an immigrant, an undocumented person, I don’t live in Roseland—so I think coming to Pratt was the best thing for me. Also, I didn’t think I was going to go to college, but Pratt truly changed my life. It’s opened doors for me and hopefully for more people—and I’m excited for Pratt to have more diversity and inclusion, and to have conversations and shows that represent this.

family histories. The resulting photograph and essay collection was published as Berliner Kindheit (Berlin Childhood) by Steidl/DAAD in 2002, and after striking up a friendship with Benjamin’s granddaughter a decade ago, Rosenberg embarked on a new phase of this project in film.

PRATTFOLIO: What draws you to personal histories—your own family’s, Walter Benjamin’s—as a source?

AURA ROSENBERG: In 1991, I went to live and work in Berlin for a year with my husband, John Miller, and our daughter, Carmen. I’d been casually shooting photos of Carmen’s kindergarten class. The curator Klaus Biesenbach arranged to show them and titled the exhibition Berlin Childhood, after Walter Benjamin’s memoir. I learned that Benjamin considered Berlin Childhood a collection of “snapshots” of a bourgeois childhood at the turn of the century, and I decided to photograph contemporary equivalents of the places and events Benjamin described.

In this way, I learned that I was living in the midst of Benjamin’s childhood home—my daughter’s playground was across the street from his elementary school. I had no intention of exploring my own family history, however, it became inevitable—my father and his parents and siblings had fled Hitler’s Germany in 1939. When my father visited us in Berlin, he too became a subject of my project. The photos of him with Carmen in some ways reflect his own interrupted childhood.

P: How did storytelling play into your process?

AR: I tried to document Benjamin’s text closely. However, because he wrote using a montage technique, there are often abrupt breaks in the narrative. For this reason, each text produced a diverse group of images that, taken alone, may seem unrelated. I like the idea that a text lay behind them and, in a sense, united them. My film work follows a similar approach.

P: What inspired you to revisit Berlin Childhood in film?

AR: Chantal Benjamin, one of Benjamin’s four granddaughters, had seen my work and wanted to meet. After she had a daughter, Lais, I started filming them, always with Berlin Childhood in the back of my mind. Now, 10 years later, I have a collection of footage I’m starting to edit. By recording Lais growing up, I incorporated real-time documentation into the film.

P: What is the significance of film to this project?

AR: Shooting video has changed my approach n many ways.

For example, anything I encounter in the course of filming can become part of the story. What I’m learning from this is that Benjamin’s texts, deriving from a bleak historical moment and his own dire situation, can shed new light on present experience. For example, while shooting last winter, I attended a party for Syrian refugees settling in Berlin. Their plight overlays Benjamin’s own exile and vividly recalls the recent past.

P: What challenges have you faced in this process?

AR: First of all, the scope of the project is daunting. And Lais is growing up, so there’s a time limit. Also, I’m typically only in Berlin in the summertime.

P: How has your time at Pratt influenced the development of Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s memoir of youth in Berlin—a this project? collection of 42 texts written after the philosopher fled Germany AR: This year, I had a sabbatical. It allowed me to visit Berlin in 1932—Aura Rosenberg set out to create a series of photojust before Christmas for a week. I shot all the footage I graphs related to each of the work’s vignettes. In the process, needed for the text titled “A Christmas Angel.” It was the she discovered uncanny intersections between her everyday first time I could shoot in such a concentrated way. Pratt movements around modern-day Berlin and the childhood has also supported my work on this project with a Faculty experiences Benjamin describes, as well as echoes in their Development Fund grant.

Aura Rosenberg (Adjunct Professor of Photography)

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BLUE DRESS, 2016, BY MARIA DE LOS ANGELES. PHOTOGRAPH BY ADRIANMENDOZAPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

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Activ th Te

For One Pratt Writing Alumna, Stories Are Made to Be Heard

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“It was here, on this campus in the heart of Brooklyn, that I was constantly reminded of Audre Lorde’s mantra ‘my silence won’t protect me.’”

The voice holds revolutionary power.

When Mahogany L. Browne (M.F.A. Writing ’16), a member of Pratt’s inaugural class of graduate writers, first came before an audience to perform her writing, she connected with a way of storytelling that ignited a new relationship with the written word. “I didn’t know I needed poetry until I stepped on stage and watched people watch me break open,” she says.

With a style that shapes narrative from layers of lyric expression, bold statement, gesture, and aural drama, burst from the codified language that alienated her from poetry as a young writer, Browne found a niche in slam. “In 2001, I signed up at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, mistaking it for an open mic,” she says of a pivotal event at Manhattan’s home of slam in the East Village, “and I’ve been hooked ever since.” She went on to refine her work in competitions, coach teams of poet-performers, and eventually direct the Nuyorican’s poetry program and helm its Friday Night Slam series. This cultivation of composition, performance, and community is not only part of an artistic vocation but also a social justice practice—reclaiming authority over one’s story, supporting the stories of others, and challenging the structures that exist to confine or diminish these experiences.

At the center of Browne’s work is a chronicle of the realities of her life as a black woman, mother, and writer in America today, laced through with a call to witness and question the implications of these truths. Last spring, Browne, who was one recipient of the new Stacy Doris Scholarship Fund supported by a grant

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from cross-cultural arts organization the Tamaas Foundation, spearheaded a conference of poets whose work similarly intersected in forms of advocacy.

She brought the Women of the World Poetry Slam—an annual festival and competition that draws writer-activists from around the globe—to the Brooklyn campus, culminating in a sold-out finale in Memorial Hall.

For Browne and her cohort, storytelling has been crucial to enacting change beyond the stage and page. Spurred by the M.F.A. in Writing Program’s unique emphasis on the cultural and political involvement of its students, she and many of her fellow writers participated in the Black Lives Matter teach-ins held at Pratt last year and advocated for equity and inclusion initiatives on campus. Her time at the Institute, she says, “taught me the power of my voice. As a younger student, I may not have felt comfortable speaking with administration because of their positions of power.

Pratt reminded me that students have power too, and a voice. It was here, on this campus in the heart of Brooklyn, that I was constantly reminded of Audre Lorde’s mantra ‘my silence won’t protect me.’”

Browne has worked to assure that voices like Lorde’s remain part of a living narrative of radical voices, voices “who showed me the way to the page is fearless.” As part of her field work project at Pratt (an outside-engagement requirement for second-year M.F.A. Writing candidates), Browne established the Women Writers of Color Reading Room in the Pratt Library, a dedicated space for readers to interact with books and

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other media by women writers of color, a model Browne hopes to help replicate on other college campuses.

Within her own work, the impulse to be part of an ongoing dialogue is just as strong. “I want the work to be able to exist whether I am reading the poems on stage or the reader is experiencing the poem on the page,” she says. In 2015, Browne published the collections Smudge (Button Poetry) and Redbone (Willow Books), and her poetry appeared in the anthology The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of HipHop (Haymarket Books). In May, her work was featured alongside poetry and prose by fellow M.F.A. candidates and graduate Writing Program faculty in the first print publication by The Felt, the program’s literary magazine and press (available at thefelt.org).

Igniting conversations on the stage, page, or on social media through her #Dear Twitter dispatches, Browne’s poetry finds power in engagement. Her advice to writers and performers coming up in their craft is a call for dialogue, and for widening the narrative: “Read everything. Workshop with different communities. Learn hands-on what other writers are doing. It will stretch your growth as an artist exponentially.”

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Bright P assages Across Genres and Disciplines, P of Personal, Social, and Mythic R

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Delicious Foods by James Hannaham, Associate Professor of Graduate Writing A story told from the margins of American life in three distinct voices —a mother trapped in the clutches of modern-day slave labor and drug addiction after the murder of her husband, her son determined to free himself from a cycle of exploitation, and anthro­pomorphized crack-cocaine itself—Hannaham’s second novel, winner of the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award, “explore[s] the thorny nexus of systemic racism and the personal destruction that often hounds the hopeless” (Ted Genoways, New York Times Book Review).

Hell Figures by E. Tracy Grinnell, Visiting Assistant Professor of Undergraduate and Graduate Writing The mythologized histories of Helen of Troy, Antigone, Cassandra, Sappho, and other classical female figures form the chorus of this poetic meditation on loss of identity in times of war. Grinnell writes, “As a hostage of fate, Helen has no agency, can only ever be a projection, never herself. Her vantage point is a vanishing point. We are left holding the projections, so devast­atingly our own.”

Everyone… by Christopher Silas Neal, Visiting Instructor of Undergraduate Communications Design A lyrical flight through the array of human emotions as experi­enced by a young boy, illustrator Neal’s first children’s book as author is, as he says, “about the cerebral journey we take when left alone with our thoughts.”

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt, Professor of Undergraduate and Graduate Writing Hunt’s third novel crosses bound­ aries of fantasy and realism in its tale of ghosts, cults, con men, meteor strikes, and motherhood, unfolding over an uncertain journey through the remote reaches of New York. “I wrote Mr. Splitfoot as an argument between the faithful and the profane,” says Hunt. “I don’t want mysteries to be solved—I want to confirm that mystery never ends.”

Clean and White by Carl Zimring, Associate Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies Excavating journalistic records, liter­ature, and other historical sources, Clean and White traces social perceptions of waste and hygiene, and the relationship between refuse and race in America. From prevailing narratives of purity to the stories of waste workers, Zimring writes, “This book presents a history of environmental racism in the United States, using the lens of dirt.”

They and We Will Get into Trouble for This by Anna Moschovakis, Adjunct Associate Professor of Graduate Writing Moschovakis’s third poetry collec­ tion crosses languages, liter­atures, and forms to create a multilayered chronicle of self-appraisal, human connection, and detach­ment, and the slippery, dis­orienting struggle of trans­ lation. “Its parts decidedly inter­textual and polyglot,” writes poet Mónica de la Torre of the book, “think of it as a turbulence machine.”

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Fragile City by Tülay Atak, Visiting Associate Professor of Undergraduate Architecture Atak’s collaborative text revisits the 1911 Voyage d’Orient of architect Charles-Edouard Jenneret (who had yet to rechristen himself Le Corbusier) and art historian August Klipstein through photographs, essays, and conversations with contemporary artists, activists, architects, and other local experts working in the cities visited during the pair’s historic journey.

The book aims, as the authors write, “to weave an understanding of the urban, where one form may relate to another in a multiplicity of ways, across spaces and times, texts and images, physical bodies present in the here and now.”

The Hermit by Lucy Ives, Visiting Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Writing Through fragments, arguments, dialogues, poems, and images, a close study of the writer’s uneasy engage­ ment with the world takes shape.

On the title of this thought cata­log, Ives writes, “Strangely, the hermit I have in mind is most closely or ac­cur­ ately figured by the character Nancy Thompson, as portrayed by actor Heather Langenkamp, in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Why is Nancy a hermit?

Because she is entirely isolated from others, though she is by no means distant from them.”

Bright Passages

Credits: From Delicious Foods: A Novel

by James Hannaham. Copyright © 2016 by James Hannaham.

Used by permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.

Everyone by Christopher Silas Neal. Copyright © 2016

by Christopher Silas Neal.

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA. Clean and White by Carl Zimring, 2016. Care of NYU Press.

Hell Figures by E. Tracy Grinnell, 2016. Reprinted with permission of Nightboat Books.

From Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt. Copyright © 2016 by Samantha Hunt. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

All rights reserved.

This excerpt from “Paradise (Film Two)” is used by permission from They and We Will Get into Trouble for This (Coffee House Press, 2016). Copyright © 2016

by Anna Moschovakis.

Fragile City by Tülay Atak, David Bergé, and Elke Krasny, 2016.

Reprinted with permission of MER. Paper Kunsthalle.

The Hermit by Lucy Ives.

Copyright © 2016 Lucy Ives.

Cover image © Iwajla Klinke, Untitled, from the series Bescherkinder, 2010. Reprinted with permission of The Song Cave. www.the-song-cave.com.

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News

Alumni Return to Brooklyn Campus Pratt hosted the 2016 Alumni Day and Reunion in September with a refreshed program of campus and neighborhood tours, networking sessions, open studios, film screenings, readings, and a juried exhibition curated by alumni from the School of Art. The day also included talks on technology and culture by faculty members Sara Devine (School of Info­r­mation) and Rebecca Pailes-Friedman (adjunct associate professor of industrial design and fashion, B.F.A. Fashion ’85, M.I.D. ’02). The day concluded with the fall season premiere of Pratt Presents public programs, “A Creative Conversation with Kadir Nelson (B.F.A. Com­muni­cations Design ’96),” followed by a sunset barbecue in the Rose Garden with a toast to the 50th reunion class of 1966.

School of Information Announces New Digital Degrees The School of Information introduces two new Master of Science programs this fall, the M.S. in Information Exper­ience Design and the M.S. in Data Analytics and Visualization. The two new programs provide skills for creative professionals to secure positions at cultural institutions and continue to enhance the curriculum following the launch of the M.S. in Museums and Digital Culture, introduced in the fall of 2015.

Commencement Notes Nearly 1,300 graduates crossed the stage of Radio City Music Hall at Pratt’s 127th Commencement in May. Honorary degrees were awarded to Kay WalkingStick (M.F.A. ’75)(Doctor of Fine Arts); Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown director

Prattfolio

of the Whitney Museum of American Art (Doctor of Humane Letters); and painter and Pratt alumnus Terry Winters (B.F.A. ’71) (Doctor of Fine Arts). Jason Vigneri-Beane, adjunct associate professor of graduate architecture and urban design within the School of Architecture, received Pratt’s Disting­uished Teacher Award 2016–2017, with a medal designed by Julian Anderson (B.Arch. ’16).

for his novel, Delicious Foods (Little, Brown, 2015).

Professor of Undergraduate Arch­ itecture Haresh Lalvani (M.S. ’72) was awarded the 2016 Cosmic Fishing Award for design science, also known as the E.J. Applewhite Award, presented by the Synergetics Collaborative (SNEC) and the SNEC-Rhode Island School of Design Symposium.

Nadya Nenadich, academic coordi New Leadership for nator for Historic Preservation, received Inclusion Initiatives the 2016 James Marston Fitch Mid-Career Jazmin Peralta has been named Assistant Fellowship awarded by the Trustees of Director of Special Projects for Equity the Fitch Foundation. and Inclusion, a new position within the Theodore Prudon, visiting professor Division of Student Affairs, where she will in the Graduate Center for Planning and be responsible for providing leader­ship the Environment, received a 2016 Arts and and expertise while acting as an advocate Letters Award in Architecture from the for issues of diversity and social justice American Academy of Arts and Letters. within the Pratt community.

Patrick Webb, tenured professor in the Foundation Art Department, was awarded a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow­ Faculty Receive Major Industry Awards ship by the John Simon Guggenheim Stephanie Bayard, adjunct assistant Memorial Foundation. pro­fessor of graduate architecture and urban design, with her firm Atelier Arch­ Linda Celentano Receives itecture 64, received awards from the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award American Institute of Architects Brooklyn Alumna and Adjunct Associate Professor and Queens chapters and the Society of Linda Celentano (B.F.A. Industrial Design ’80) was presented with the American Registered Architects.

A Brooklyn Museum team co-led by Rowena Reed Kostellow Award for her Sara Devine, visiting assistant professor work in the industrial design profession. in the School of Information and manager Celentano was presented the award, a of audience engagement and inter­­pretive 3-D model created by Madeleine Knox materials at the Brooklyn Museum, won (B.I.D. ’17), at an event benefiting the two MUSE awards from the American Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund, estabAlliance of Museums for the ASK lished in 1988 to support scholarships Brooklyn Museum inter­active app. and communicate the philosophy of its James Hannaham, associate profes- namesake, one of the founders of Pratt’s sor of graduate writing in Pratt’s School Industrial Design Department. of Liberal Arts and Sci­ences, is the 2016 winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award

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“Take some risks to find an interesting, challenging, perhaps even difficult profession. Take risks to find an interesting life partner who can talk about your profession with curiosity and affection.. . . It is the work that will preserve and inspire you.”

—Kay WalkingStick (M.F.A. ’75), 2016 Commencement Speaker

Students and alumni in the Bruce M. Newman ’53 Amphitheatre during the Alumni Readings on 2016 Alumni Day

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1 Textile, Technology and Design: From Interior Space to Outer Space Deborah Schneiderman, Professor of Interior Design, and Alexa Griffith Winton, Visiting Associate Professor of Interior Design $112, hardcover $34.95, paperback Textile, Technology and Design explores the role of the interior at the inter­section of design and tech­nology, examining the way in which textiles and tech­nology inform each other.

Contributors include Anca Lasc, assistant professor, history of art and design, and Sarah Strauss, visiting associate professor of interior design.

Available at bloomsbury.com.

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2 Annie Duffel Shana Luther (B.F.A. Fashion Design ’99) $450 Shana Luther’s Annie Duffel exemplifies the handbag and leather goods designer’s classic-yet-modern aesthet­ ic. Made in New York City from top-grain black leather, the versatile bag can be worn over the shoulder or cross-body with the detachable strap and fea­tures several handy exterior and inter­ior pockets. Avail­able at shanaluther.com.

Fall 2016

3 Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers Bob Eckstein (B.F.A. Communications Design ’85) $22 In his new book, New Yorker cartoonist Bob Eckstein collects vibrant portraits of 75 beloved bookstores around the world. Eckstein’s color illustrations are paired with stories, an­ec­­dotes, and confes­ sions featuring artists, writers, and other cultural luminaries who have passed through the aisles and found inspiration in these iconic shops. Available at penguinrandomhouse.com.

4 Dish Bench Chelsea Minola (B.F.A. Interior Design ’02) $2,875 A version of Grain’s Dish table series, this bench features a sloping underbelly and flat top that could serve as a coffee table. Each piece is made to order, produced in the Pacific Northwest from FSC-certified solid American ash. Customized sizes and finishes are available.

Available at graindesign.com.

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Pratt Programs Rank Among Top in the Nation

Work by Jihyun Kim (B.F.A. Fashion Design ’16)

Undergraduate Architecture: Design­ Intelligence ranked Pratt #8 among U.S. undergraduate architecture programs.

Digital Arts: Animation Career Review ranked Pratt #8 on its list of top U.S. animation schools. Pratt was ranked #7 among private schools and colleges, and #3 on the East Coast.

Film/Video: USA Today ranked Pratt #5 on its “10 Best U.S. Schools for Pursuing a Film Degree” list, and Variety named the film program one of the best in the country in its “Entertainment Education 2016: The Best Showbiz Programs” roundup.

Interior Design: DesignIntelligence ranked Pratt #1 (graduate) and #2 (under­graduate) among U.S. interior design programs.

Black Alumni of Pratt Honors Innovators and ComD Scholars The Black Alumni of Pratt (BAP) hosted its “Celebration of the Creative Spirit” Scholarship Benefit Gala at the Four Seasons Restaurant in Manhattan in May. This year’s Creative Spirit Award recipients were Tristan Walker, founder and chief executive officer of Walker & Company Brands, and Andrea and Robin McBride, cofounders of McBride Global Enterprises. Also recognized were the recipients of the 2016 Marcio Moreira Multicultural Scholarship and McCann Internship, sponsored by global

marketing firm McCann Worldgroup and awarded to juniors in communications design. The winners were Maria Alma Guede Pina, Beatriz Hernandez, and Jenny Yoo. The agency has hired all three of last year’s winners: Antonia Orol-Berlinger, Jordan Moss, and Ginnelle Sparkman.

Fashion Students Present AMAZIN’, Pratt’s 117th Runway Show Eighteen graduating senior fashion students displayed their thesis collections at the 2016 Pratt Institute Fashion Show + Cocktail Benefit honoring Harold Koda, former curator-in-charge at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Koda received the Pratt Fashion Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by Simon Doonan, Barneys New York creative ambassador-at-large.

Jihyun Kim (B.F.A. Fashion Design ’16) was recognized with the “Liz Claiborne Award – Concept to Product,” a $25,000 prize funded by the Liz Claiborne & Art Ortenberg Foundation to support creative entrepreneurship. Isabel Hall (B.F.A. Fashion Design ’16) also received recognition for her thesis collection post-event, when pop singer Rihanna wore one of Hall’s thesis garments in a music video released in June.

Santander Universities, a division of Santander Bank, was the platinum sponsor of the Pratt Institute Fashion Show + Cocktail Benefit.

Savannah Magruder (B.F.A. Film ’16), Spectrum

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Faculty and Staff Moves Foundation Professor William Hochhausen —better known as Bill—has retired.

His initial appointment to the Institute was in 1972.

Paul McDonough, adjunct associate professor of photography, retired after more than 40 years of teaching at Pratt.

Donna Moran, who has served the Fine Arts Department in a number of high-level positions at Pratt Institute, has been appointed dean of the School of Art and Design at Pratt’s Utica campus in upstate New York, Munson-WilliamsProctor Arts Institute (PrattMWP).

Eve Baron became chair of the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment within the School of Architecture, succeeding John Shapiro, who stepped down to serve as faculty.

Maria Damon stepped down as chair of Humanities and Media Studies to join the faculty.

David Erdman became chair of Grad­ uate Architecture and Urban Design, succeeding William MacDonald, who stepped down in July to serve as faculty.

Macarena Gómez-Barris became chair of the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the start of the fall 2016 semester. She succeeded Chair Gregg Horowitz, who stepped down to join the faculty.

Alison Snyder joined the Institute as chair of Interior Design in August.

In the Student Affairs Division, Elisabeth Sullivan joined Pratt as the Director of the Learning Access Center, replacing Mai McDonald Graves, who

retired earlier this year after 24 years at the Institute. Esmilda Abreu will serve as the Interim Director of Special Projects and Title IX Coordinator. She is replacing Grace Kendall, who left Pratt in August after a decade of service.

Tom Nawabi has joined Pratt Institute as controller, replacing Sylvia Acuesta, who retired at the end of December 2015.

Ursula Vesala was appointed to the position of Executive Director, Campaign and Major Gifts.

NYCxDESIGN Showcases Student, Faculty, and Alumni Work In May, Pratt participated in NYCxDESIGN, New York City’s official citywide cele­ bration of design, through a variety of exhibitions in venues around the city.

Highlights of NYCxDESIGN included Pratt Design 2016 on the Brooklyn campus; BKLYN DESIGNS, featuring work of students and alumni and a Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator showcase; and the International Con­ temp­orary Furniture Fair, high­lighting work by students and graduates from Pratt’s Industrial Design Department in an exhibition titled Post-Digital. To­ gether these events showcased work by approximately 400 students, faculty, and alumni.

Space Module Design Shown on Intrepid Pratt architecture and industrial design students presented a full-scale proto­ type of their Mars Habitat, designed in

a partnership with NASA, at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in July. For an interdisciplinary studio class led

by Adjunct Assistant Professor of Arch­ itecture Michael Morris and Adjunct Associate Professor of Industrial Design Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, the undergraduate and grad­u ate stu­d ents designed the module for the eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) 2016 Academic Inno­ vation Challenge, a NASA collab­oration with academic institutions.

DIFFA Dining by Design Students from the Interior Design Department created an installation for Dining by Design 2016, an annual event held by the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) in March. Jon Otis, professor of interior design, served as faculty lead, and Regis Paen and Ilona Parkansky, both visiting assistant pro­ fessors of interior design, were coinstructors. The team members were Emlyn Hilson, Raleene Cabrera, Regina Macaraeg, and Ana Vasquez, all of whom received an M.S. in Interior Design last spring. The team’s concept, “Trans­ cending Darkness,” was inspired by a quote from Desmond Tutu, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.”

Pratt Center Receives CitiGroup Grant, Boosts Made in NYC Initiative The Pratt Center for Community Dev­ elop­ment has been awarded a $500,000 Citi Foundation Community Progress Makers Fund grant in recognition of its

Pratt Design 2016. Photograph by Fiona Szende (B.F.A. Photography ’15)

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5 Los Angeles Manhole Cover Coasters Kevork A. Cholakian (B.F.A. Communications Design ’77) $240 (set of four) Los Angeles-based designer Kevork A. Cholakian created these coasters to memor­ialize unique and playful emblems of city culture in miniature.

Each coaster is hand patinated, evoking the covers as they appear in the wild. Available at kacstudios.com.

News

6 Denim Ojami Cushion Stevenson Aung (M.I.D. ’11) $225

7 Fade Task Light Bret Recor (M.I.D. ’01) $250

8 SQR Box Ashira Israel (B.Arch. ’11) from $45

Designed by Nalata Nalata, Stevenson Aung’s East Village design label and boutique, this denim Ojami pillow takes its four-paneled figure from traditional Japanese bean bags.

The cushion is handmade in Kyoto in col­lab­oration with Takaokaya, a nearly century-old futon and zabuton (floor cushion) maker, using American denim.

Available at nalatanalata.com.

The Fade Task Light by Box Clever is designed for agility and utility. Light shifts from cool to warm, dim to bright, and a flexible arm with 270-degree rotation makes this a dynamic tool for any workspace. Fade Studio and Box Clever are San Francisco–based design agencies, both cofounded

by Bret Recor. Available at fadestudio.com.

This solid-cast concrete box with wood lid by Ashira Israel’s Brooklyn studio, IN.SEK DESIGN, is made to store treasured objects. Fabricated from natural materials, each vessel is unique.

The hand-sanded lid is available in a variety of woods, and marbleized and color versions of the base are also offered.

Available at insekdesign.com.

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“Art only happens when you get that connection with the viewer.”

—Vik Muniz, who joined Surface editor-in-chief Spencer Bailey for a President’s Lecture Series conversation on Muniz’s life and socially conscious work in May

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groundbreaking work in the intersections of community development and forward-thinking research and policy.

The Pratt Center will use the funding to develop new strategies to advance more inclusive, equitable growth in the creative economy.

The Pratt Center has also received a second year of funding from the New York City Council for its Made in NYC initiative, launched in 2001 to help New York City manufacturers thrive and inspire job growth. The funding supports a public-facing ad and social media campaign, created by eyeball, an awardwinning advertising agency founded by Limore Shur (B.F.A. Illustration-ComD ’91), as well as technical assistance led by Pratt faculty and students to increase the marketing and design capacity of individual companies.

Pratt Creates Paths to Technology Careers Pratt is participating in the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline, an initiative of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration devoted to working with public and private partners to define employer needs, develop and test training and education solu­ tions to meet those needs, and scale solu­t ions that work throughout the city’s largest systems in order to deliver home­grown talent for 21st-century jobs.

As a member of the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline’s Academic Council, the Institute has committed to ensuring the alignment of computer science education and tech workforce needs across the five boroughs.

Soccer Returns to Campus For the first time since the early 2000s, Pratt Institute Athletics will field men’s and women’s intercollegiate soccer teams, beginning in the fall 2016 semester. This addition means Pratt will offer students 14 athletic programs, including men’s and women’s basketball, cross country, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, and volleyball.

Winners of Scholastic Art and Writing Program Awards Featured at Pratt Manhattan Gallery In June, Pratt Manhattan Gallery hosted Art.Write.Now, an exhibition of visual artwork and writing by students in grades 7 to 12 who are national winners of the Scholastic Art and Writing program. Founded in 1923, the program has a history of supporting promising young American artists, including notable Pratt alumni Robert Redford and Kay WalkingStick.

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Pratt Presents Inspired Dialogues This spring, Pratt Presents and the School of Architecture featured the event “Food, Culture, and Beyond,” with Asako Iwama, artist, cook, and former leader of the kitchen team at Studio Olafur Eliasson; Mark Ladner, exec­­utive chef at the Michelin star–rated Del Posto; and Charlotte Birnbaum, writer and culinary historian, moderated by Sanford Kwinter, architectural theor­ist and professor of undergraduate architecture.

Pratt hosted the Brooklyn advance screening of the HBO documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, a definitive portrait of artist and Pratt alumnus Robert Mapplethorpe, co­ presented with the Photography Depart­ ment and the Film/Video Department, and featuring a talk with the film’s directors, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato.

Pratt copresented the talk “Branded Design” with Areaware and WantedDesign, with designer and alumnus Harry Allen (M.I.D. ’95); alumni Chen Chen (B.I.D. ’07) and Kai Williams (B.I.D. ’06), of the eponymous design studio; and Lisa Smith, creative director of Areaware, moderated by Anita Cooney, dean of the School of Design.

Pratt Mourns Treasured Faculty David Lee Brown, professor of foundation art, passed away on August 12. A sculptor with a passion for design, architecture, and material, Brown began working at Pratt in September 1965. He was a full professor and received tenure in September 2002. For more than 40 years, he presented fundamental concepts in compelling and challenging ways with a dedication to preparing his students for their artistic futures.

Gihyun Cho, adjunct professor of industrial design, passed away on June 22. Cho, an industrial design educator, writer, and professional who held seven U.S. patents, taught in the Industrial Design Department for 20 years, including both undergraduate and graduate drawing and studio courses, and was known by students and colleagues as a beloved professor and friend.

Estelle M. Horowitz, former pro­ fessor of economics and founding pres­ ident of the Institute’s teacher’s union, passed away on May 13 at the age of 96.

Horowitz joined Pratt’s faculty in September 1957 as an adjunct associate professor, received a Certificate of Continuous Employment (CCE) in the early 1970s, retired in June 1991, and returned to the Institute in the 1990s as a visiting associate professor. A trail­

blazer devoted to educators’ rights, she unionized the school’s faculty, ensured tenure for part-timers, and negotiated the Institute’s first collective bargaining agreement.

Jan Uretsky, visiting instructor of under­graduate communications design, died on March 10. Uretsky taught graphic design at Pratt beginning in 1999, and he was widely admired by his students for his passion, wit, and encyclopedic know­ ledge of art and design.

In Memoriam Mark Wall Bennett (B.F.A. Art Education ’76) Marie E. Clarke (Certificate, Costume Design ’48) Ryan A. Cunningham (M.S. City and Regional Planning ’11) Edwin Dauber (B.Arch. ’48) Marilyn Hansen (B.S. Food Science and Management ’55) Vincent C. Hayman (Textile Design) Hanna Hombordy (B.F.A. Communications Design ’84) Dorothy Kishibay (Certificate, Industrial Design ’48) Ralph D. Olson (Certificate, Leather and Tanning Technology ’49) Ralph Ramstad (Certificate, Illustration ’41) Anabel M. Reif (Bachelor of Library and Information Science ’47) Barbara J. (McGee) Simon (B.F.A. Graphic Arts ’66)

What’s new in your story?

Submit your latest chapter to Class Notes, now online at www. pratt.edu/alumni/class-notes.

Email announcements about recent exhibitions, publications, product launches, promotions, awards, and other creative and professional achievements to classnotes@pratt.edu.

Submissions should be 100 words or less and will be edited for length, clarity, and style. Please include your full name, degree/ program, and graduation year.

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Spotlight

Dr. Schutte to Step Down as Pratt President

After more than two decades of leadership as Pratt’s 11th president, Dr. Thomas F. Schutte announced in May that he plans to step down as president following the end of the 2016–2017 academic year.

He will be named president emeritus on July 1, 2017. The Board of Trustees has formed a committee composed of representatives of the Institute’s key constituencies to conduct a global search for Dr. Schutte’s successor.

During Dr. Schutte’s 23 years at the helm, he has guided the Institute through a series of successful organizational, fiscal, and academic initiatives that have launched Pratt into the top echelons of art and design colleges worldwide. After joining Pratt in 1993, following a decade of acclaimed service as president of the Rhode Island School of Design, Dr. Schutte presided over the renewal of the Institute’s Brooklyn campus, including the construction of five academic build­ ings and strategic acquisitions of property in the borough, as well as the purchase and renovation of Pratt’s campus on 14th Street in Manhattan.

“Tom Schutte is one of Pratt’s most transformative leaders,” said Mike Pratt, vice chair of the Board of Trustees and a descendant of founder Charles Pratt.

Spotlight

“The entire Pratt community—board members, faculty, staff, students, and alumni—are very much in Tom’s debt for the leadership he has provided over the past 23 years.”

“Because of Tom’s dedication, perseverance, and commitment to excellence, Pratt is recognized as a leader in art and design education, as evidenced by the record number of student applications the Institute receives each year, by the artistic and scholarly renown of its faculty, and by the superlative achieve­ ments of its alumni,” said Bruce Gitlin, chair of the Board of Trustees. “The Schutte era will be remembered for a deep commitment to academic excellence, diversity, sustainability and fiscal stability, and greater impact within the borough of Brooklyn, across the nation, and around the world.”

Progress updates on the presidential search will be available at www.pratt.edu/ presidential-search. The Presidential Search Committee encourages the engage­ment of the Pratt community in the search process; questions and comments may be sent to prattpresidentialsearch@ pratt.edu.

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Invest in the creative Pratt talent of today (and forgo federal income tax on your IRA distribution). ongress has extended the IRA Charitable C Rollover and made it permanent. If you are age 70½ or older, you can transfer up to $100,000 from your IRA account directly to the Pratt program of your choice. When you make a gift from your IRA, you do not need to report the distribution as income.

These gifts also qualify for your required mini­mum distribution, which can lower your income and taxes.

I f you typically make a gift to Pratt with funds from your IRA required minimum distribution, consider transferring those funds directly from your IRA account to the Institute. You’ll save on your taxes and provide the Institute with valuable resources to benefit the Pratt students of today. o learn more about how the IRA Charitable T Rollover can benefit you and the Institute, contact Drew Babitts, director of planned giving and major gifts, at 718.399.4296 or dbabitts@pratt.edu.

Alvaro Ceballos (B.F.A. ’17) and Hayden Hoyt (B.F.A. ’15) in the new Pratt Film/Video Building Sound Studio

You did it! Thanks to all of you, The Fund for Pratt reached a historic high in 2016.

Thanks for being the difference! Let’s do it again this academic year.

Last fiscal year, contributions from thousands of alumni, parents, faculty, staff, and friends helped raise significant funds to support the transformative Pratt educational experience. Gifts from more than 2,000 donors helped us reach our goal for The Fund for Pratt. From ensuring that every Pratt student receives cutting-edge education that fosters intellectual and creative growth to attracting and retaining the practitioner-educators who make up the stellar Pratt faculty, your gift to The Fund for Pratt truly does transform Pratt.

Watch your mailbox for more information on how you can help transform Pratt.

To make your transformative gift today, visit www.pratt.edu/give or contact Melissa Kelly, senior annual giving officer, at mkelly7@pratt.edu or 718.687.5693.

Note: Donor names on this page are just some of the many who contributed to The Fund for Pratt in FY2016. For a comprehensive list of FY2016 donors to Pratt, visit www.pratt.edu/pratt-giving/ make-an-impact/honor-roll.

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What is the story of the future?

In each issue of Prattfolio, we will publish a new creative prompt along with a space to devise your response, should you choose to work with this constraint. We invite you to respond—in image or text—on social media, email, or by mail. In the issue that follows, we will feature a selection from your submissions.

How to participate:

Email prattfolio@pratt.edu

Mail to Prattfolio Editor Pratt Institute Institutional Advancement 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205

Post on social media using #storyofthefuture and tag @prattinstitute

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Save the Date Thursday, May 4, 2017 2017 Pratt Institute Fashion Show Honoring fashion icons and featuring collections by the Department of Fashion class of 2017 Spring Studios New York City www.pratt.edu/ fashionshow Image: Work by Kristin Mallison (B.F.A. Fashion Design ’16)

Pratt Institute Institutional Advancement 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205

About the cover Storytelling is everywhere at Pratt. In the Pratt Library, where the cover photograph was made for this issue, narratives emanate from the shelves—including the fixtures themselves, part of the library’s historic Tiffany interiors.