Prattfolio Fall/Winter 2019

Pratt folio

Fall/ Winter 2019

The Magazine of Pratt Institute

In quiry

Features

8 HABITAT FOR THE BEES Architect and Pratt Professor Ariane Lourie Harrison Explores the Possibilities of Post-Human Architecture for Native Pollinators 18 RESEARCH ACCELERATES Pratt Fosters an Ecosystem of Investigation 24 WHAT QUESTION CAN YOU NOT STOP THINKING ABOUT? Pratt Students Share the Sparks of Their Inquiry Departments

1 IN CONVERSATION WITH THE PRESIDENT 2 PRACTICE A visit to the site of RETI BlueCity Lab with Gita Nandan and Zehra Kuz

Prattfolio, the magazine of Pratt Institute, is published by Pratt Communications and Marketing. ©2019 Pratt Institute 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205 prattfolio@pratt.edu www.pratt.edu/alumni Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: @prattalumni; @prattinstitute

Vice President of Communications and Marketing Jim Kempster Senior Editor Jean Hartig Director of Creative Services David Frisco Graphic Designers Marcela Albuquerque Nir Bitton Dan Romanoski Contributing Designer Carter Gekiere ’20

4 CRIT A conversation with Industrial Design professor Karol Murlak and Danielle Begnaud, MID ’20 6 SOLVED Alumna Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya blends science and design to reveal connections within the natural world 36 NEWS Recent updates from campus and beyond 39 NEW AND NOTEWORTHY 43 CLASS NOTES 55 SPOTLIGHT Celebrating the 2019 Alumni Achievement Award Winners

Copy Editor Brandhi Williamson Staff Contributors Marion Hammon Allison Meier Jolene Travis Editorial Assistant Lexi Anderson ’21 Project Management Erica Dagley Galea Stephanie Greenberg Charlotte Savidge Assistant Director, Traffic and Production David Dupont

Vice President for Institutional Advancement Daphne Halpern For address changes and obituary notices, please contact Alumni Engagement at alumni@pratt.edu or 718.399.4447.

A Shared Language of Inquiry The most challenging questions of today demand creative and critical exploration—modes of inquiry Pratt faculty, students, and alumni have engaged with throughout the Institute’s history. As the fall semester kicked off, and the energy around emerging and ongoing investigations intensi­ fied, I spoke with Allison Druin, Associate Provost for Research and Strategic Partnerships, and Deborah Schneiderman, Professor of Interior Design and the recipient of the inaugural Research Recognition Award, about how research is mani­ festing at Pratt and helping to shape our collective future.

— Frances Bronet, President FRANCES BRONET: Before Pratt, much of my background had been in Research I institutions, both as a student and as a faculty member in at least five different universities. Different models of inquiry were part of the pedagogy as well as part of the research enterprise. I find it fascinating that people don’t think about art and design schools as being cauldrons for in­ quiry—but this is the very place where investigations are born.

ALLISON DRUIN: I also grew up, from an assistant professor to an administrator, in a Research I university. I stayed in one place, University of Maryland, but had many different roles leading research. My last role there was chief futurist. My job was not to predict the future, but to prepare people for the fu­ ture, helping them think about where their research could go, imagine the possibilities. It’s that work that I bring, in a sense, to Pratt.

DEBORAH SCHNEIDERMAN: I also studied at a Research I institution, Cornell University, in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, which is heavily engaged in re­ search. Before coming to Pratt, I had established a research base as an assistant professor at Arizona State University, also a Research I institution, where I received critical mentoring to establish a model of integrated creative and traditional scholar­ ship, bringing praxis and research together within the realm of design. I’ve been proud to continue my work in a more ex­ pansive manner here at Pratt, and also work with colleagues to help them develop their research.

FB: At Pratt, we sit in an exciting liminal place between re­ search domains—history/theory and technical/scientific—but even more significantly, we occupy the domain that asks what is it to be creative?

AD: The kind of inquiry we take part in happens in three areas: creating the innovative artifact, developing the innovative design process, and then observing the impact of what our artifacts or processes have on the greater community and the educational community.

DS: I have employed a triangulated approach to my research.

I have worked within the traditional trajectory of scholarship generating theoretical and historical research that manifests in an expanded body of knowledge for interior design. I also Continue reading on page 56.

In Conversation with the President

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From the site of RETI BlueCity Lab, with Gita Nandan, Visiting Associate Professor, Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and Zehra Kuz, Adjunct Professor CCE, Undergraduate Architecture Red Hook, Brooklyn Prattfolio

How can waterfront communi­ties withstand shifts in their environ­ ment brought on by a changing climate, and even flourish as the world transforms?

Two Pratt professors are working with the RETI Center, a resil­ience education organi­ zation in Red Hook, to create a model for what resilience and adaptability could look like, “putting a lens, for all of New York City, on coastal climate change issues.”

Fall/Winter 2019

Professors Gita Nandan, prin­ cipal of multidisciplinary design firm thread collective, and Zehra Kuz, founder of Oasis Design Lab, are in the design phase for RETI BlueCity Lab, a first-of-itskind climate-­research vessel to be sited off Columbia Street Pier in the protected waters of GBX Gowanus Bay Terminal, owned by concrete producer John Quadrozzi Jr. Aiming to be a sustain­able, closed-­loop system, ver­­sions of the design feature elements

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Photo by Daniel Terna

Practice

Read more about the lab at www.pratt.edu/practice.

such as a solar skin to generate power, rainwater harvesting from the inverted roof, and floating gardens that break down contami­ nants in the water. The prototype aims to be flexible and will invite modifications by others looking to explore resilience technolo­ gies. Every discipline will have a seat at the table, from archi­ tects and planners to biologists and industrialists.

For Nandan and Kuz, involving industry is central to the work,

Practice

with the potential to “soften Another goal is to engage the edge” of industrial water­ the community with the water, fronts and push the economic with input from residents on conversation—RETI is rethinking programming. Creating access the manufacturing process to the water through RETI Lab around tools for resilience, cre­ could help residents, Nandan says, ating green-blue-collar jobs, and “to not be scared by the prospect training local residents to drive of climate change but activated production in the resilience econ­ to do something, to adapt.” omy. “Economic development For six semesters at Pratt, is in the back of our minds,” Kuz Kuz and Nandan have brought says. “How can we do something their interdisciplinary, commu­ productive here that also elevates nity-centered approach to the community?” students in the Delta Cities

Coastal Resiliency Studio.

Undergraduate and graduate Pratt students, together, have the opportunity to work on clientbased resilience projects, gain exposure to working with local organizations, and hear the real concerns of people affected by environmental changes, cultivating students’ sense of social responsibility and inviting them to start their investiga­tions from the perspective of overall impact.

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HURRAH! is an interactive musical installation inspired by a commission from the Polish Cultural Institute and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, DC, to commemorate 100 years of diplomatic relations be­ tween Poland and America. It debuted at the 2019 Design Pavilion in Times Square during NYCxDESIGN, the city’s annual design festival, held in May. Design team members included Karol Murlak, the Pratt faculty author of the project; designer Marzena Krupa, who initiated it; graduate industrial design student Danielle Begnaud; and Kasia Michnowska, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland. Murlak and Begnaud discussed HURRAH! as it transitioned to a second phase in DC, where it will be on view—and open for play—until September 2020.

DANIELLE BEGNAUD: The project has a few themes, but something that kept coming up was music, how it strongly relates to Polish culture, but also how it can bond people and create joy.

KAROL MURLAK: The key word is joy.

The diplomatic relationship [this cele­ brates] relates to the everyday life of Polish people in America, so we felt that it needed to be very close to people.

We looked at how people celebrate anniversaries in their everyday life, and it was clear that in Poland, and in America, when we celebrate anniver­ saries, we celebrate through singing and through music. Joy, happiness, and celebration equals music and sound.

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Karol Murlak, Associate Professor of Industrial Design

Danielle Begnaud, MID ’20

DB: We came up with what we would love the project to look like and sound like based on a complete lack of knowledge of music. The iterations were figuring out how to make different notes [to play the Polish celebratory song “Sto Lat”], and shaping the structure based on information we were finding out as we went along.

DB: One of the things we observed— we tried so hard to control the situation so that everyone would play the song the same and it would come out like a music box. We put stickers on the ground, told you what to do with your hands, showed you where to hit each tube, what order to hit the tubes in, how far apart each one should be in time. But something I observed is people are just going to play it however they want. Regardless of our motives, they were experiencing joy and just kind of letting loose to do their own version of the song.

KM: Sound was our main medium. This is a three-dimensional installation, but the thing we wanted people to remem­ ber was the music, not the form. At the same time, we as designers are trained to satisfy human eyes, really, not so much ears. It was actually quite excit­ ing to have this idea that we all loved, and our main struggle was to find a way to make it feasible, which is a big part of design work anyway. We spent a lot of hours in the workshop of our fabri­ cator at Brooklyn Stainless Steel—he became one of our experts.

Hannah Fink, MID ’20, also lent her expertise as a metalworker, and Alice Hixon Kirk, MID ’19, consulted on the project as a trained musician. Part of the expertise Begnaud brought was her experience designing for play and fun.

KM: This project is part of Design Clinic (read more on page 23). The idea be­ hind Design Clinic, when Constantin Boym [Chair of Industrial Design] was creating it, was that it would be a very different way of educating students, exposing them to real-life projects and real-life situations. This is the main takeaway that I hoped this project would give.

DB: It helped me realize that projects this quick, this real, and big are possible.

You really just have to break things down, Google things and call people and figure it out, just keep moving KM: When you finally see this thing forward. Also, a personal thing: Kasia being used, and when you see people had been working on this project with smile when they use it, there’s this us all semester from Poland and she moment when you know you’ve man­ came at the end for the install and aged to accomplish something—it’s stayed with me. Personally, this was not about the product, it’s about what the culmination of the whole project, happens between the product and the making a friendship through this cel­ human being who’s using it. At the ebration—I thought that was a nice same time, this is a great learning op­ poetic ending. portunity, when you see that there are things you could’ve done better.

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Photos by Daniel Terna

Crit

Crit

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Solved

Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, MFA Communications Design ’15

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Multidisciplinary artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya uses her background in neuroscience and art and design practice to illuminate scientific wonders and explore nature’s mysteries.

For her exhibition Connective Tissue, she created works that reveal life’s unifying forces.

The ideas: “Much of the work revolves around play,” Phingbodhipakkiya says

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of the interactive exhibition, “making invisible things visible,” and highlighting the enmeshment of the natural world and human experience.

The opportunity: An expansive 4,800-square-foot space created the potential to magnify micro phenomena to macro scale and invite visitors to participate in discoveries about the community of life.

The challenge: Communicating complex and abstract ideas—like space-time— aesthetically presents one set of challenges, but scaling up has its own conundrums. When thinking about how to visualize the electron field, for her work There Are No Particles, Only Fields, Phingbodhipakkiya needed to figure out how to blow up a small model made with string to a 10-foot-tall piece.1 A material

Fall/Winter 2019

solution came in shock cord, which could hold the appro­ priate tension, mounted in a specially designed frame.

When printing a large wall sticker proved excessively expensive, Phingbodhipakkiya chose to marshal her mural-making expe­ rience and paint the graphic.2 The work: [De]Compose asks viewers to reconsider the lifecycle of

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Connective Tissue is on view at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Fine Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, through February 22, 2020.

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6 objects, via home goods made of mycelium, the fibrous building material of mushrooms, which can be grown to make biodegrad­ able commercial products.3 Campfire’s inflatable seats and neon glow create a space for having conversations around common experiences.4 Strange Sequences presents visitors with technological quan­ daries of tomorrow, based on discoveries of today, and asks

Solved

them to choose their approach— from early adopter to skeptic— in addressing each scenario.5 For Binary Outcomes, a piece highlighting how collective action builds a movement, fragments of a tune play as viewers touch parts of the work; touching all together activates the full song.6 The exhibition also cele­ brates women’s contributions to scientific knowledge and technological advancement.

In the Company of Great Scientists The takeaway: uses 3-D printed busts to honor “I hope the exhibition inspires women in STEM whose work has visitors to wonder more, explore changed their fields and society.7 more, not keep things they’re Rest in Prowess collects curious about—things that have narratives from around the world been tickling their minds for that remember heroic women, a while—at arm’s length,” says sourced via a virtual story booth Phingbodhipakkiya. “I hope and translated into digital col­ that because the exhibition lages, projected above beds has invited them to play in of “neurons” of the hippocam­pus, this multidisciplinary sandbox, the area of the brain associated they’re more likely to approach with memories.8 the un­familiar with an open mind.”

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Architect and Pratt Institute professor Ariane Lourie Harrison created the Pollinators Pavilion, a structure designed to attract and study solitary bees that combines architecture, art, and science.

bee

bee

By Steve Neumann

bee

and one familiar set of images, habits, and behaviors likely comes to mind. But this is scratching the surface of all that could be understood about some of nature’s most industrious workers—vital knowledge that architect Ariane Lourie Harrison, Visiting Associate Professor and Coordinator of the MS programs (Architecture and Urban Design) at Pratt, is working to develop.

Everyone knows the honeybee, but many may be surprised to learn that this iconic insect originally came to the US from Europe, or that it’s just one of about 20,000 species of bees worldwide, with the vast majority of the native species in North America being “solitary bees.” These types of bees, which don’t have a queen or operate as a hive, making them chal­ lenging study subjects, are critical to agriculture and the ecosystem as a whole, as most flowering plants on the planet need pollinators to reproduce.

The form of the Pavilion was inspired by the compound eyes of the bees it’s meant to attract.

Seen under a microscope, bees have tiny hairs that grow out of the lenses of their eyes. These hairs are believed to be used to detect wind direction as the bees head out to find flowers to pollinate.

Harrison incorporated that element into her design, where the pointed form of each panel not only mimics the hairs on the bee’s eye, but serves as both a rain canopy and storage space for a solar-powered monitoring sys­tem that includes an endoscopic camera, a motion sensor, and a microprocessor.

“Each panel is a way to passively document the comings and goings of the solitary bees,” Harrison says. “When the bee breaks the beam of the motion sensor, the camera turns on, and we get a flow of images.”

The images collected by each panel are then fed into a database for a machine-learning system to identify the species without harming the bee. The initial image library used as the foundation for the machine learning was derived And the honeybee, for all the golden deliciousness it pro­ from a collection of solitary bees at the American Museum of duces, does very poorly compared to solitary bees when it Natural History in New York City. comes to pollinating American native plants such as pumpkins, cherries, blueberries, and cranberries. Solitary bees, on the other hand, pollinate nearly 80 percent of flowering plants bee and approximately 75 percent of fruits, nuts, and vegetables grown in the country. And possibly the best attribute of solitary bees is that, unlike honeybees, they are nonaggressive. Many don’t even have stingers.

, this unique amalTo study these enigmatic insects with the hope of under­ gam of art and science started with a question that challenges standing and improving their role in the planet’s ecosystem, the conventions of human-centric architecture, while also Harrison has created the Pollinators Pavilion, a striking dome- suggesting a larger role for architecture in environmental like oval structure made of concrete and covered with spiky activism in the Anthropocene—the geologic age in which some protrusions. scientists believe humans are the primary driver of change: How can humans build with and for other species?

“Our interest here is in creating a way to document how these solitary bees live,” Harrison says. “So the Pavilion is an Architecture as a field has always focused on ‘analogous habitat,’ as well as a research field station and humans, but Harrison notes that we’re only one visitor center.” species among an estimated 10 million—of which fewer than 2 million have been identified. We’re With a footprint of 18 feet by 14 feet, discovering new ones each year. That insight has and rising to 9 feet tall, the Pollinators driven Harrison’s years-long interest in what is Pavilion offers inhabitation for up to called “post-human architecture.”

4,000 solitary bees in over 300 panels, each having a hole filled with a bundle of bamboo shoots that mimic the natural cavities where solitary bees deposit their larvae in the wild.

Previous page: The Pollinators The panels, which are made of Ductal®—an ultra-high-per­ Pavilion sits atop a hill on the grounds of Old Mud Creek formance concrete (UHPC) technology that parent company Farm.

LafargeHolcim invented—were fabricated at Ductal’s work­ shop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Ductal contributed both Right: Pratt professor Ariane material and, as Harrison notes, deep expertise: Her team Lourie Harrison previewed the Pavilion for the Hudson, worked closely with UHPC consultants Kelly Henry and New York, community during Andrew Pinneke. construction.

The Pavilion was constructed this past summer on the grounds of Old Mud Creek Farm—a sister operation to Stone House Farm, a 2,500-acre model of regenerative organic agriculture in New York’s Hudson Valley. The Pavilion itself is situated on an idyllic little hill with a 360-degree view of all the farm’s fields, as well as vistas of the picturesque Catskill Mountains.

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Previous page and opposite: Photos by Lily Landes

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Habitat for the Bees

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“Post-human doesn’t mean we’re getting rid of humans,” planted nearby, because different species of solitary bees are Harrison says, “it just means we’re moving humans away from attracted to different species of plants, and only fly so far to the center of our inquiry as architects.” get to them.

“It felt like the birds were fine with a little hollow space,” Harrison says, “but for the bees we realized it was a lot less straightforward. We realized that there were certain condi­ tions, like shelter from the rain, that they needed.”

At that point, Harrison decided to bring in a science advisor to get a better sense of what else solitary bees might need in a nesting site. That’s when she turned to Kevin Matteson, Director of Graduate Programs for Social and Ecological Change at Miami University in Ohio, who had done his dis­ sertation research on bees and pollination in the Community Gardens in the Bronx and East Harlem before doing his postdoctoral research in Chicago.

“There’s some literature on this area,” Matteson says, “but in terms of published studies of what materials and hole di­ mensions you should use to attract certain species, there isn’t a lot.”

Matteson says there are a few studies that show that with a four-millimeter hole, for example, you’re likely to get a certain type of predatory wasp, but if you go to eight milli­ meters or more, you might get mason bees—a species of sol­ itary bee. There also needs to be a selection of certain flowers

Pavilion developed by way of a cross-pollination of ideas and expertise, a continuous interdisciplinary dialogue that has deepened the project’s resonance. It all began with a fortuitous encounter between an architect, an artist, and a lifelong farmer.

Francine Hunter McGivern, a native New York artist who founded The Frank Institute @ CR10— a 15,000-square-foot space for conceptual artwork and a functioning cultural center—is the one who brought the architect and the farmer together.

“I really like the idea of collaborating with people who enjoy the feeling of being equal,” McGivern says. “Everyone brings their skills and vision to an idea, and then its mani­ festation comes from everybody’s commitment to making it happen.”

McGivern had previously hosted two of Harrison’s exhibitions at The Frank Institute, which is located about five miles from Stone House Farm, where Ben Dobson, a leader in regenerative farming practices, has been the general manager for the past six years.

Dobson had come to The Birds and the Bees exhibition, where McGivern presented the idea of the Pollinators Pavilion. Dobson was instantly receptive to the idea.

Left: The protrusion of an exterior panel provides protection for nesting tubes as well as image-capturing technology.

Opposite: A scale model of the Pavilion before an arrangement of panels, no two of which are alike.

Previous spread: Various species of bees in the genus Osmia, commonly known as mason bees, are among the types of pollinators that may begin nesting in the Pavilion next spring.

Previous spread: Photos sourced from USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program. This page and opposite: Images courtesy of Ariane Lourie Harrison

Harrison’s Brooklyn-based architecture firm, Harrison “We’ll see what it actually attracts, which is what I’m most Atelier, which she cofounded with her partner Seth Harrison, interested in,” Matteson says of the Pavilion, “but it’s also has made previous attempts to answer the question at the going to draw some public interest and awareness about the heart of post-human architecture before the Pollinators issue of native pollinators, and that’s really important.”

Pavilion, the most recent being a project called The Birds and the Bees, completed in early 2016 and installed at The Frank Institute @ CR10 near Hudson, New York. The modular wall panels of that structure—which resembles an oversized an­ tique room divider—were designed to house small, cavi­ ty-nesting birds and hole-dwelling bees. The installation had bee a brief exhibition, but when Harrison reinstalled it in her garden at home, some birds actually built nests in some of the panels.

Habitat for the Bees

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Yuxiang “Riccio” Chen, who was a student in the Graduate Architecture program Harrison currently coordinates, said he was impressed with Harrison’s commitment to post-human architecture. His role in the project was to make sure all the panel components fit together so that they could be installed on the farm site properly.

“It’s very easy to design something complex or even weird on the computer with the help of digital technology,” Chen says, “but how to realize those forms in reality is a totally different thing—it’s one of the most interesting and memora­ ble experiences I had from this project.”

Chen says he drew on his experience as a monitor at the Consortium for Research & Robotics, a center for collabora­ tive research at Pratt located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard that is home to the city’s largest industrial robot.

The compound eye of a mason bee, one of the kinds of solitary bees the Pollinators Pavilion aims to attract, is echoed in the design of the structure’s paneled exterior (right).

“We’d like to put several pavilions around the farm to bee highlight the plight of wild pollinators because they’re so important to our ecosystems and agriculture,” he says, “and use this project as a model for rebuilding those popula­

completion this summer, the Pavilion has drawn tions that are essential to biodiversity and, ultimately, community interest, but Harrison doesn’t expect much pol­ our survival.” linator activity until the spring, because the nesting season for bees begins in April.

Harrison would also like for the intent behind the Pavilion project—to create more protected habitats for solitary bees As the experiment progresses, its contribution to the sci­ and raise awareness of their role in the ecosystem—to grow entific knowledge of our native pollinators will take time to beyond Dobson’s model farm, to Americans’ backyards. unfold. In the meantime, Harrison plans on securing grants for the project so that she can continue to monitor the site and “We’re very interested in this partnership with build the machine learning, which will likely be a two-to-threeLafargeHolcim,” she says, “because there is an idea that we year research cycle. In August, the project received significant could develop a panel system that we can sell at Walmart, for support in the form of an AI for Earth grant from Microsoft, example, and everyone just hangs up a few panels and it’s no given to advance projects that use artificial intelligence to big deal—these bees don’t sting, they’re great neighbors.” address sustainability-related issues such as biodiversity. The grant will enable Pollinators Pavilion to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing tools to build the database of bee pollinator images.

As Harrison continues to concretize her abstract architectural designs (quite literally) with the Pollinators Pavilion, she also continues to realize

to the collaboration with her vision of the architect as less an isolated creator McGivern and Dobson, Harrison couldn’t have accomplished of beautiful forms for humans, and more a collab­ something as ambitious as the Pollinators Pavilion without orator with both human and nonhuman species. the support of Pratt, where the project received an award at the 2019 Pratt Research Open House.

“That’s my ambition for architecture,” Harrison says. “To design for the coexistence of multiple “The school has such an amazing research agenda,” species, and in doing so, make a profound contri­ Harrison says, “so there’s a sense of real support. It’s nice to bution to the environment.” be part of a school where your research is actually valued.”

Harrison also credits the contributions of a diverse team of designers at Harrison Atelier with bringing the project to life, including recent Pratt alumni Eileen Xu, MS Arch ’18; Nai-Hua Chen, MArch ’18; Zongguan Wang, MS Arch ’18; and Yuxiang Chen, MS Architecture and Urban Design ’18.

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This page: Photo sourced from USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program. Opposite: Photo by Lily Landes

“I had access to a lot of different architects,” Chen says, “helping them to fabricate their projects’ components and make sure they could be installed in real life. Without that “From an ecological perspective and a beauty perspective, experience, I don’t think I could have finished the optimization I was all for the project,” Dobson says. “It really fits in well as of the Pavilion structure and its construction.” a new habitat for insects we’re trying to bring to the farm.”

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Research Accelerates: Pratt Fosters an Ecosystem of Investigation

The Interdisciplinary Technology Lab designed and prototyped a custom stereoscopic camera, mounted on a UR10 robot, for spatial data collection.

Throughout its history, Pratt Institute has been a fertile site for research—from the earliest drawing classes that helped students explore the visible world through their own hands, to technological study that shaped emerging manufacturing fields during the early 20th century, to aesthetic and theoretical investigations that formed the foundations of art and design education. With its emphasis on edu­cating for disciplines grounded in inquiry, Pratt continues to support knowledge creation that enriches scholarship and society. Over the past few years, with the formation of the Office of Research and Strategic Partnerships, Pratt has begun crystalizing a cohesive research community, uniting the efforts of faculty, students, and staff and linking their investigative work with the world.

Associate Provost for Research and Strategic Partnerships Allison Druin has set the mission of her team to uncover, communicate, and cultivate scholarship, activism, and academic leadership among researchers at Pratt. The annual Pratt Research Open House has grown to present more than 50 Prattaffiliated research projects to the Institute, govern­ ment, industry, and alumni communities each spring.

A recently launched Pratt Research Seed Grant Program supports researchers across the Institute aiming to jumpstart a project. And creating space for ideas and explorations to progress side by side Design Clinic’s Future Bathroom 2025 considered the integration of technology has also been central to Druin’s team’s work. and nature.

This year, they transformed an available Pratt from Pratt’s Brooklyn campus. The facility is expected to be space on 18th Street in Manhattan into a hub for research up and running by late 2020. leaders who lacked a dedicated place to advance their To learn more about the questions Pratt’s research com­ pro­­jects, with the complementary goal of introducing munity is pursuing, Prattfolio spoke with just a few of the oppor­tu­nities for collaborative networks to blossom. More investigators within its ranks, who highlighted the challenges recently, with the support of Brooklyn Navy Yard and the their work addresses and the emerging tools and methods New York City Council, a new space was conceived that would that are building new knowledge in their fields and the allow Pratt research activities, community outreach efforts, world at large. and student learning to merge at the Navy Yard, just steps

Probing the Meaning of Progress: The Global South Center Entering the Global South Center’s sun-drenched space in Manhattan, a long table beckons—an invitation both to dig in to rigorous work and to connect in the spirit of curiosity and cooperation most easy to find when we sit face-to-face.

Led by founder and Director Macarena Gómez-Barris, Chair of Social Science and Cultural Studies, the Global South Center has created an academic hub at Pratt for scholars and researchers citywide to come together and explore social issues across the geopolitical landscape. In collaboration with an energized global scholarly community, the Center’s work reexamines assumptions about what it means to advance in a world divided by inequity, collectively imag­ ining a more just and decolonized future.

The terms Global North and Global South re­ fer, respectively, to countries where wealth and geopolitical power are concentrated and countries of mostly low income that have ex­ perienced political and cultural marginaliza­ tion.

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QUESTIONING INJUSTICE “The big issue or concern we deal with in the Global South Center is how to address the growing inequality and environmental disparity between the Global North and the Global South,”1 GómezBarris says. At the center of their investigations, the Global South Center looks at how people and communities in regions affected by environmental, economic, and political disruption are advancing the conversation. “Despite gloom-and-doom empirical realities, the Global South is also where many ar­ tistic, interdisciplinary, design, and sustainable solutions foment, not only to adapt to worsening conditions, but to actively resist and refuse what is increasingly a dominant imaginary of planetary disaster.”

STRETCHING THE CONVERSATION “We are lucky to have an extensive network of artists, scholars, designers, architects, and activists currently engaging with us,” Gómez-Barris says, noting that beyond its events in New York, the Center has held workshops, forums, and seminars in Belgrade, Mexico City, Cairo, Sydney, Melbourne, and Santiago, with more to come. “We feel fortu­ nate to be at an art and design school that values the importance of social context and imagining new worlds through collaboration.”

Quantifying Our Relationship with Our Environment: Interdisciplinary Technology Lab Gathering around a tower of cameras, monitors, and motion-tracking technology in the space where the Interdisciplinary Technology Lab (ITL) con­ ducts its research, the room around us comes alive as a site for potential data—traces of information about our habits of motion and interaction. These points of data are central to the investigations of ITL’s Medium Analysis Group (MAG)—led by Richard Sarrach, BArch ’01, Director of Inter­ disciplinary Technology and Adjunct Associate Professor CCE of Undergraduate Architecture; Ted The Global South Center is a hub for scholarly activity around global social issues.

Ngai, Visiting Associate Professor of Undergrad­ uate Architecture; and Scott Sorenson, BArch ’10, SCHOLARSHIP TO ACTION The Global South Visiting Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Architecture— Center’s scholarly work has crossed into the public realm which is looking at how sophisticated metrics on human through several projects emerging from pressing issues, from behavior could enhance design. By analyzing evidence of land and water defense in Indigenous territories in the how people use space, MAG aims to create “more intelli­gent Americas to career pathways for young people of color and feedback loops between the physical and virtual worlds,” as immigrants in upstate New York. Currently underway is a project that charts the presence of plastics in oceans and waterways, examining the link between sites of dense pollu­ tion and industrial production. “We believe that we must enliven experimental work, conscious urban design projects, decolonial theory and praxis, anti-racist practices, and social movements in the Global South and amongst communities of color in the Global North,” Gómez-Barris says. “It is from these spaces that we will learn to get out of the impasse of developmental thinking that assumes progress is tied to material wealth for the few at the expense of the many.”

Computer vision detects body gestures, points of data on how space is used.

The Interdisciplinary Technology Lab’s MAG researchers use 3-D datasets to create heatmaps of activity in a space.

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Sarrach puts it, and position architects and urban designers to bring more of the human condition into human environments.

THE SITE OF INQUIRY MAG’s research is “spatial prospecting—to collect, analyze, and mine spatial data—to reveal human macro- and microstructures hidden deep in our spatial and temporal dimensions,” Sarrach explains. “We are dev­eloping novel ways to combine machine learn­ ing, computer vision, photogrammetry, IoT devices,2 industrial design, architecture, and urban design, to allow us to gain insights into the relationship between space, design, and human behavior.”

HABIT MAPPING MAG’s research delves into two domains: public and private. Within the public sphere, the researchers use data to look for insights into how design can make social interac­ tions easier. Their work in private spaces pursues information that could aid planning and manage­ ment. According to Sarrach, the research “proposes a fully automated, autonomous, and anonymous approach to spatial and behavioral tracking using uncalibrated and unordered video footage and Building Information Models.”3 MAG proposes using video footage from existing security camera systems to isolate details about people’s movements in a space. Scanning those recordings, a state-ofthe-art machine-learning algorithm detects move­ ments and creates a 3-D dataset, which researchers can translate into a visual heatmap of activity.

REFINING PROCESS The methods MAG is experimenting with strive to improve accuracy and eliminate bias in the way researchers survey how people use spaces and iden­ LIAVH’s inaugural research project examines the ancient city of MohenjoDaro. tify patterns in their movements. we stand in our society’s present and future, but as the “Through the extraction of body gestures, Laboratory for Integrative Archaeological Visualization and we gain a better understanding of how Heritage (LIAVH) points out, for fragile sites dating to antiq­ people interact with objects such as urban uity, access to that sort of exploration is often out of reach. furniture, sculptures, lawn, trees, and other Interested in what the removal of barriers to entry might mean types of urban objects,” Sarrach says. “This for scholarly discovery and a community’s sense of belonging line of research will have a significant im­ to a nation, the LIAVH’s interdisciplinary team seeks out in­ pact on the way we think about the design novative methods to explore the ancient world, with a do-noof our built environment—in the end, we harm approach. Led by principal investigators Uzma Z. Rizvi, are rewriting the design playbook.”

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies, and Can Sucuoglu, Interim Director of the Spatial Analysis and Visualization Initiative (SAVI) at Pratt, and cofounded by Jessie Discovering Keys Braden, SAVI’s former director, LIAVH is embarking on its to the Ancient City: inaugural project, M_LAB, to explore how data mapping can Laboratory for Integrative make one of the world’s foremost architectural sites dis­ coverable to all.

Archaeological Visualization

and Heritage

QUESTIONS OF TIME AND SPACE With existing 3-D modeling technology, it is possible to reproduce and ob­ Experiencing places rich with history can serve sites of historical interest altered by the fluctuations be a powerful means to understand where of civilization and the physical world—but there is only so far IoT: internet of things, the system of inter­ connected “smart” devices capable of trans­ ferring data.

2

Building Information Modeling is a computeraided design process that captures layers of data about a building within a 3-D model.

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Research Accelerates

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STORY OF A CIVILIZATION The group’s inaugural project, M_LAB, takes as its focus MohenjoDaro, an ancient settlement in Pakistan considered to be one of the most sig­ nificant and influential planned cities of South Asia.5 Starting with one section of the city, M_LAB is mapping information about its spaces and artifacts using existing excavation plans and site reports, weaving together data to create a 4-D model that could help piece together a dynamic picture of a people across time.6 “The interactive tool proposed by LIAVH enables researchers, for example, to understand the historical cultures from an urban-planning perspective by analyzing change at the neighborhood level,” according to Rizvi and Sucuoglu.

Technology is computing the space all around us. In one area of the Environmental Sensing Lab, an unassuming plastic briefcase houses a data-collection system gathering informa­ tion on high-energy particles in the atmosphere. In another, tiny sensors and monitors are relaying measurements of temperature and humidity in the room. Founded by physicist Helio Takai, Interim Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to facilitate his research on urban cosmic rays, the Environmen­tal Sensing Lab investigates how physical com­ puting devices can be used to observe environmental condi­ tions. The lab recently expanded to include Gabrielle Brainard, Visiting Associate Professor of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design, who is collecting data on studios and class­ rooms in Higgins Hall, and Monica Maceli, Associate Professor in the School of Information, who has been working on a Pratt Research Seed Grant–funded study focused on observing conditions in archives and making the modes of data collection more accessible.

Broadly, Maceli’s THE FIELD OF EXPLORATION research looks at how libraries are using low-cost, openEXPANDING ANCIENT NARRATIVES The source, customizable “maker” technologies,8 examining the MohenjoDaro project also addresses another quandary for benefits, challenges, and skills involved. Maceli’s project investigators of the ancient world: The site’s protected status, EnviroPi: An Open Internet-of-Things Approach to Monitoring while vital to its conservation, limits the potential for hands-on Archival Collections focuses specifically on how physical study and heritage-related exploration. Rizvi’s research group computing 9 devices can help cultural heritage organizations looks to solve the access problem by noninvasive—that is, track the conditions of their archive environments. virtual—means, with applications beyond MohenjoDaro.

LIAVH’s ultimate goal for M_LAB, Rizvi and Sucuoglu say, “is SHARING ECONOMY The rapid pace of develop­ to create an open-source software that could be utilized at ment for new physical computing systems has presented any ancient city to create narratives from datasets to reveal Maceli with exciting, widely accessible avenues for solving archaeological information.”7 problems. EnviroPi addresses a particular challenge: how to make monitoring tools available to institutions unable to ac­ quire expensive commercial systems. Maceli’s project exper­ Monitoring with Maker Tech: iments with low-cost, easy-to-obtain open-source hardware Environmental Sensing Lab and software—components that are right at the fingertips of library and collections professionals.

For Maceli, research BUILDING THE NETWORK and teaching go hand in hand. Her exploration of applications for physical computing devices feeds directly into curriculum developments at Pratt, with potential for broader educational influence.10 “These efforts lower the barriers for other insti­ tutions interested in offering similar courses and/or topics in the future,” Maceli says. “This is of particular importance to the Library and Information Science field currently, as recent research indicates that there is a small but growing number of maker-related courses offered within Master of Library Science programs, and other programs will likely follow suit.”

The Enviro-Pi project uses inexpensive tools to track atmospheric data valuable to archivists.

4 Stratigraphy in archaeology looks at the layers, or strata, of a place through time, with older layers concealed by newer ones.

MohenjoDaro is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Centre, preserved for its scholarly and cultural value as the urban center of Indus civilization (third millennium BCE), one of the world’s major ancient civilizations.

5

The well-documented site’s wealth of ar­ chaeo­ logical details makes it an ideal case study. Data fields M_LAB is mapping include spaces’ area, function, and artifacts; streets’ width, drainage, and slope; and the charac­ teristics of street intersections.

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7 To learn more about LIAVH’s projects, visit liavh.org.

“Maker” technologies, like sensors, micro­ controllers, and single-board computers, enable low-cost, accessible, do-it-yourself construction of digital tools and other per­ sonally meaningful technology projects, and have become highly popular in educational contexts to support problem-based learning.

8

For example, a new Rapid Prototyping and Physical Computing course at Pratt gives stu­ dents hands-on experience designing and constructing experimental devices—from a cat-operated thermal bed to a light installa­ tion that responds to touch.

10

Physical computing relates to creating inter­ active systems, using hardware and software, that sense and respond to the physical world.

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Images courtesy of ITL (18, 20, 21); Design Lab (19, 23); Global South Center (20); LIAVH (21); Environmental Sensing Lab (22)

researchers can delve into the human business that once de­ fined these spaces. LIAVH sets that challenge at the center of its inquiry: “Is there a way by which we might plot data points—such as architecture, infrastructure, and artifacts—at different stratigraphic levels,”4 and in so doing, create a new way to visualize and study the development of cities over time?

Asking the Next Question: Design Clinic A reclining bench replaces a traditional bathtub.

Pockets of moisture-thirsty air plants bloom from a wall tiled in gentle waves. Shifting light, inspired by daybreak, keeps the time. Design Clinic’s Future Bathroom 2025 invites us to imagine how peace­ful, restorative, and, ecologically speaking, low-impact, the bathing experience could be. The project, sponsored by American Standard Corporation, exemplifies the concept behind Design Clinic, a program established by Constantin Boym, Chair of Industrial Design, “to investigate the role of reality-based action in today’s design academia,” blurring the line between educational and profes­ sional experience for students. In this “internal internship,” faculty and students work side by side to undertake real-life projects for a client, with a process structured around research principles of Pratt methodology.

THEMES OF INQUIRY “Like patients who come in to see a doctor,” Boym explains, “our clients approach Design Clinic with their ‘problems’ in search of design help.” For American Standard, the challenge was to create a bathroom that would minimize the user’s footprint and enhance their enjoyment of the space. To address this, Boym’s group explored three main areas: how design could conserve water, reduce labor, and create an atmo­ sphere of calm that would give urban users respite Design Clinic investigated water-saving design elements such as a shower seat from hectic city life. to replace a tub.

FRESH SOLUTIONS For Future Bathroom 2025, the design team proposed a gray-water system that routed used shower water to the toilet, which would save some 14 gallons of water per person every day. They proposed a pre­ fabricated “wet wall”11 and fixtures to limit the trade-specific labor it takes to finish a bathroom. This was all balanced with elements that emphasized tranquility for the user: “Bathing and cleansing are no longer considered purely functional hygienic activities,” Boym says. “Our bathroom provided integration of technology with nature, from use of tropical air plants to moderate the humidity, to a show of light that rises like the sun to visualize the length of one’s shower.”

Designers explored prefabricated components as a means to conserve labor.

A “wet wall” contains the pipes and drains in a bathroom behind a solid panel. The idea is that a prefabricated wall and fittings could be installed by a single construction crew.

11

THINKING FORWARD “Someone said we could have called Design Clinic ‘The Future Of,’” Boym remarks, noting past work on a future kitchen, the future of takeout, and the future of vinyl, as well as this year’s project on the future of wood, initiated by Associate Professor of Industrial Design Karol Murlak.12 “Opening up new lines of inquiry, en­ visioning something which has not been done before, acting in a responsible and sustainable way—these are directions of our research.”

Read more about Murlak’s spring 2019 De­ sign Clinic project, HURRAH!, on page 4.

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Research Accelerates

23

What Question

You

Thinking About ?

Can

Not

Stop Pratt students share the sparks of their inquiry.

As last academic year came to a close, Prattfolio interviewed dozens of students around the Brooklyn campus to find out what questions were on their minds and what lines of inquiry they were pursuing in their work— from sculpture to architec­ ture to critical studies. They wondered how their work Photographs by Daniel Terna

could have a positive effect on the world and in what ways, through their distinct fields of study and practice, they might improve communities, the environ­ ment, and the human condition. They also considered the methods and motivation behind their work, raising questions about how they can make

the most of their experience as students and find their voices as practitioners.

Meet just some of Pratt’s next generation of change makers, risk takers, and big questioners.

How is the future of fashion going to impact the environment?

I’m in a fashion sustainability class right now, and for our midterm we had to track the supply chains of our favorite fashion companies. It was eye-opening. One of the companies I was researching did a lot of fabric printing, and the dyes they use have heavy metals and carcinogens in them, and they just dump them.

Sabrina Brokenborough BFA Fashion Design ’21

What is the point

of meaning?

Hope Morrison BFA Sculpture ’19

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How to re-create natural beauty is my biggest interest and concern.

My thesis was clay vessels that I had hooked up to microphones and amps.

I choreographed a movement performance that was all about interacting with the naturally occurring sounds from these very odd, unfired things. My body interacted with them—some of them I stuck my head in, or my arm.

It was very loud. Essentially, it was scientific feedback I was working with, but that’s only if you’re looking at it from a technical standpoint.

It’s less about that and more about what clay can do, the material qualities of it that aren’t tactile or physical.

Meghan Rutzebeck BFA Sculpture ’19 (Rutzebeck’s artwork appears on the cover of this issue of Prattfolio)

What Question...

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Did I make the right move moving to the United States?

I was born and raised in France. What feels like a yes is that I’m getting something 100 percent out of Pratt.

The thing that keeps me going are my comics—I’ve been doing comics for a while, and I started the Pwatt series in 2015, part of a larger set of Dill Comics.

I feel like what I’m doing with my comics is advancing, because in Crit Viz, you can kind of do whatever you’re going for—my goal is to publish a book, and I’m doing that for my thesis.

Calyn Pickens Rich BFA Critical and Visual Studies ’20

How do I bring humanity, humanism into architecture?

For my thesis, I made a market for people in a very poor village—an old but important city on the Silk Road. I was trying to go back into the history, try to dig more into humanity, how architecture can affect people, from inside. It’s more about material and how people feel. For this, I only used bricks, because the local people use bricks, it’s vernacular.

Long Long BArch ’19

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Why hasn’t electric technology caught on?

What Question...

Brandon Terrien MID ’19

Luke Lazin BID ’19

In doing this project, we found out that the compo­ nents we’re using haven’t changed in the last 10 to 15 years. Our professor, Larry Au, made a bike when he was an undergrad at Pratt and he used the exact same motor, the exact same batteries. The technology hasn’t evolved. So how can we push that?

With this project, our premise was to upcycle an existing dirt bike frame then convert it to electric. Our hope was to reimagine the aesthetics and functionality of urban EVs. How do we make that happen?

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For a recent project I did for LCD [Light, Color, and Design], we had to find an issue that was affecting the environment that was personal to us. My project had to do with agriculture, and how women in Haiti, where I’m from, have to farm and do all this hard labor but are not able to own land. I was reading about it and thought,

how are we in 2019 and women still don’t have the right to own land?

So I decided to make an 18 x 24-inch charcoal drawing of women in nature farming.

The point of my piece was to show faces, to show the people hidden behind the hard labor and work and food that’s being made.

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Emily Murdock BFA Painting ’22

MacCray Rentel BFA Photography ’22

Something that I’ve always thought about:

How many people are doing the exact same thing at the exact same time in the world?

Also doppelgangers.

Someone that looks exactly like you somewhere else is wild to me—how close our gene pools can be, even if we’re separated by thousands of miles, just by chance.

Neyssa Pierre BFA ’22

What Question...

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What am I going to make next?

Olive Lagace BFA Communications Design ’19

I made two stop-motion short films this year, and I’d love to keep making them. I got really interested in the Opportunity rover over the past year, so I made one of my films

about Martians. Also, I’m on the equestrian team at Pratt so I wanted to make a film about horses— it’s about a cowgirl and her horse jumping over the moon.

I keep thinking about how my definition of research is changing.

Basia Kurlender BFA Communications Design ’19

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Fall/Winter 2019

Especially when it comes to making visual art. I was always taught to use a database via a library site, within a traditional academic context. How do I research beyond that in a way that is still relevant and acceptable. I like reading blogs about specialized topics, which can be hard to find, so it’s a lot of googling for specific phrases. I wrote and designed a thesis called “All Men Are Friends” about the shared kinship of masculinity, and for that, there’s obviously a lot written on gender that I was reading, but I was also looking for niche ideas that hadn’t been written about.

A whole part of the thesis is about the idea of “calling dibs,” and there’s no, to my knowledge, scholarly writing on that, so that [reading blogs] was my process.

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How do you design for a user and not specifically for a technology?

For my projects, I’ve done various types of research, and the one that was most rewarding was an interview observation, actually sitting down with the user and going through tasks.

When I helped with the research for the redesign of Pratt’s library website, my group reached out to students on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus to participate.

When we met them, we had a list of tasks for them work through and questions for them after they finished.

As a designer, you may think you know what the user wants, but getting their perspective firsthand brings a whole different set of insights, and makes the design stronger and more effective.

Armon Burton MSIXD ’20

How do I redesign the world so it’s more human?

The world is designed in a way that’s very industrial focused. How do I make design more enjoyable, making people’s lives more interesting and empower­ ing? I feel like we can be much happier, be more us, be more creative, if the world is designed in a way that accommodates that sort of thinking.

Yeon Jee BID ’09; MPS Design Management ’19

What Question...

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How can I incorporate color in a meaningful and important way?

I like to think of myself as an advocate for color. Color is a good way of standing out, it feels personal and impersonal at the same time, allowing you to be noticed, but at the same time to be “you” and not confine yourself.

Mikayla Bacani, BFA Industrial Design ’19

I get really interested in really mundane things or everyday life moments, and also trash—I’m really interested in trash this year, the kind of things that people throw out.

Oliver Ward BFA Photography ’22

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What’s next?

I’ve felt myself growing within the two years I’ve been here and I hope that growth continues. My thesis helped me find my voice as a designer—to break away

Keith Garrett Wright MFA Communications Design ’19

What Question...

from Western, European principles. Being African American, those types of design principles didn’t resonate with me and where I come from, so to take

my own experiences and inject them into my work is what I hope to do.

To read more about the questions students are pondering, visit www.pratt.edu/inquiry.

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News

Pratt Celebrates the Class of 2019 In her address at Pratt Institute’s 130th Commencement on May 20, author and cultural critic Roxane Gay urged grad­ uating students not to be complacent as they move through the world, and to help others by being willing to “make ourselves uncomfortable by imagining the impossible to be possible.” Held at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, the ceremony celebrated the achievement of more than 1,200 undergraduate and graduate students and welcomed them as Pratt’s newest alumni.

Honorary degrees were awarded to Gay (Doctor of Letters), who was the Commencement speaker; artist and educator Nick Cave (Doctor of Fine Arts); and Nancy Spector (Doctor of Humane Letters), Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In her speech, Gay spoke of the phalanx of challenges society is facing, from the economic and environmental to the social and politcal.

She encouraged students to do some­ thing more than just hope, because “hope allows us to leave what is possible in the hands of others.” Instead, she spoke about the importance of taking responsibility and working to effect change in service of others, inspiring students to “think about possibility.”

Graduation speakers also includ­ed Daisuke Endo, Adjunct Assistant Pro­fessor of Undergraduate Comm­ unications Design, who was named Distinguished Teacher 2019–2020 and was honored with a medal designed by student Wanlu Liu, as well as elected student speakers Cagla Gungormus, BFA Fine Arts ’19, and Yeon Jee, MPS Design Management ’19. Additional recognition was given at the ceremony

Prattfolio

to Interior Design Professor Deborah Schneiderman, the inaugural recipient of Pratt’s Research Recognition Award.

Alumni of the class of 1969 were also honored with a celebratory walk across the stage at Radio City to comme­morate the 50th anniversary of their own Commencement.

City Council Awards Funds for Research Facility Pratt has been selected to receive $890,000 from the New York City Coun­cil for a new research facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. New York City Council Majority Leader Laurie A. Cumbo announced the news on June 25 at a press conference held at the Brooklyn Music School to celebrate historic financial wins in this year’s city budget. In partnership with the Brook­ lyn Navy Yard, the new research facility will be created and led by Pratt, and shared with the community of Navy Yard industry leaders and local high school students. It will bring together many of Pratt’s research initiatives, from robotics, to sustainability, to rural design incubation. Through the facility and its programming, urban challenges will be identified, translating research into community solutions, and train­ing the next generation of workforce thinkers and doers.

Pratt Center Made in NYC Initiative Receives City Council Support The New York City Council has awarded $850,000 to the Pratt Center for Com­ munity Development’s Made in NYC (MINYC) initiative for the coming year.

MINYC is a unique marketing-assistance program that leverages the expertise of Pratt faculty and students to help more

Fall/Winter 2019

than 1,300 local manufacturers. MINYC companies are located across the city and produce a diverse array of products in sectors including fashion, jewelry, food and beverage, home and interiors, print and media, and machinery and metals. This year’s city council funding will not only sustain existing prog­ ramming but support new programs focused on women and minority-owned businesses.

BAP Honors Art and Design Icons in Support of Student Scholarships The Black Alumni of Pratt (BAP) hon­ ored visionaries in art and design at the 2019 “Celebration of the Creative Spirit” Scholarship Benefit Gala, held on May 7 at the Park Hyatt New York in Man­ hattan. The annual gala honors indivi­ duals and companies in the world of art and design whose accomplishments and values resonate with those of Pratt Institute. Funds raised from the event help to provide Black and Latinx stu­ dents with stipends and scholarships.

This year, abstract artist Frank Stella received the Lifetime of Artistic Ex­ cellence Award, presented by artist Sarah Morris. Demna Gvasalia, Crea­ tive Director at Balenciaga, was honored with the Creative Spirit Award, and DeMonty Price, President, Chief Ope­ rating, Service and Values Officer at RH (formerly Restoration Hardware), re­ ceived the Creative Spirit Corporate Leadership Award, presented by Susan Chokachi, President and CEO of Gucci America. Alexander Smalls, restaura­ teur, chef, and author, also received the Creative Spirit Award, presented by actress Cicely Tyson.

Vira Capeci, President of the Ame­ricas at Balenciaga, made the announcement

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“Hope allows us to leave what is possible in the hands of others. . . . I wish you the power of all that might be possible if you do anything more than hope.”

—Roxane Gay, 130th Commencement keynote speaker, to the class of 2019

Members of the 50th reunion class of 1969 took the stage at Pratt’s 130th Commencement.

Photos (above and top) by Laura June Kirsch

News

37

Emerson Place Residence, a first-year student residence hall, opened on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus this fall, celebrated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in October.

Photo by Armon Burton, MSIXD ’20

Elodia Wei, BFA Interior Design ’22, transformed Myrtle Avenue Plaza’s utility boxes with the installation “Wonderland.”

Photo by Armon Burton, MSIXD ’20

Prattfolio

that Balenciaga has made a commit­ ment to support the efforts of the Black Alumni of Pratt by providing two four-year scholarships for students of Pratt Institute.

The evening also featured the an­ nouncement of the 2019 Marcio Moreira Multicultural Fellowship and McCann Internship winners. Sponsored by glo­ bal marketing firm McCann World­ group, the annual fellowship recog­nizes top academic junior and senior stu­­dents studying communications design, film and video, digital arts, photogra­ phy, and writing. This year’s winners are Lisa Johnson, Christian King, Mark Reyes, and Maria Useche.

Since its establishment in 1990, BAP has raised more than $5 million to fur­ ther the BAP-endowed student scholar­ ship effort, provide precollege awards for high school students looking to pursue an arts or design education, and help fund other BAP initiatives.

Pratt Opens Emerson Place Residence This fall semester, first-year students were welcomed into the newest resi­ dence hall at Pratt: Emerson Place Residence. With amenities like maker spaces and open floor plans, every as­ pect of the 10-story tower advances a vibrant “living-learning” experience for first-year students.

Emerson Place Residence is loca­­ted on Emerson Place between Myrtle and Willoughby Avenues, just a block from Pratt’s main Brooklyn campus.

CannonDesign, which has an exper­tise in student-focused education design, and Hanrahan Meyers Architects (hMa), where former School of Architecture Dean Thomas Hanrahan is Partner, collaborated on the building. The project involved several members of the Pratt community, including hMa Project Architect Shannon Hayes, BArch ’12; CannonDesign Academic Planner and Designer Frances Fox, MArch ’12; and NYC Education Prac­tice Leader and Senior Vice President at CannonDesign Carisima Koenig, Visiting Assistant Professor in Grad­uate Architecture and Urban Design.

Thornton Tomasetti worked as the structural engineers and Langan as the civil engineers.

Student input was continuously so­ licited in the design process in meetings arranged with Residential Life, with Pratt partnering with CannonDesign to model the building as a representa­ tion of its educational objectives. The

Fall/Winter 2019

outcome is a residence hall that is dif­ ferent from a traditional dorm with its long hallways lined with rooms.

Instead, the floorplans are more fluid, designed to promote interaction. Each floor features a large central lounge as its hub, with the bedrooms oriented around it. The gender-neutral distrib­ uted hallway-based bathrooms further facilitate movement out of individual rooms into community space, offering more chances for students to meet. This design reflects current research into residence hall architecture. The build­ ing was designed with sustainability in mind to be Pratt’s most accessible res­ idence hall.

Student Installs Myrtle Avenue “Wonderland” in Neighborhood Partnership Elodia Wei, BFA Interior Design ’22, was inspired by the seasonal shifts of color along Myrtle Avenue in creating a new installation for Myrtle Avenue Plaza, located next to Pratt’s Brooklyn cam­ pus. Called “Wonderland,” the work wraps three utility boxes in the pedes­ trian plaza with colors representing the changes in the area across spring, summer, fall, and winter. Wei devel­ oped the idea for “Wonderland” in the Light, Color, and Design Studio as part of the Foundation curriculum for firstyear undergraduate students in the School of Art and School of Design. The yearlong installation, unveiled in June, was developed by Pratt with Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project (MARP), and the project is planned as an annual collaboration involving Foundation students in creating temporary and semi-permanent works.

Deanship Transitions Andrew W. Barnes stepped down as Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the conclusion of the 2018–2019 academic year, having served in the post since July 2011. Barnes will take a yearlong sab­ batical to work on a new book and in­ tends to return as a tenured professor in the Writing Department.

Thomas Hanrahan stepped down as Dean of the School of Architecture this summer, following 22 years of service.

After a one-year leave, Hanrahan will rejoin the Pratt faculty and continue to engage in the hands-on approach to education that he nurtured as dean.

Dr. Harriet Harriss began her ten-­ ure as Dean of the School of Architec­ ture on August 20. Prior to joining Pratt, she led the Post-Graduate Research

38

Image credit for Dooz bag: Katherine Groft, BFA Photography ’14

3

1

2

4

1 Double Bass Blues

by Rudy Gutierrez, BFA Illustration ’79, Professor of Communications Design $17.99

2 Art This Way

by Jason Fulford, BFA Communications Design ’96, and Tamara Shopsin $24.95

In this new picture book written

by Andrea J. Loney and illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez, readers follow Nic, a young aspiring musician who carries his double bass on his back as he travels between his sub­ urban school and his home in the bustling city. Gutierrez’s colorful imagery harmonizes with author Andrea J. Loney’s text in a story that celebrates artistic dedication, community, family, and the unifying power of music. Available at rhcbooks.com and wherever books are sold.

Made in collaboration with the Whitney Museum, Art This Way invites young audiences to interact with art in fresh, imaginative ways. While they take in a thoughtfully curated collection of works from the Whitney collection, children are encouraged to fold out pages, gaze at mirrors, and peer through holes, following their visual and tactile curiosity to discover art from new angles.

Available at www.phaidon.com.

New and Noteworthy

3 Backpack by PARS UNUM Jimmy Rau, BFA Communications Design ’07 $1,195

4 Céleste Bag by Dooz Rachel Borghard and Mia Kazovsky, both BFA Fashion ’14 $465

What began as a personal project to find a bag that would move effortlessly from meeting to gym to airport, this minimal backpack from the unisex ac­ cessories brand PARS UNUM incorporates clean aesthetics, technical design, and refined materials. Crafted in Italy from supple lambskin, each bag is intended to become part of the wearer through “use, experience, and emotion.” Available at www.parsunum.com.

After graduating from Pratt and working in different parts of the fashion industry for several years, Rachel Borghard and Mia Kazovsky joined creative forces to launch their brand, Dooz. Among their first products, channeling the spirit of the 12 signs of the zodiac, are a full spectrum of vibrantly colored, convertible hand-shoulder bags. Made in Los Angeles, the bags are embossed with logos representing each distinct sign (pictured here is Pisces).

Available at dooznyc.com.

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7

5

6

8

5 Alpine Whiskey Glass Set

by Simon Pearce James Murray, BID ’90; MPS Design Management ’97; Visiting Assistant Professor of Design Management $275 This natural soapstone setup keeps cocktails perfectly chilled without watering them down.

Designed by alumnus and faculty member James Murray, Vice President of Design at Simon Pearce, a base hand-carved by stonecutters cradles one of the artisanal glassware company’s bestsellers, the Ludlow whiskey glass. The slab chills in the freezer, and with soapstone’s superior insulating properties, stays cool all through cocktail hour. Available at www.simonpearce.com.

Prattfolio

6 Firecracker Christmas Tree Earrings Ada Chen, BFA Jewelry ’18 from $138

7 Leg Bowl Chen Chen, BID ’07, and Kai Williams, BID ’06 $108

Inspired by the artist’s rela­tion­ ship with both the Christmas and Chinese New Year holidays, Ada Chen’s festive earrings feature a burst of red “fire­crackers,” evoking the New Year, cascading in the shape of a celebratory fir tree, topped with a star.

Available as a single or a set, the earrings are made to order using acrylic and brass with sterling silver ear posts. Available at www.potadachen.com/shop.

This fanciful ceramic bowl from Chen Chen and Kai Williams takes its form from ding, ritual food vessels dating back to pre-Bronze Age China that prefigured the European soup tureen. A version of the three-legged bowl cleverly outfitted with black leather slide sandals sold out earlier this year, but new seasonal footwear is on its way. Available at www.cckw.us/store.

Fall/Winter 2019

8 Champagne Year Cards

by Idlewild Co. Katie Gastley, BFA Communications Design ’06 $5 (single) or $18 (box set of 8) With a whimsical, handmade aesthetic, Katie Gastley’s studio— born in Brooklyn and now located in Vero Beach, Florida—produces a graphic line of cards, calendars, totes, accessories, and other giftable goods. Celebrate the New Year with an effer­vescent message to loved ones with these bubbly-inspired holiday cards, or one of Idlewild Co.’s other seasonal and evergreen greetings.

Available at idlewildco.com.

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Program in Architecture and Interior Design at the Royal College of Art in London.

Pratt Advances toward NCAA Membership The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III has accepted Pratt into its provisional membership process after one year as an exploratory member. Starting on September 1, Pratt became a provision­ al member of NCAA Division III and will now compete against some of the 450 Division III institutions from around the country. The NCAA desig­ nation makes Pratt the only school in the Association of Independent Colle­ ges of Art and Design to achieve this athletic level.

Currently, Pratt Athletics sponsors 14 men’s and women’s teams across seven sports, including basketball, cross country, soccer, tennis, indoor and outdoor track, and volleyball. The most recently added varsity sport, equestrian, will operate under the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association, as equestrian is not an NCAA sport at this time.

The NCAA membership process takes four years. Once full membership is reached, Pratt will be able to compete in Division III championships.

Pratt Ranks among Top Colleges for Veterans Studying Design College Factual, a prominent source of data analytics and insights on college outcomes, has ranked Pratt Institute #10 in the country in its 2019 list of Best Design & Applied Arts Programs for Veterans. Pratt was considered along­ side 216 colleges and universities, put­ ting it in the top 5 percent of schools in the nation for veterans studying design.

Out of the 14 colleges in New York, Pratt ranked fourth in veteran friendliness.

College Factual’s rankings methodol­ ogy was based on 24 different factors in areas including veteran affordability, population, resources, policies, satis­ faction, and the overall excellence of the college.

Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund Honors Industrial Design Alumni This year, the Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund honored two sets of Pratt class­ mates for achievements in industrial design. Deane and Sandra Richardson, both BID ’57, who both studied with Kostellow, were honored with the 2019 Rowena Reed Kostellow Award for the

News

couple’s respective work in product design and design education. René Bouchara, BID ’85, and Simon Hamui, BID ’85, who were Pratt classmates, were presented with the Young Designer awards. The Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund at Pratt started follow­ ing the death of Kostellow in 1988. It supports the continuation of her teach­ ings through scholarships, publishing, and other programs.

Remembering Beloved Faculty Eric William Allison, MS City and Regional Planning ’92, long-serving professor in the School of Architec­ture, died on June 15. Dr. Allison taught in the graduate City and Regional Planning program and the graduate Historic Preservation program, leading the development of the Historic Pre­ servation program and, together with Ned Kaufman, formulating the original pedagogy and vision of the program.

The Pratt community remembers Dr. Allison for his invaluable contribution to the school and his exemplary work as a colleague, teacher, and scholar.

Lee Epstein, longtime faculty mem­ ber in Undergraduate Communications Design, passed away on May 16. Profes­ sor Epstein joined the Pratt faculty in February 1956. He was instrumental in the early development of courses in Art Direction and taught in what is now the Undergraduate Communications Design Department until his retirement in December 2017. He is remembered as a much-esteemed and successful advertising professional and teacher.

In Memoriam Ken Bald, Certificate, Illustration ’41 Aleta Shari Fierman Benjamin, BFA Fashion ’66 Susan Beschta, BFA Integrative Studies ’77 Judd Brynes, MS Art Education ’75 Dorothy (Caruso) Brzozowski, Certificate, Costume Design ’50 Richard Carboni, MFA ’81 Gerald Casper, AAS Product Design ’62 Robert Warren Charles, BS Food Science and Management ’67 Gloria Kamen Charney, Certificate, Illustration ’42 Guadalupe DiDonno, BArch ’70 Tom Fawell, Certificate, Illustration ’53 Victor Giarratano, BEE ’65 Richard F. Gibbons, BPS Construction Management ’77

Eloise Gardiner Giles, BFA Art and Design Education ’51 George Gilmore, BEE ’42 Shirley Goldberg, MLS ’65 Dianne Gutscher, BS Food Science and Management ’68 Lee Haber, BFA Graphic Design ’59 Marjorie Haddad, MLS ’68 Verna Hart, MFA ’91 Maida Heatter, Certificate, Fashion Illustration ’36 Stephen Horton, Interior Design ’66 Bernice King, Certificate, Costume and Commercial Illustration ’26 John Louise, Advertising Design ’51 Denton Lund, BFA Advertising Design ’58 Gloria Lynn, Certificate, Illustration ’47 David Knight Matthes, AAS Mechanical Engineering ’63 Virginia McNeice, BFA Graphic Design ’57 Margaret A. Milek, BID ’71 Donald L. Morgan, BID ’62 Daniel “Joe” Moroney, BME ’49 Louis Musacchio, BME ’50 David Palladini, BFA Graphic Arts ’68 Ellen Panero, Sculpture ’55 donalee pond-Koenig, BFA Sculpture ’70 Peter Primak, BArch ’77 Erwin Rosin, BEE ’50 Edward Sanz, BChE ’61 Bernard “Duke” Schaeffer, AAS Mechanical Engineering ’58 Ruth Doris Schloss, BFA Art and Design Education ’41 Louise Stellato, BS Home Economics ’46 Jean A. Stratton, Certificate, Illustration ’47 Joseph Sullo, Certificate, Industrial Design ’42 Frank S. Tagariello, Certificate, Architecture ’49 Peter Nolan Tuomey Sr., Industrial Engineering Le Roy Van Lent, Architecture ’47 John Wills, Mechanical Engineering ’39 John Zaremba, MLS ’71 For more on these stories and the latest updates from Pratt, visit www.pratt.edu/news.

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PRATT INSTITUTE SCHOOL OF CONTINUING AND PROFESSIONAL STUDIES SPRING 2020

PRATT.EDU/SCPS-spring2020 855.551.7727

ART, BUSINESS, DESIGN, AND ARCHITECTURE

CREATE & INVENT

Class Notes We want to know what you’re up to, and so do your fellow Pratt alumni. See page 53 for Class Notes submission guidelines.

1940s Ivy (Gaffney) Bottini, BFA ’47, published a memoir, The Liberation of Ivy Bottini: A Memoir of Love and Activism, following her life at the forefront of sec­ ond-wave feminism and LGBT liberation.

In the memoir, told through conversa­ tion with biographer Judith V. Branzburg, Bottini highlights how her design background helped her to create logos for feminist organizations, including the famous National Organization of Women (NOW) logo. Bottini’s story shows the power that emerges from personal transformation and the inter­ section of art and activism.

1950s Ann Petix Adams, Textile Design ’53, throughout her artistic career has won awards, including Best in Show, for her oil painting New England Autumn, which was purchased by the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, for their permanent collec­ tion, and first place for a multi-exposed photograph, New Cannan Reflections.

At her home in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, she hand paints one-of-a-kind silk scarves, camisoles, and matching earrings. Silks are steamed for two hours to bring out color brilliance and to set the dye, accents applied and heat set. Adams accepts inquiries at alann126@aol.com.

Henry Sanoff, AIA, BArch ’57; MArch ’62, Professor Emeritus of Architecture, ACSA/Alumni Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, writes that NYU Tandon School of Engineering hosted the 50th anniversary of Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), which was founded

by Sanoff. Sanoff also was editor of the EDRA 1 proceedings, which took place in 1969 at North Carolina State University. He also organized an inter­ national symposium titled Democratic Design without Borders.

1960s Valetta (Marascia), BS Art Education ’61, and known legally as Valetta since 1989, has continued to practice her art and show work in exhibitions across the United States and abroad. In 2000, she formed a nonprofit corporation, the Regional Center for Women in the Arts in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

This year she has expanded the reach of the organization with a second location in Sarasota, Florida. View work at www.valettaartist.com.

Frank Katz, BS Art Education ’62; MS Art Education ’63, published a book of his paintings in 2018 titled Harry Midgely’s Tales of Travel and Travail . . . Fifty-Two Parables in Pictures for the Coming Year.

He is now working on two picture books, The Disappearance of German Street and After Images, which will be printed in one volume as a “flip book,” with one title be­­ ing read from the “front” while the other will be read from the “back” by turning the volume over and upside down.

Marilyn Church, BFA Graphic Design ’59, was interviewed on 20/20 for the episode “One Night in Central Park,” revisiting the troubling case of the Central Park Jogger 30 years since the trial.

She discussed her experience as a court­ room artist drawing the emotional trial, which led to the convictions of five teenage boys who were found innocent after spending years in prison. Twenty of Church’s drawings appeared in the Lucy Blake-Elahi, The Sepulveda Gateway, program, which aired in May. The trial was laser-cut steel, 7 x 12 feet Pearl (Lutzker) Seymore, Interior recently dramatized in an opera staged Design ’56, is moving to Sonoma, at Long Beach Opera in California, which California, from Delray Beach, Florida, exhibited Church’s drawings from the Lucy Blake-Elahi, MS Art Education to be near Amy (Lutzker) Gottlieb, trial. Additionally, Church was featured ’64, completed her first public art com­ BFA Interior Design ’72. in the June/July issue of AARP Magazine. mission in 1990 and since then has

Class Notes

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enjoyed completing 15 permanent installations. Two recent examples are the public art commissions Homage to Ballona Creek, an (accurate) equatorial sundial that was redesigned, relocated, and restored in 2019 and functions as part of the skyline of Culver City, California, and The Sepulveda Gateway, the opening to the Ballona Creek Bike Path. Blake-Elahi taught art in an elementary school in New York and, in Los Angeles, in junior high and high school, at UCLA, and since 2000, at West Los Angeles Community College.

Edward Koren, MFA ’64, released Koren. In the Wild, a new collection containing 175 of his many cartoons.

The collection, featuring his signature humanoid and hairy creatures, illustrates country life, exurbanites, locals, and the ironies of living in the boonies.

Long associated with The New Yorker magazine, where he has published over 1,100 cartoons, Koren, also a volunteer firefighter, is Vermont’s second Cartoonist Laureate, and has received the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. For more information, visit edwardkoren.com.

Louise Dunn Herman, BS Art Education ’65, has taught art to all ages, from kindergarten to adult, and retired after 15 years of teaching at Glen Cove High School, with a 13-year advisorship of their yearbook. She studied the Art Students’ League Frank Reilly method for five years, traveled extensively in Europe, and has exhibited and sold her work nationally and internationally, showing two paintings at the National Arts Club. She sold many paintings at the AGB Gallery on 57th Street in New York.

She has stayed in touch with Alex Katz, her beloved painting teacher at Pratt.

Her website is www.louiseherman.com.

John B. Vrabel, BID ’65; MS Package Design ’74; and MFA ’75, now retired from his own design firm, has collaborated

Prattfolio

with writer and critic Fred Jarvis to design and publish a biography of his wife, Eleanor D’Antuono. Written from a historical perspective, the book, Always the Ballerina, traces her long career, from her time as a baby ballerina at 14 years old with the Ballets Russes through her 20 years as a prima ballerina with American Ballet Theatre, and beyond.

done commercial illustration for MGD Investments, most currently for new Qdoba and Starbucks locations in East Meadow, New York, and Panera Bread and advertising for Gabby’s Gourmet.

Are you a member of the upcoming 50th reunion class of 1970? Connect with Pratt Alumni Engagement for up­dates on the 50th reunion celebrations Haig Khachatoorian, BID ’67, has plan­ned for Commencement 2020. Email moved to Los Angeles from North alumni@pratt.edu or call 718.399.4447.

Carolina, where he retired as Emeritus Professor of Industrial Design. He served Milton Green, BFA Advertising for 30 years at the NCSU College of Design ’71, published the novel A Psychic’s Design in Raleigh, as Department Party, available as an ebook on Amazon.

Head, Associate Dean for Research, and Director of Graduate Programs in ID. He chaired committees for six successful PhD in Design candidates and numerous master’s students. His cross-functional course (Design, Business, Engineering graduate students on team-based projects), the Product Innovation Lab, was cited by Forbes magazine as one of the top 10 in the US. Khachatoorian re­ ceived awards for teaching, research, and service during his tenure at NC State.

Photo by Twelfth Night Photography He can be reached at hkhacha@ncsu.edu.

Constance A. Smith, BFA Art Education ’71; MID ’73, received the McKean Cup from the AACA at their National Convention, for her book, Damsels in Design; Women Pioneers In The Automotive Industry: 1939–1959 (Schiffer Books, 2018). The award recog­ nizes the author who contributed Congratulations to the 50th reunion class of most to automotive history. The book 1969! Read about the celebration of this features a large number of Pratt ID year’s reunion at Commencement on p. 36. graduates and 415 photos.

Irene Buszko, BFA ’69, had an exhi­ bition of her paintings, Flowering Trees of Victorian Richmond Hill, at the Voelker Orth Museum Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden in Flushing, New York, from April 6 to June 30.

1970s Anne Dushanko Dobek, MS ’70, exhibited prints from her Perilous Journey series in the exhibition Armistice Day at the Puffin Foundation this winter.

Perilous Journey is her extended series of layered monoprints that reference the impact of wars and the dangerous plight of refugees around the globe. Created by Dushanko Dobek at the Robert Blackburn Studios, these prints were also shown in the artist’s solo exhibition at the Print­ making Council of New Jersey, and in the Robeson Gallery at Rutgers University.

George Ranalli, FAIA, BArch ’72, has teamed up with UK-based Barratt Homes to use the latest 3-D rendering techniques to bring to life Ranalli’s “totem-style tower” design for the famous “Crossroads of the World.”

The Guardian, Business Insider, Lonely Planet, and a number of other news outlets highlighted renderings for John Fackre, BID ’70, has recently Ranalli’s tower of theaters, circa 1984, been involved in a wide variety of illus­ originally an entry drawn by hand for trations for businesses and residents of the Municipal Art Society-sponsored his hometown of Williston Park and also competition for visually striking ideas to East Williston, Long Island. He has also regenerate Times Square.

Fall/Winter 2019

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Michela Griffo, My Funny Valentine, oil and pencil on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 1979, part of the permanent collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum

Michela Griffo, MFA ’70, has a painting in Art After Stonewall, 1969–1989, the first major exhibition to examine the impact on visual culture of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ ) liberation movement. The Leslie-Lohman Museum debuted the exhibition this spring, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, and it will be on view at the Frost Museum in Miami through January 2020 and the Columbus Museum of Art from February 14 to May 20, 2020.

Griffo also has work in Queer Forms at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, through December 7. This June, Griffo was one of the Grand Marshals of the New York City Pride March, as a member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), the group founded 50 years ago that launched the first Gay Pride March in June 1970.

She recently reflected on her experiences with the GLF in an expansive interview with fellow Pratt alumna Gwen Shockey, MFA ’17, as part of Shockey’s Addresses Project, an online oral history archive.

Brian Paul Wiegand, BME ’72, recently hosted a seminar titled “Automotive Lateral Dynamics and Mass Properties,” held under the auspices of the Society of Allied Weight Engineers as part of that professional engineering society’s 78th International Conference in Norfolk, Virginia. The seminar was an all-day affair held on Monday, May 20, in the Momentum Room of the Norfolk Hilton, and was well received. This auto­ motive engineering seminar was just one of a series of such seminars held by the society, beginning in 2017 at a Regional Conference in Irving, Texas.

Jon Corbino, Fair Racetrack © Lee Corbino/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, New York

Lee Corbino, BFA ’74, taught art and design for three years in Valle de Angeles, Honduras, in the US Peace Corps, begin­ ning in 1976. Upon returning to the states in 1981, she began working on the archives

Class Notes

of artist Jon Corbino, NA (1905–1964), curating his works and beginning his catalogue raisonné. Lee would appreciate hearing from anyone with information on the location of Jon Corbino’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures, and/or with recollections, letters, photgraphs, and other documentary material; she can be reached at leecorbino@verizon.net.

Steven Bleicher, Dollmaker’s Rocker

Steven Bleicher, BFA ’77; MFA ’79, showed graphite and mixed media works at a solo exhibition, Southern Stories of the Kings Highway, at the North Charleston City Gallery, which ran from April 1 to 30, 2019.

Bleicher is a professor of visual arts at Coastal Carolina University.

Phoebe Farris, MPS Art Therapy ’77, Purdue University Professor Emerita, photographer, and freelance arts critic based in New Jersey, New York, and Washington, DC, published an article in Cultural Survival on Jeffrey Gibson’s work in this year’s Whitney Biennial.

Farris reviews several works by Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor, including his mixed media hanging sculptures that reference Native American regalia worn by participants in the Ghost Dance, a movement of peaceful, spiritual resis­ tance across tribes in the 1800s.

Dennis O’Brien, BFA Integrative Studies ’77, showed some 50 of his watercolor paintings in a show titled The Eyes Have It at the Hygienic Gallery in New London, Connecticut. The show ran from July 6 through August 3.

Meryl Taradash, MFA ’78, installed To B. (Brancusi), this spring in the Clifton Sculpture Park in front of City Hall in Clifton, New Jersey. She writes that it is

45

“a tribute to the Romanian sculptor, one of the last century’s most important artists.

I created the 11-foot-high column by twisting three sheets of aluminum into a spiraling obelisk.”

New York State Assemblyman Tony D’Urso and his wife, Maria, present a copy of a Holocaust diary to Pope Francis. Photo courtesy of Assemblyman D’Urso

Tony D’Urso, BS Construction Management ’79; MArch ’83, was honored by Pope Francis for his family’s efforts during World War II to protect two Jewish families in Italy. In 1944, D’Urso’s father took the families into hiding; five-year-old D’Urso acted as a lookout.

D’Urso went on to a career in public ser­ vice, working as Assistant Commissioner of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction for New York City, serving as Town of North Hempstead Councilman, and doing humanitarian work in third world countries. Last year, he was reunited with the families he helped save, after a Holocaust diary was found in the National Archives of Italy that linked the families; a copy was presented to the Pope.

Suzanne Volmer, BFA ’79, showed works on paper in a group exhibition at Gallery BOM in Boston’s SoWa Art District in July. Volmer credits the ability to sustain freedom of thought, expres­ sion, and discipline of practice to the influences of Pratt drawing instructors Toshio Odate and Ted Kurahara.

She loved Pratt. Immediately after grad­ uating, she began to exhibit. She had studio space on East 18th Street in New York before locating to a larger space in Lincoln, Rhode Island. Volmer exhibits internationally: sculpture, installations, and works on paper.

A member of AICA, she also is a regular contributor to Artscope magazine and writes for Sculpture magazine.

1980s

Liz Goldberg, MFA ’81, Visiting Associate Professor of Fashion Design, showcased a collection of her new paint­ ings and her larger-than-life animation film, Cuban Queens, as part of Philadelphia Fashion Week’s Lux Pop-Up Experience.

Made in collaboration with filmmaker Warren Bass and animator Lowell Boston, Cuban Queens is inspired by “the arche­ type of the flamboyantly uninhibited female, and the political empowerment she represents.” Cuban Queens has been in 30 international film festivals in 20 countries, and Goldberg was recently interviewed by Rosemary Connors about the film on NBC10.

Peter Reich, MID ’81, had his original folding-bicycle design, the Swift Folder, highlighted in The Red Hook Star Review.

The design debuted in 1996 and was manufactured by scooter company Xootr until last year. As of this writing, Reich still has a few of the original frames and takes custom orders, and he recently began prototyping a design for a new, titanium frame.

Laura J. Padgett, BFA Painting ’80, had a solo exhibition, Open Equations, at Galerie Peter Sillem in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, September through October 2019. Padgett’s work “explores unoccupied spaces, both real and Left to right: Jim Morgan, Brian J. McCarthy, imaginary, to reveal truths that are and Joanne DePalma often overlooked. She travels along the complex interfaces between memory and the present, between private and Brian J. McCarthy, BFA Interior Design public, between nature and culture.” ’83, and classmate Joanne DePalma, Her website is www.lpadgett.net.

Interior Design ’83, had a wonderful reunion with their professor Jim Morgan last year. McCarthy reached out to Jill Withrow Baker, MFA ’81, Morgan after all these years and he gra­ designed and built her dream studio ciously agreed to meet at McCarthy’s next to her and Lee Pennington’s home office on West 57th Street. McCarthy and in Louisville, Kentucky. The 1,400DePalma were both interior design square-foot studio has concrete floors students of Morgan’s and they have re­ radiantly heated, 22 rooftop solar mained close friends, along with several panels, and windows designed for passother interior design classmates from ive heating and cooling, and to allow the class of 1983, Lisa Brecher, Peter light for painting. Baker completed her David McGough, BFA Photography MFA in the building adjoining Pratt’s Kelaher, Julia Doyle, Angelo Ferrara, ’79, released a book, Fame, collecting architecture department and was influ­ Michele Beaudoin, and Michael some of his greatest shots as a photogra­ enced and encouraged by architecture DeLoach. McCarthy’s professional webpher of celebrities. The volume features students. Her master’s exhibition was a site is www.bjminc.com and DePalma’s his photographs and stories of notables series of collages featuring houses made is www.joannedepalma.com. such as Mick Jagger, Elizabeth Taylor, of generic matter, such as butterflies, Michael Jackson, and more. ice, and auto-body parts. She always John Steven Gurney, BFA Illustration wanted to be an architect, and building ’84, writes that Ninja Baseball Blast, a peaceful working environment for the sequel to his humorous graphic herself fulfilled that aspiration. novel Fuzzy Baseball, was published in

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Fall/Winter 2019

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David Kramer, MFA Sculpture ’87, opened a solo show at Front Room Gallery in New York City in June and joined with Celine to launch a new line of men’s fashion (Fall/Winter 2019) based around his work, during fashion week Paris.

May by Papercutz. His latest picture book, The Bossy Pirate, was published last October by Schiffer. Gurney received his MFA in Illustration from the University of Hartford in 2017. He taught this summer at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and is teaching this fall at Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

Matt Magee, MFA ’86, had a mono­ graph, Matt Magee Works 2012–2018, published by Radius Books this spring.

His website is www.mattmagee.info.

Photo by Roger Westerman

Stephanie Strickland, MSLIS ’84, published How the Universe Is Made: Poems New & Selected, wonderfully reviewed by Julie Wade in The Rumpus.

Strickland was interviewed for Touch the Donkey Supplement #122 and recorded an interview for Yale University Radio.

New poems appeared in Chicago Review and online at Big Other (May 14, 2019).

Earlier this fall, she had readings at Pen + Brush in Manhattan, Pioneer Valley Festival in Amherst, and the Virginia Fall Festival of the Book in Fairfax.

Allan Neuwirth, BFA Communi­ cations Design ’86, is producing, writing, and voice directing Fairy Tale Forest, the pilot for an animated musical TV series, and producing State of Dispute, a docu­ mentary about the BDS movement.

Previously he was a producer of the fea­ ture films Call Me By Your Name, Change in the Air, and Drawing Home, and screen­ writer of animated TV series including Space Racers, Octonauts, and Tumble Leaf.

This past summer, Neuwirth’s illustra­ tions for Where in America is Carmen Roxanne (Beausoleil) Turner, BID Sandiego? (Golden Books) were auctioned ’84, had a recent career move that took at Swann Galleries in New York City, her from the heartland (Nebraska), where along with original art from his syndicat­ she served as a compliance officer ed comic strip Chelsea Boys. for UnitedHealthcare, back to the East Coast, where she was appointed Senior Director, Corporate Compliance, for Robert Talarczyk, MS Communi­ Omnicell, a medical device company cations Design ’86, writes, “Platinum with a location in Cranberry Township, & Gold Found in Pennsylvania by Pratt Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Turner Graduate.” Talarczyk, CEO of Darkhorse and her husband, Fred, have settled on Design in Lancaster, Pennsylvania a 42-acre farm with their horses in (founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, where they 2007), was “honored by the 2019 Graphis enjoy horseback riding, carriage driving, Annual with a ‘Special Award’ known as hunting, and fishing in their spare time. the Platinum Award . . . but also a Gold Turner was a winner of the Rowena Award for a second entry! For decades, Reed travel fellowship awarded to an the Graphis Annual has been one of the Industrial Design graduating senior most prestigious international awards and publications recognizing proin 1984. fessional graphic design, advertising, illustration, and photography. I am deeply proud and grateful!” His website is www.darkhorsedesign-usa.com.

Class Notes

Roger Westerman, BID ’88, celeb­ rated the 20th year of his exhibition de­ sign firm, Roger Westerman Design LLC, in September. Recent projects include the new Legacy Gallery at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, which got a great review in Architectural Digest, Walt Whitman: America’s Poet at the New York Public Library, and Remembering Vietnam at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Westerman thanks professors Fred Blumlein and Bill Fogler for showing him the way.

Gerry Bannan, MFA ’89, exhibited new work in a solo show, Peaceable Kingdom, at Virginia Tech’s Moss Arts Center. Bannan, in a departure from his usual ballpoint pen style, worked in watercolor to render birds, plants, and other creatures, creating vividly detailed nature scenes. Full of unexpected critters and moments of wonder, Bannan’s new work celebrates nature’s intricacy.

The show ran from May 9 to June 1.

1990s

Paul Metaxatos, BID ’90, Principal of Boston-based Motiv, an integrated product design, branding, and packaging agency, was a featured panelist at “Intellectual Property and Branding for Startups: Legal and Design Best Practices, and Real-World Considerations.”

Cosponsored by the IP law firm Wolf Greenfield, the webinar covered legal

47

and design best practices for early- and later-stage companies. Three start-up companies—Juicero, Coravin, and Eight Sleep—also shared real-world experiences.

Paul noted, “Emerging companies are often confused about the most effective ways to combine and finance product engineering, brand strategy, and legal protection of those assets.”

James Murray’s Vine Chandelier hangs over the Simon Pearce bar, with interiors by Murray.

James Murray, BID ’90; MPS Design Management ’97; Visiting Assistant Professor of Design Management, creat­ ed the Vine Chandelier for Simon Pearce, a piece that has been very successful in the year since its launch. Designed to illuminate a dining table, kitchen island, or entryway in handblown glass and hand-forged metal, the Vine Chandelier was inspired by clusters of grapes growing in the South of France, where Murray traveled to find inspiration for his work.

Mark D. Shelton, Piegan Girl with Play TeePee

Mark D. Shelton, BFA Communi­ cations Design ’91, Seneca-Honorary Chinook Tribal Artist, had an exhibition, Passion for Our First Peoples, at Flury & Company gallery in Seattle. Shelton was the first “living artist” represented.

He works from vintage photographs (circa 1898–1920) by Seattle’s worldrenowned photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis. Shelton’s artwork con­ sists of rare and exotic papers collaged

Prattfolio

over stretched canvas with acrylic paint.

This was Shelton’s 10th solo show and 45th exhibition. He has exhibited in nine states, plus Italy and Germany. His three series include Portraits, Peopled Landscapes, and Figurative Works.

Long Island City, providing a shorter and safer commute for pedestrians and bikers.

Jason A. Morris, MID ’96, was pro­ moted to Director of the Industrial Design program at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.

Joseph Caserto, BFA Communi­ It is a small and highly selective Bachelor cations Design ’92, was awarded two of Science in Industrial Design degree American Graphic Design Awards from program.

GDUSA magazine. The winners were features from ADDitude Magazine, among the 10 percent of roughly 10,000 entries selected to receive Certificates of Excellence. This marks the 11th con­ secutive year that Caserto has been a recipient. His award-winning entries were published in the printed 55th Anniversary Design Annual, the website and mobile showcase, and download­ able digital edition.

Jean Shin, BFA ’94; MS ’96, has a project, Allée Gathering, on view at Storm King Art Center until November 24. In the work, Shin responds to Storm King’s ongoing revitalization project along the center’s Maple Allée with a 50-foot-long communal picnic table crafted out of salvaged maple trees. The work offers Adam Wallenta, BFA ’96, released visitors a place to reflect on the changing an all-ages graphic novel, Punk Taco, landscape and the hidden lives of trees. created with his six-year-old son.

The book was nominated for and won a 2019 Kids’ Comics Award. More infor­ mation is available at www.punktaco.com.

Amy Egner, MS Communications Design ’95, is working at Hero Digital, a boutique customer-experience agency based in San Francisco. As Director of Content Strategy, she’s led successful initiatives for several clients including Lions Clubs International, Twitter, and Berkshire Hathaway. She is also currently serving as Vice Chair of Pratt’s Bay Area alumni network and creating art in her spare time.

Emi Katayama, BFA Film ’99, had screenings of her award-winning feature Jun Aizaki, AIA, BArch ’96, and his documentary, Wind Riders, in October, firm CRÈME were spotlighted in The in Albuquerque, New Mexico, suppArchitect’s Newspaper, Gothamist, Brooklyn orted by the city and the Albuquerque Daily Eagle, and other news outlets for International Balloon Fiesta, the largest their LongPoint Bridge project proposal. balloon festival in the world. The film is The highly anticipated floating timber about three balloonists who dedicated bridge would connect Greenpoint to their lives to their sport—a masterful solo

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Will Day, MArch ’04, has worked within a number of realms in his life, from Peace Corps, to Wall Street, to architecture, to abstract painting. Earlier this year, he gave a TEDx talk based on his experiences, “Finding Creativity in the Chaos,” which was presented by the University of Colorado Boulder and is available on YouTube. He discussed finding direction amid disruptions and the process of discovering purpose through creative practice. “The education I received at Pratt under Dr. [Catherine] Ingraham was a major influence on my current professional endeavors,” Day wrote recently in a note to Pratt.

“I can’t thank the School of Architecture enough for the fantastic lessons I learned that have shaped and inspired me to have the courage to pursue my purpose to become a full-time artist and creative spirit.” Day was also recently featured in an article on Forbes.com, “When Getting Fired Is Actually the Best Thing for Your Career,” which highlighted his professional pivot to fine arts.

Jason Oliveri, BFA Film/Animation forcing you to put people in categories ’02, is the Executive in Charge of they might not expect. For more inforProduction for Nickelodeon’s new mation, check out zazzgames.com. series LEGO City Adventures. A brandnew CG-animated series, LEGO City Adventures premiered Saturday, June 22, on Nickelodeon! The 10-episode-long series depicts “the funny, smart, and dy­ namic slices of life within the sprawling Chris Wright, MFA Fine Arts ’99, and diverse LEGO City community, Adjunct Professor CCE, received following the absurd and action-packed a MacDowell Colony Fellowship for the adventures of its residents.” LEGO City fall/winter of 2019. Wright also attended Adventures is produced by Flaunt a residency at the Brush Creek Foundation Animation and Passion Pictures and writ­ for the Arts in Saratoga, Wyoming, ten by Jon Colton Barry (Phineas and Ferb), during the month of October.

Steven Banks (SpongeBob SquarePants), Jamie Moyer (Modern Family), and Brian Hunt (Second City Chicago).

2000s hot-air balloon pilot whose passion tran­ scends generations and a team of two famed avid competitors trying to defend their world title in a high-risk gas-balloon race. The premiere was on October 7, during the Balloon Fiesta. For more infor­ mation, visit www.windridersfilm.com.

Becky Beamer, BFA Film ’02, received the Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short Film at the Portland Film Festival. Her film WARD: B12 fol­ lows the patients, doctors, caregivers, and midwives at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, and works to raise awareness about the need for improved women’s healthcare.

Beamer is currently Assistant Professor at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE.

Class Notes

Drew St Marie, BFA Computer Graphics ’02, has started the card game company Zazz Games to bring people of all kinds together to laugh and bond over party card games. Two games are available on Amazon. Ruler of Rules has players stack rules on opponents to make them act silly as they collect points before the Alien Rulers conquer Earth.

Yearbooked asks players to decide who fits into each crazy yearbook category.

But you can vote for a person only once,

Chelsea Bruner, PhD, MS History of Art and Design ’03, coedited, with Margaret R. Laster, New York: Art and Cultural Capital of the Gilded Age, published by Routledge in 2019.

The anthology explores the conscious shaping of the city into the cultural hub it is today, by New York’s Gilded Age elites in the 1870s and 1880s.

49

Michele (Marino) Kelly, BFA Fine Arts; MS Art Education ’03, a middle school visual arts teacher at PS 207 Elizabeth G. Leary, a K–8 school in Brooklyn, had the honor of being a Big Apple Award finalist. Out of the 79,000 total teachers in New York City, she was one of 200 to make it to the final round in May.

Brad Ascalon, MID ’06, was awarded the Elle Deco International Design Award in Milan for his Hepburn Collection, a glassware collection designed for Nude Glass and launched at Milan’s Salone del Mobile in 2018. Inspired by Audrey Hepburn and made in consultation with mixologists from around the world, the glassware aims to elevate the experience of cocktail making and drinking to the highest degree. In addition to the Marilena Sausa, MS, OTR/L, PAT, EDIDA, Hepburn has received numerous BFA Graphic Design ’04, was working awards in recent months, including as a graphic designer for more than 15 Interior Design magazine’s Best of Year years before trying for a career move, Award, Chicago Athenaeum Good inspired by her sister. “It snow-balled Design Award, IF Design Award, and from there,” she writes. “In 2017 I earned two National Elle Deco Awards for both a BS and MS in Science for Occupational Turkey and Ukraine.

Therapy. Currently, I am a licensed and registered Occupational Therapist in New York and New Jersey. I work in the Lisa M. Chronister, FAIA, MArch ’06, NYC Department of Education as an was recently elevated to the American Occupational Therapist. Although Institute of Architects College of I switched careers, I still design every day Fellows. AIA Fellows are recognized for my students.” with the AIA’s highest membership honor for their exceptional work and contributions to architecture and society.

Valeen (Parubchenko) Bhat, BFA; Chronister was specifically recognized MS Art & Design Education ’05, writes for her impact in developing emerging that in October, Private Picassos Art professionals, advancing diversity, and Studio celebrated four years in Park Slope. engaging with communities. She was Bhat is founder of Private Picassos, a two-term President of AIA Central a visual art company based in Brooklyn, Oklahoma and has served on multiple New York. She started Private Picassos AIA national award juries and committees. in 2006, traveling around New York City Currently, Chronister leverages her ar­ directly to clients for private lessons. chitectural experience, enthusiasm, and Thirteen years later, the company has insight to lead the Current Planning and a staff of more than 20 art teachers who Urban Design Division of the City of lead programs around New York City, Oklahoma City Planning Department.

Westchester, Long Island, and the Hamptons and at their Park Slope Art Studio.

Simon Kang, MID ’05, writes that the past few years have been a very busy and productive time. “I have launched 14+ new products and 12+ product refreshes for a baby product brand in Southern California called Munchkin, and I have received more than nine product design awards in one single year alone. Also, I have been mentoring three to four in­ dustrial design interns per year, which has been a grateful experience.” He also had the opportunity to speak at the LA Design Festival in June.

Prattfolio

Nick Freeman, BArch ’06, has been working on a model city for a number of years, including during his time at Pratt.

He writes,“The fictional town is set in a 10 x 12-foot room located in Southampton, Long Island, and is the culmination of thousands of hours and thousands of dollars of investment. It is more of an emerging urban design study than a functioning train set, though attention to detail through model making in architec­ ture design courses has influenced the character of the project.”

Fall/Winter 2019

Michael Nolasco, MS Communi­ cations Design ’06, has been working as the Creative Director of Beach Lion, a Florida-based boutique creative agency he runs alongside his wife, Laura Purvis Nolasco. With a special focus on video production, they have worked with a wide range of schools and brands, including the University of Georgia, the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, and the nonprof­ it organization Children’s Dream Fund.

Pascale Sablan, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP, BArch ’06, became a director on the American Institute of Architects New York Board of Directors and has been appointed as an American Institute of Architects National Strategic Planning Committee Member. Sablan also had her SAY IT LOUD United Nations exhibition, which debuted at the UN’s New York campus, translated into eight languages and displayed in poster form all over the world. The exhibition has been show­ cased in Bujumbura, Geneva, Harare, Lagos, Lome, Nairobi, New Delhi, Minsk, and Yaounde. The purpose of the exhibi­ tion is to raise the visibility of women and diverse designers to the built environment.

Enrico Miguel Thomas, BFA ’06, recently choreographed and was cast in a martial arts fashion film called The Monks of Brooknam for director and Pratt faculty member Sewra Kidane.

The film, which premiered in September, is narrated by hip-hop pioneer lyricist Sadat X and features kimono designs from the Anitra Michelle Homme collection.

Caitlin Duffy, BArch ’07, and Yulho Lee, BArch ’07, wrote that they “welcomed the newest, littlest Pratt Cat to the family, Oisin Duffy Lee. (We don’t have an official Pratt Cat for the photo op but he’s hanging with his stuffed goyangi, ‘cat’ in Korean!)”

50

The first Who Is She Sunday Salon with (left to right) Tania Pabon; Rebecca van Laer; Chanice Hughes-Greenberg, BFA Writing ’10; Laura Henriksen, BFA Writing ’12; and Alana Mohamed, BFA Writing ’14. Image courtesy of Who Is She newsletter

Chanice Hughes-Greenberg, BFA Writing ’10, celebrated the first anniversary of Who Is She, her newsletter and salon series highlighting women in creative fields and the journeys they have taken to establish their professions.

Through interviews, conversations, and community-wide calls for recommendations, Hughes-Greenberg shines a light on the big questions, influences, and inspirations behind their work, to build connections and introduce readers to new voices. “This platform is important because, even as women strive for further equality, there are still many areas that are lacking,” she says. “Especially as a Black woman, I felt it important to share the stories of other women, so someone else can read a Who Is She interview and become inspired to start their own blog or business. I like focusing on creative fields because the possibilities are endless—I’ve spoken with writers, photographers, jewelry designers. I think it also ties back to my personal interests—I love art and design and want to help promote women within those industries.” The newsletter website is whoisshe.news.

Photo by Julie Hagenbuch, BFA Writing ’09

the Kaneko Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, this spring. The multidisci­ plinary exhibition, titled The Human Condition, showcased Dodd’s work alongside that of artist Jun Kaneko and five fellow artists, encouraging viewers “to immerse themselves in the question of how we define what it means to be human.” Featured in the show, Dodd’s Fall 2019 collection builds upon a blind contour drawing Dodd created while studying at Pratt, paired with an infusion of the American Southwest. The exhibi­ tion and Dodd’s collection were both highlighted on WWD.com.

Elke Reva Sudin, BFA Illustration ’09, and Saul Sudin, BFA Film ’06, an­ nounced their latest joint project, baby girl Asiya Shamira Sudin! Asiya was born on March 28, 2019. As a combination of both alumni, the new parents predict Asiya will become an animator or defy their parents and be a doctor.

Bill Gerhard, Advanced Certificate, Art and Design Education ’10, participat­ ed in MORPH, the 15th Annual Betsy 2010s Meyer Memorial Exhibition at the Main Line Art Center in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The exhibition featured the recipients of the 2019 Meyer Family Award for Contemporary Art. The artists in MORPH shared a common under­ standing of the influence of time on the environments we inhabit. Their work called viewers to consider the impact of elemental forces, creation, destruction, Jeffrey Dodd, BFA Fashion Design and the formation of the new. ’10, exhibited a selection of archived pieces and his Fall 2019 collection at

Class Notes

Jenna Malloy, BFA Art and Design Education ’10, launched Paints & Pans, a cake shop in Kittery, Maine. Malloy, who specializes in “object cakes,” uses her fine arts background to create oneof-a-kind desserts for every occasion.

Josh Sobel, BA Critical and Visual Studies ’10, premiered the latest film he produced, Huachicolero–The Gasoline Thieves, in the International Narrative Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring, and the film won Best New Narrative Director at the festival.

The Gasoline Thieves follows a teenage boy, a farmhand in the Mexican

51

countryside trying innocently to impress creator Jon Ronson, investigates the his crush, as he gets swept up in a crim- death of adult film actor August Ames, inal underworld of gasoline extraction. who took her life in the immediate aftermath of a poorly received tweet.

The show, which has been reviewed positively by Rolling Stone and Vulture, among others, explores the many nuances of call-out culture, stigma, and mental health. Presently, Misitzis is producing stories at This American Life and working with the comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll on a new podcast.

Anthony W. Acock, MFA Com­ munications Design ’12, received both tenure to Associate Professor and promotion to Department Chair for the Jason Golob, BArch ’11, and Cory Department of Art, Art History, and Watson, BArch ’11, have partnered to Visual Communication Design at Cal launch Armada, a furniture design Poly Pomona. Cal Poly Pomona is a and fabrication studio located in the unique and diverse program, located Brooklyn Navy Yard. They have recently within Los Angeles County, with over 500 released their first collection, the design majors, and ranked in the top Gen line. Find them on Instagram at 10 of social mobility for the nation. @armada.ny or online at armadany.com.

Additionally, this year he completed a two-year term as Education Director Lina Misitzis, BFA Writing ’11, report­ for AIGA Los Angeles. He writes, “I am ed and produced The Last Days of August, grateful for Pratt’s MFA program, which released earlier this year by Audible. has led me to where I am today, Chair of In the podcast, Misitzis, alongside a unique and diverse department.”

Prattfolio

Fall/Winter 2019

Photo © Rafael Gamo

Isaac Michan, MSArch ’13, was selected as a 2019 Design Vanguard by Architectural Record, one of the most prestigious architectural publications in the United States. Started in 2000, Design Vanguard is an annual feature honoring emerging practices from around the world “that are demonstrating inventive approaches to shaping the built environment,” many of which are among the best-known firms practicing today.

52

Photo of Mickalene Thomas, BFA Painting ’00, by Alexa Hoyer. Courtesy of ART WORLD CONFERENCE

Ben Fino-Radin, MSILS and MFA Digital Arts ’14; Lisa Kim, MID ’05; and Mickalene Thomas, BFA Painting ’00, all presented at the inaugural Art World Conference this spring in New York City. The event, which took place April 25 to 27 in Tribeca, was well-attended and received positive feedback for identifying relevant and pressing concerns for artists and arts professionals, covering topics from Instagram to intellectual property. Fino-Radin, the founder and lead conservator of Small Data Industries, a consultancy focused on preserving time-based art, illuminated best practices in digital archiving. Kim, the Director of the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City, discussed sustaining a lifelong artistic practice. Esteemed artist Thomas, whose artwork spans painting, collage, video, photography, and installation, spoke on a panel concerning the value of protecting intellectual property. They presented among a lineup of notable presenters all emphasizing personal development and empowerment for artists and professionals who work closely with artists.

Lettering, for the project Hand-drawn Type, and Silver in Book Design, for Oh! Mushroom! which, along with playful pictures, offers simple introduc­ tions and fun facts to familiarize readers with mushrooms.

Installation view of Errata: Books Do Clutter a Room, with work by Pablo Alabau, Tomás Alonso, Colectivo la Cosa, Miguel Leiro, Jorge Penadés, Sara Regal, and Julen Ussía. Photo courtesy of Miguel Leiro

Miguel Leiro, BID ’16, brought togeth­ er new work from an assembly of Spanish designers for the exhibition Errata: Books Do Clutter a Room at Mast Books this May. The show explored the role of books in furnishing everyday life, as objects of “Tracking the White Shadow” performance intellect or dust-gathering placeholders, premiere, April 6, 2019. Performers: Izumi Ashizawa and Zhiwei Wu. © Han Qin. Photo by functional pieces or design artifacts, JoJo Zhong, courtesy of Fou Gallery while asking larger questions about the current state of “experimental” design.

The exhibition website is errata.info.

Qin Han, MFA ’17, showed her most recent body of work, Ethereal Evolution, at Fou Gallery in Brooklyn. The collection featured eight large cyanotypes on paper and integrated live performance into their production process. Improv­ isational dancers performed on pre­coated paper and exposed their body movements to light. For the exhibition, Han codesigned an immersive perfor­ mance, “Tracking the White Shadow,” in which the audience traveled through the gallery space as the improvisational dancers interacted with the paper.

Rachel Gisela Cohen, MFA Fine Arts ’18, is an artist, educator, and independent curator based in Brooklyn, New York.

Since graduating from Pratt, she has been awarded fellowships for her work from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Zahra Patterson, MFA Writing ’16, Vermont Studio Center, and the National won a 2019 Lambda Literary Award Endowment for the Arts. She has (Lesbian Memoir/Biography for exhibited nationally and internationally Chronology, published by Ugly Duckling at numerous institutions, including Presse. The annual awards celebrate Hunter College, the Visual Arts Center the best in LGBTQ literature. of New Jersey, and the Armenia Art Fair. She currently works as Museum Educator for the Museum of Arts and Design and as Programs Assistant for Chashama’s Space to Present program.

For more information on Cohen’s current studio practice, please visit www.rachelcohenstudio.com.

Wei-Ching Huang, MS Package Design ’18, received several honors this year, including the Student Runner Up in Packaging Award in the Core77 Chun-Hui Chang, MFA Commu­ Design Awards 2019, for ocare, nications Design ’17, won two 2019 a colorful, tangram-inspired concept for Indigo Design Awards, Gold in a children’s dental-care kit. The concept

Class Notes

also received two 2019 Indigo Design Awards, a Silver Award in Packaging Design and a Bronze Award in Branding; for a luxury perfume concept, Huang received a Bronze Award in Packaging Design.

Vardhan Mehta, BArch ’18, received the 2019 a/e ProNet David W. Lakamp AIA Scholarship, cosponsored by American Institute of Architects (AIA) and a/e ProNet. The scholarship will enable him to pursue a Master of Architecture in Urban Design at Harvard GSD in fall 2019.

Mehta also shared the news that he and five fellow Pratt alumni have formed an interdisciplinary team to launch ACELAB, a democratic B2B ecosystem that features products, vendors, and services in one marketplace for disrupting the architecture, construction, and engineering industry. The team consists of Mehta and Boying Chen, BFA Graphic Design ’17; Ina Chen, BFA Interior Design ’18; Carly McQueen, BArch ’17; Boqin Peng, BFA Graphic Design ’17; and Andrew Setiawan, BArch ’18. At the time of this writing, the startup was scheduled for a presentation at Harvard Angels Network for seed investment.

Submission Guidelines: Send submissions of 100 words or less to classnotes@pratt.edu.

Please include your full name, degree or program, and graduation year. All submissions will be edited for length, clarity, and style. Image submissions should be high-resolution (300 dpi at 5 x 7 inches).

53

We didn’t get to say, “thank you.”

She spoke to the world with images snapped through the lens of her Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic cameras, photographing models and celebrities in a style that she referred to as “relaxed portraiture.”

Leading ladies such as Julie Andrews, Vivien Leigh, and Mary Jane Russell were immortalized by her in advertising campaign layouts or magazine covers shots. Of her time in Europe, famous New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham once wrote to her, “You were a camera and eyewitness to a golden age—the rebirth of Paris after the war.”

When Virginia Thoren, Certificate in Advertising ’42, passed away in 2017, Pratt Institute became a beneficiary of her estate. Included in her incredibly generous bequest, and because of her stature on the world stage, is The Virginia Thoren Collection at Pratt Institute Libraries, curated by her close friend Betty Guernsey; the Virginia Thoren Endowed Archivist, a rotating, two-year project archivist over the next decade; and a future Virginia Thoren exhibition. The depth of planning and regard for Pratt and her education shines through in this incredible legacy gift.

Although Virginia Thoren spoke to millions through her work as an art director and couture photographer for such magazines as Vogue & Country, wewe here at at Pratt were and Town and Country, here Pratt were never able to formally thank our former student, Virginia, for her amazing bequest intentions.

Virginia on Assignment with Camera.

Image courtesy of the Virginia Thoren Collection, Pratt Institute Libraries.

Please allow us to thank you.

Reach out to Pratt Institutional Advancement and let us know if you have included Pratt Institute in your will, or if you are interested in doing so.

We want to hear your story.

Most of all, we want to learn why you are so generously including Pratt in your will, or thinking about it.

Please contact Rob Danzig, Director of Planned Giving, today at rdanzig@pratt.edu or 718-399-4296.

Spotlight

Celebrating the 2019 Alumni Achievement Award Winners

The annual Alumni Achievement Awards honor Pratt Institute artists, creative practitioners, and professionals who break rules, defy the odds, and make bold statements through their work and life. This year’s Alumni Achievement Awards honor alumni who have had a distinctive and significant cultural influence in their community. The five winners were honored at a special event held at Brooklyn’s Smack Mellon art space on November 6.

cluded in the collections of MoMA and the Louvre. After decades of dedicated work as a tenured professor, Katavolos is now Visiting Professor of Architecture and Co-director of the Center for Expe­ rimental Structures at Pratt.

Rodriguez is an award-winning, inter­ nationally exhibited Cuban American artist. Inspired by personal history, reli­ gious rituals, politics, memory, and nostalgia, his bold, figurative works are an examination of identity, mortality, and cultural displacement.

Bob Eisenhardt Bob Eisenhardt, BArch ’70, received the Impact Award, recognizing contribu­ tions that have made a deep and mean­ ingful positive impact on the community.

A celebrated film editor, Eisenhardt is an Academy Award nominee, a fourtime Emmy winner, and a two-time recipient of the prestigious American Cinema Editors “Eddie” Award who has shaped more than 60 films, includ­ ing Everything Is Copy (2015) and Free Solo (2018).

Jeremy Martin Jeremy Martin, MPS Art Therapy ’18, received the Rising Star Award, recog­ nizing a Pratt graduate for significant success and the promise of sustained contributions to their creative industry.

Martin is a multidisciplinary artist and art therapist. As a programming special­ ist at Housing Works working with LGBTQ youth, he uses art therapy to help clients heal from trauma and cele­ brate identity development.

William Katavolos William Katavolos, Industrial Design ’49, received the Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring a Pratt graduate whose work has challenged existing paradigms over the course of a prominent career.

His work as an avant-gardist has spanned Edel Rodriguez disciplines including industrial design and architecture, with his manifesto Edel Rodriguez, BFA Painting ’94, re­ “Organics” having become the basis for ceived the Visionary Award, recognizing chemical architecture and his work in­ unique, transformational creative vision.

Spotlight

Joan Semmel Joan Semmel, MFA ’72, received the Impact Award, recognizing contribu­ tions that have made a deep and mean­ ingful positive impact on the community.

With a career that began in the 1960s, Semmel has centered her painting prac­ tice on issues of the body, from desire to aging, as well as those of identity and cultural imprinting. The recipient of nu­ merous honors, Semmel has had her work exhibited around the world. One of her paintings is included in the reopen­ ing exhibition at MoMA, and a traveling retrospective is planned for 2021.

To learn more about the Alumni Achievement Award winners, as well as Pratt Alumni Engagement events, programs, and more, visit www.pratt.edu/alumni.

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A Shared Language of Inquiry Continued from page 1.

engage in creative practice, investigating the way we make space though fabrication, materiality, and sustainability.

Additionally, I work in the community with students. Students have benefited from my research and generate design based on rigorous investigations. That design then gets built in the community, and I have often been able to incorporate this work into my research, hence their work is then published.

DS: I’ve worked with my students on projects for SOFA, the Sculptural Objects Functional Art and Design fair, in Chicago.

For the first project, we designed and constructed a set of furniture utilizing paper tubes sourced from printers at Pratt and print shops around the city. We investigated how to incor­ porate history, and created upholstery patterns based on the architecture of Chicago. Then we incorporated trash bags to create a canopy over the furniture installation, and within the canopy we projected the process of making of the piece—which involved research on both the city’s history and architecture and on the ergonomics of the body.

FB: How do you imagine a future for you and your students with respect to research?

DS: It centers on materiality, making and sustainability, think­ ing about large-scale issues and the upstream considerations that can make the world more habitable. We are thinking about objects and what their lifespan should be, how they can make the planet more sustainable, how they can make relationships between people stronger. We’re thinking about how we can design more universally, so no one feels like they are othered.

Through research, we extend past our own boundaries and establish connections.

AD: Those connections, among our faculty, students, and the outside community, make Pratt special in terms of research.

The participatory nature of our research makes it possible for us to have an extraordinary impact—on the lives of individuals, on communities, on the future of art and design education, and on the world.

In Conversation with the President

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Page 1: Photo by Armon Burton, MSIXD ’20. This page: Detail of upholstery pattern created by Pratt Interior Design students and faculty for SOFA project in 2013, courtesy of Deborah Schneiderman.

FB: What’s interesting about your work is that you go the traditional publication route, but you also publish archival material, by exhibiting the work. That’s what makes indepen­ dent art and design schools’ inquiry so powerful—we don’t just relegate it to the paper, to the book, but beyond that, to the human experience of an exhibition and interaction with artifacts.

FfP.1119

Environmental degradation.

Natural resource shortages.

Sociopolitical inequality.

AI and robotics in daily life.

Pratt students and faculty grapple with the most pressing issues of our time. Wherever their inquiries lead them, The Fund for Pratt supports them every step of the way.

Join us in helping Pratt students and faculty ask, explore, and answer the questions that will shape our lives for generations to come.

Make your contribution to The Fund for Pratt today at www.pratt.edu/give.

Pratt Institute Communications and Marketing 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205 Electronic Service Requested

About the cover “Most everything I do is driven by nature,” says Meghan Rutzebeck, BFA ’19, who explores phenomena of the natural world through sculpture. These investigations have led to experimentation with glazes, to mimic naturally occurring colors, textures, and shapes, and also inquiry into the natural nonvisual qualities of her primary medium, clay. Read more on page 27.