Prattfolio Spring 2018

Pratt folio

Spring/ Summer 2018

The Alumni Magazine of Pratt Institute

Leader ship

Features

8 GO WHERE THERE IS LIGHT For Pratt’s 12th president, Frances Bronet, Leadership Is a Process of Illumination

4 CRIT A conversation with Duks Koschitz, Associate Professor of Undergraduate Architecture, Director of the Design Lab; Che-Wei Wang, BArch ’03, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Architecture; David Franck, BArch ’18; and Adin Rimland, BArch ’18

14 HOW WE LEAD Guiding Wisdom from Pratt Alumni Defining Leadership across Disciplines 6 SOLVED 26 The founders of WearWorks discuss OUR TORCHBEARERS the design process behind their haptic Soon-to-be Alumni Reflect on the navigation device Teachers Who Helped Them Find Their Paths at Pratt 36 NEWS Departments Recent updates from campus 2 and beyond PRACTICE A visit to the office of librarian 38 and artist Deirdre Donohue, NEW AND NOTEWORTHY MSILS ’97, Visiting Assistant Items in the marketplace created Professor, School of Information

by Pratt alumni 44 CLASS NOTES Updates from Pratt alumni on work and life

Prattfolio is published by the Division of Institutional Advancement for the alumni and friends of Pratt Institute. ©2018 Pratt Institute Office of Alumni Relations 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205 Read the magazine online at www.pratt.edu/alumni.

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Vice President of Institutional Advancement Joan Barry McCormick Executive Director of Alumni Relations Sherri Jones Executive Director of Communications and Marketing Jim Kempster Director of Development Communications Charlotte Savidge Senior Editor Jean Hartig

Creative Director Mats Håkansson Associate Creative Director Kara Schlindwein Graphic Designers Chase Booker Erin Cave Dan Romanoski Copy Editor Brandhi Williamson Staff Contributors Marion Hammon Jolene Travis Project Management Stephanie Greenberg

Assistant Director, Traffic and Production David Dupont Photography Daniel Terna Questions? Suggestions?

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

Reach us at prattfolio@pratt.edu.

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

As you read this letter, the energy at Pratt is peaking. Pratt Shows has had extraordinary success, theses have been presented, and finals completed. We are about to graduate our newest class of alumni— an occasion that has a particular meaning for me, as this marks my first Commencement as your president. I am excited to join our faculty, staff, and parents in celebrating the class of 2018, members of a bold new generation of creative and insightful thinkers, makers, and leaders.

Today, more than ever, the investigative and leadership traits Pratt alumni bring to the world are the coin of the realm. Pratt graduates are uniquely positioned to be at the forefront of their disciplines and industries, poised to identify the problems, to build awareness, and ultimately to offer penetrating and perhaps unpredictable resolutions.

Alumni are asking the questions that will affect our lives.

Understanding the conditions that create the world’s challenges.

Introducing unexpected ways of exploring these issues. No matter how far we progress technologically, creative inquiry continues to lead.

In this issue of Prattfolio, alumni from an array of disciplines share their insights on what it takes to lead today, with ideas rooted in the values of a Pratt education. What underlies so much of the advice they offer is listening. Listening as your team members reveal their passions and ambitions. Listening to criticism and challenges.

Listening to unfamiliar communities that ask different questions than the expected. Listening to yourself with a critical self-reflection— aware of your own intuition, its strengths and constraints.

The essential points of leadership I’ve discovered on my path to Pratt, which you can learn more about on page 8, have been anchored in this same principle of listening: Recognize the talent and insights that are present. Build on what those around you are already doing, and be a partner and ally. Make space for others to be excellent, and for that work to be your guide.

As president of Pratt, one essential aspect of my job is to reach out and listen to you, our alumni. You are part of a continuum of learning, and your involvement is vital as we shape the future of the Institute.

Each day as I get to know individuals from every part of this multidimensional community, I discover more and more how truly extraordinary the road ahead will be. I look forward to meeting you on this journey.

Frances Bronet President

Letter from the President

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Practice 1

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From the office of Deirdre Donohue, MSILS ’97, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Information, New York Public Library Art & Architecture Collection, Midtown, New York

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Eight months into her tenure with the New York Public Library’s Art and Architecture Collection, Deirdre Donohue hadn’t fully settled in to her office. “I haven’t had time to get messy yet,” she said of her space, tucked into a lofty room that opens up like a secret trove behind one of the Schwarzman Building’s Employees Only doors.

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She is beginning what she calls her library career’s “third chapter,” following terms at The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography. As a library science educator, she wants her students to come away from her classes with a sense that “there are a lot of places librarians are needed to make material discoverable that aren’t necessarily libraries.”

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1 Donohue, also a practicing artist, keeps a spectrum of books on hand, from reference guides and industry tomes to exhibition catalogs and volumes on art and artists. Her shelves also contain several photobooks, of which she has a substantial personal collection. At Pratt, Donohue teaches Photography Collections, which she says is a growth industry for librarians.

Practice

2 “I take the things people abandon,” notes Donohue, whose office is studded with gems such as wood-block missing-book placeholders and this vintage Achilles library-stamp carousel.

“They are good technologies, sound technologies,” like many of the art books and artworks whose journey through time and ownership brings them to Donohue’s office on their way to the patrons.

3 “The architectural photos, printouts from NYPL Digital Collections, document two moments from the 16 years spent building this library,” says Donohue, who has been studying the history of the NYPL and its architecture and art collections at home. Part of Donohue’s work will be ushering in a new era in that history, “thinking about intelligent collection development, and relationships with partner institutions.”

4 Above Donohue’s desk hang works by photographer friends including Johan Spanner—who made this portrait of a leader of the New York City Afghan expat community—and a piece by Matthew Monteith (5). “This is my particular darling, because with the cruller reclining on blue fur resembling the Venus of Willendorf, this photograph encompasses my love of art, ancient and contemporary—and edible.”

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Crit

Duks Koschitz Associate Professor of Undergraduate Architecture, Director of the Design Lab

David Franck BArch ’18 Adin Rimland BArch ’18

Che-Wei Wang BArch ’03 Adjunct Assistant Professor of Undergraduate Architecture

Duks Koschitz and Che-Wei Wang’s wheels, and it creates this shape that architecture studio, Designing Maembodies two extremes, very clean, chines that Design, prompted stumathematically pure. dents to dig into the underpinnings DAVID FRANCK: Then we went through of design—such as coding, prototypa process of disturbing that very pure ing, and machining—toward the shape, finding interesting things creation of their own 2-D and 3-D along the way (top). design apparatuses. Ultimately, AR: Introducing elements of chaos into student teams interpreted their the system—whether adding spring machines’ output as architectural steel to the arm so it would have a ideas—but much of the studio’s conkickback or hitting it with a hammer versation centered on “noise and at a steady pace—allowed us to get mistakes and failure, breaking things some kind of, what we felt as ownerand fixing stuff,” as Koschitz says, to ship, over this machine process. build students’ technical mastery and DK: That’s a nice way of putting it. confidence to take risks in their work.

You’ve got a cyclic system, you start to modify it, and you thereby take Adin Rimland and David Franck’s ownership of it. investigation involved a mechanical CW: I’m sure you thought about it—to drawing apparatus; a 3-D-modeling what end are you modifying the malathe machine that extruded hot glue chine, how do you evaluate whether and wax; and a bridge-based architecthe turnout is good or bad? tural proposal (bottom right).

AR: If we got something novel, that was a success in a way. If we could conDUKS KOSCHITZ: The first step was ceive the final result before doing the inspired by an idea that [Daniel] experiments, we would consider that Libeskind had—using a chaotic maa fail—or not a step forward. chine to write about architecture, DF: With the final project [3-D drawing which he translated into a machine machine] we would try to break out with chaotic behavior that creates a of that definite torus, or cylindridrawing. We expanded on this idea cal shape (bottom left). by asking students to interpret their DK: So normally you would just spin work as architectural speculations. around one axis. You used two, and CHE-WEI WANG: This studio’s big put [the formwork of the model] into question was what would happen if the machine in one orientation and we wrote our own software, built our then a second time in another orienown machines—would we come up tation. That’s how the geometry of with a different type of architecture? this occurred. How did you make the ADIN RIMLAND: We were excited decision to open up the ends? about building this harmonograph DF: That was partially to have the poten[pendulum-powered drawing matial of hooking into a building, to chine]—you have two different-size create a sort of parasitic architecture.

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AR: So we developed those jig endpieces, those laser-cut fingers— DF: To hold it open, the metal pieces playing the role of tension cables.

DK: It’s nice to hear both of you describe which piece is doing what. We’re reading into not the drawing but the model—it shows you that making a three-dimensional sketch and then looking for architectural potential does work. You can get physical data that a drawing can’t give you.

DF: Materials do interesting things, and being able to read them as architectural elements might force you to rethink the way a wall works or a floor works.

AR: For instance, in our final test, we had these catenary curves that started happening—these lacy curves—it was like the material acting at its most pure, and the form acting to service the material.

DK: How would you say all this was productive for a thesis?

AR: There were a lot of techniques, a lot of troubleshooting.

CW: It’s interesting that in architecture school, there’s some hesitation to just absorb technical knowledge, but you enjoyed it. There’s a huge value to it in that it gives you more agency, more confidence to take on things that you really want to.

DK: Would you say you’re less afraid of trying something?

DF: Yes, I mean—to learn anything, you have to take risks. And if you do it properly, document properly, you will end up learning.

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Solved

A fascination with haptics, or touch-based communication technology, brought the cofounders of WearWorks together, as did a shared drive to improve lives. Keith Kirkland, who was developing a haptic bodysuit to teach its wearer kung-fu, met Yangyang Wang and Kevin Yoo, who were developing haptic motors, in the Digital Arts and Humanities Research Center at Pratt. After collaborating on

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Keith Kirkland, MID ’15 Yangyang Wang, MID ’15 Kevin Yoo, BID ’15

a haptic wristband that navigated users through a landscape, the trio went on to adapt and refine their concept for market. Wayband launched in beta last November.

The speculation: Haptics promised a way of delivering messages to a user via a sense that isn’t typically overloaded with information. Could a device navigate a person through touch alone?

Cofounders, WearWorks

The opportunity: At South by Southwest 2016, where the cofounders were exhibiting the early Wayband, a chance encounter with a teacher from the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired led to an impromptu presentation with a blind services organization—a visit that solidified the cofounders’ mission: To create a haptic device for visually impaired individuals, of which there are 21 million in

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the US today. “This would give us the opportunity to make the biggest impact,” says Kirkland.

The goal: Using GPS-syncing and a precise haptic language (pulses to deliver messages such as “turn right 30 feet” or “object ahead”), the cofounders aimed to create a wearable device to enable greater independence for blind users in motion—at any speed.

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Below: Runner Simon Wheatcroft (left) and Kevin Yoo at the 2017 New York City Marathon

The stress test: The cofounders put Wayband to the test under conditions that were universally challenging: on the crowded, wet course of the 2017 New York City Marathon. On a rainy day among some 50,000 athletes and millions of spectators—plus all their devices— the team supported ultramarathoner Simon Wheatcroft as the first blind runner to race in the event unguided by a sighted

Solved

pacer. Yoo ran the entire 26.2mile race with him for technical backup, and Wheatcroft made it through about 15 miles before the compass and sensor in the device failed, due to the weather.

The takeaway: Beyond the rain, city navigation presents a suite of technical challenges, from skyscrapers’ signal deflection to metal objects’ distortion of magnetic

north. While the team is confident that improved technology, such as hyperaccurate L5 GPS coming to smartphones this year, will resolve some of these challenges, they are “also working on ways of negating magnetic interference and GPS discrepancies by using machine-learning algorithms to recognize patterns in use and adjust for them in real time.”

And, of course, says Kirkland,

“the other great—and obvious— learning is that everything needs to be waterproof.”

The wisdom: “As designers, we focus on social impact as much as a beautifully functional product,” says Yoo. “Allowing a true problem of the people to be at the forefront of design gave us greater purpose, and this purpose fueled innovation.”

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Go Where There Is Light

by Steve Hendershot Prattfolio

Spring/Summer 2018

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For Pratt’s 12th president, Frances Bronet, leadership is a process of illumination

Dawn is just breaking over Brooklyn and Frances Bronet is already hard at work.

But she’s not an insomniac, nor has she pulled an all-nighter —she’s just an exceptionally early riser. She has no need for an alarm clock. Each morning before the rest of the world stirs, she takes her first cup of coffee and then climbs aboard her elliptical machine to begin taking care of emails, reading articles on higher education, and preparing for the day’s meetings with colleagues and mentees. As often as possible, she is out before 7 AM, getting in a walk or run with a friend or collaborator, or taking calls if she is alone. “Once I’m up, I’m up,” Bronet says.

Bronet is already closing in on her first semester as Pratt’s new president, the 12th person and first woman in the role—and one of only a historic few architectural educators to hold the post of college president. She is uniquely qualified to helm Pratt, especially at a time of increasing cross-disciplinarity, both because of her résumé—she is an architect and engineer as well as a skilled academic administrator and educator—and because of her focus on fostering innovation and exploration.

“I like seeing what evolves when different people join together, and I like designing teams where the unexpected can unfold,” she says.

Over a 30-year academic career, forging those sorts of collaborations has become a Bronet trademark. The first watershed moment for her multidisciplinary efforts was a project funded by the National Science Foundation called “Design as a Creative Model for Technical Education” that Bronet co-led in 1998 while on the faculty of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

She continued to push for new partnerships at the University of Oregon, where she was acting provost after serving as dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts from 2005 to 2014, and then at Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech), where she was provost from 2015 until the end of last year. Her passion for inventive collaborations extends to her own creative work, which includes multiple live-performance pieces blending action art and architecture. Bronet designed physical large-scale constructions, which iteratively interacted and transformed as the dance informed the environment. In various productions she has built, dancers alternately navigated and manipulated Bronet’s installation to demonstrate the relationship between space and movement.

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Additional photos (top, bottom) by Brittany Buongiorno

“Frances is a tireless advocate for cross-disciplinary work, and frankly one of the great attractions about working with her is that she’s always thinking about ways to draw other skill sets and talents into the mix,” says Richard Lariviere, who was president of the University of Oregon during Bronet’s time as dean.

Many schools and leaders extol a multidisciplinary approach, but such partnerships are more difficult to execute than to conceive. Bronet has made a career out of identifying and negotiating the structural and cultural barriers that inhibit successful collaborations.

“The real issue, if you want to have faculty and students work together [across disciplines], is they have to be respectful of the other disciplines and the investigative systems that the different fields have,” says Bronet. “You can’t dismiss the other domain. We have to create an ecology of practices that allows people to have different modes of inquiry.”

It helps that Bronet excels at modeling the empathy and attention required to build that mutual understanding.

“She’s very good at bringing groups together, because she’s very interactive and also listens well,” says Illinois Tech president Alan Cramb. “She likes to get everyone into consensus— not necessarily total agreement, but at least consensus, before she moves ahead.”

As Bronet builds partnerships, her decisive resources are careful listening and active encouragement. It’s proven to be a potent formula, and one that presents inspiring potential for her presidency at Pratt.

“Philanthropists like to give to big ideas, and Frances is very good at finding those ideas and building upon them—especially when she’s pushing people to form partnerships across campus that have never existed before,” says Betsy Hughes, the Vice President for Advancement at Illinois Tech. “She is always looking for those opportunities, and that angle is going to be exciting for philanthropists and alumni.”

Go Where There Is Light

‘An extreme extrovert’

Bronet spent her childhood in Montreal in what she describes as a neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors. Her father, for one, was raised in Warsaw, Poland, and spent World War II in a Siberian work camp. Bronet’s grandmother and aunt both were imprisoned at Auschwitz; her grandmother died there.

That community of survivors was committed to family, neighborhood, and work, with Bronet’s father making purses and her mother a salesperson at a department store. Bronet didn’t spend much time at home, instead meeting friends on the school playground across from her apartment or frequenting a community center where kids gathered to dance to songs on the jukebox. Others would drift in and out of the scene, but Bronet was a constant—an early manifestation of one of her defining traits.

“I’m an extreme extrovert,” Bronet acknowledges. “I am not a homebody. I’m always out, and I like to be always out.”

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Bronet studied architecture and engineering as an undergraduate at McGill University, then worked as a Montreal architect before leaving Canada to attend graduate school at Columbia University in New York City. After a few of her Columbia housemates—three fellow architects—traveled upstate to Troy to successfully interview for open faculty jobs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), she got an interview herself and was offered a tenure-track position teaching design and structures.

It was at RPI that Bronet took the next step in her academic career, when she was named associate dean of architecture in 1994. RPI is also where she started her family. She met engineer Jeffrey Paules at a party and the two married soon after. Like Bronet, Paules was veering toward a career in academia—he later coordinated precollege science-education programming at the University of Oregon and directed transfer and high school programs in engineering at Illinois Tech, where he was also involved in robotics initiatives. Bronet and Paules have two children, a daughter in her 20s, now a New York City–based writer, and a college-age son who is studying math and economics.

Oregon is the institution where Bronet honed her ambitious, action-oriented approach to academic leadership.

“Pratt is about to see a level of energy in their leadership that is going to be dazzling,” Lariviere said just before Bronet assumed the presidency. “She’s capable of getting people to invest huge amounts of work to get a job done quickly. She’s not patient with unnecessary delay. She wants to get it done now, and she drives no one harder than herself to do it.”

Bronet’s always-on, hard-charging leadership style is tempered by her humor and her upbeat demeanor.

“Frances is an energetic rocket booster,” says Illinois Tech’s Hughes. “She came in and learned what was best about this institution, and then she became the single biggest cheerleader for excellence our school has ever seen. She’s such a confidence booster, the one who would always encourage us and say, ‘You guys are extraordinary.’”

Bronet also is careful to make sure her demands are realistic. She understands that a commitment to collaboration across disciplines requires making space to accommodate it, especially when the participants are faculty members and students whose schedules already are stretched thin.

“My job is to figure out a way to liberate that space so that people are incentivized, or motivated, or interested in giving up some of their other attentions in order to do this,” she says. “I do think big, but I’m also somebody who understands that a vision framework has to have an implementation strategy with it.”

A new chapter

Bronet is approaching her tenure at Pratt with the energy and enthusiasm you’d expect from someone who thrives on opportunity: “It’s so perfect,” she says, “a school that’s concep-

Go Where There Is Light

tual and theoretical, aesthetically rooted and pragmatic, and anchored in social justice. Pratt is a vibrant community, a place that’s always been a hive of creativity, and my job is to extend and support that powerful energy.”

From Pratt’s perspective, Bronet’s unique mix of scholarship, leadership, and life experience makes her an ideal leader. “Her background was one that excited me and that I felt went beyond what we were hoping to find,” says Associate Professor of Writing Ellery Washington, a faculty trustee and member of the presidential search committee.

“It was clear she was someone capable of creating a vision and taking us forward.”

From day one, Bronet has emphasized her view of a Pratt connected, collaborative, and contextualized within the fluctuations of the society and culture—“a robust ecosystem of learning modalities,” as she puts it, responsive to the opportunities of a changing world. “We don’t know what the jobs of the future will be,” she says, “but what will not go away is a creative and critical model of inquiry. That means we need to continue developing students and faculty to navigate these uncertainties through informed investigations and designs.”

While Bronet’s vision for Pratt has been taking shape, she has hit the ground asking significant questions, such as how best to position Pratt’s students to realize their ambitions, and how to transform Pratt’s far-flung alumni base into a more cohesive network. She’s on the lookout for big ideas and for ways to translate the Pratt community’s expertise into global leadership.

She has already focused on specific initiatives that will define the start of her presidency. At the same time that she launched her “listening tour” with members of Pratt’s internal community, she also began forging new relationships with academic, civic, creative, and technology-centered communities in New York. Furthermore, within her first month of taking office, she launched the process for a new strategic plan for Pratt, building upon the plan adopted in 2012. “It is not a task that I can accomplish alone,” Bronet noted in a letter to the Pratt community. “Together we will develop a vision and plan for Pratt that will set the priorities for the coming decades.”

“Frances not only seeks collaboration, but reveres it,” says Alison Snyder, who chairs the Interior Design Department at Pratt and previously worked under Bronet as director of interior architecture at Oregon while Bronet was dean there.

Snyder says Bronet’s knack for fostering partnerships relies on nuanced insight. “She’s able to really synthesize all of the kinds of interdisciplinary relationships and can help make [collaborations] work because she’s a great listener, a fast and facile thinker, and caring at the same time.”

Now, in the first months of Bronet’s presidency, she is setting about the work of identifying and illuminating spaces where groundbreaking ideas and work can evolve. “There’s a saying, ‘Go where there is light.’ It’s about looking for the opening, anticipating the space that’s going to open—and then that space unfolds because of how people occupy it,” she says.

For Bronet, that process starts with listening, connecting with faculty, students, trustees, and local leaders and making visits to alumni in network cities. “I rely on other people— there are always people who want to help to lead, to teach, to give Pratt a voice in the world. Pratt is about you, and this is our journey. Let’s walk it together.”

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How We Lead Guiding wisdom from Pratt alumni defining leadership across disciplines Illustrations by Hanna Lefcourt BFA Communications Design ’16

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In an era of unpredictable change and amplified challenges pressuring the limits of human capacities every day, for better or for worse, the roles of leaders are more critical than ever: to envision what’s next, to organize and galvanize, to free space for novel solutions to flourish. We asked alumni at the helm across many fields of innovation Pratt represents how they develop their teams, inspire fresh thinking, and do their best work.

What came up again and again was the need to foster experimentation, failure, and resilience building; diversity, respect, and compassion; and a shared sense of purpose, with an eye on the strengths of what’s gone before and the promise of realities to come. Here are some of the guiding principles these alumni leaders shared.

On what is essential

How alumni ignite creativity

If you believe in what you are doing—are passionate about it— then that innate enthusiasm is conveyed to those you work with and inspires their own interest and commitment. Supporting your team members, even allowing them to make mistakes, provides them with confidence, which engenders enthusiasm.

Lenore M. Lucey, FAIA, NCARB, BArch ’70 Principal, LML Consulting 55th Chancellor of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows

I try to inspire creativity in my team by presenting them with complex challenges, providing the resources to solve the challenge, and then most importantly, get out of their way and let them experiment with solutions. It’s important to give my team lots of autonomy in solving problems.

Rosio Alvarez, Bachelor of Engineering Chief Information Officer, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Transformational leaders are authentic. There is a social contract between the leader and the led.

Being honest, being your “real self” is the key to establishing trust.

With trust comes a progressively stronger shared vision for the future.

Charles S. Whelan, Jr., MS City and Regional Planning ’74 President, The Whelan Group Musicality is an extremely important quality of leadership, especially within creative teams: being able to bring together the components of a great ensemble, fostering an environment for play and syncopation, creating and allowing for interesting collisions and juxtaposition of ideas while also listening to the rhythm and flow of the creative work being done.

Kareem Collie, BFA Graphic Design ’01 Creative Director, Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, aka The Hive Have a vision: hindsight, insight, and foresight. Hindsight to learn from past success and failures.

Insight to understand current issues and opportunities. Foresight to anticipate the implications of present decisions and emerging trends.

Mitchell Silver, BArch/MS Architecture and Planning ’87 Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

As much as possible, I try to work with the passion(s) as selfexpressed by team members.

Cultivating an office/team culture and relationships of openness, harmony, and fun is essential.

Shashi Caan, MID ’86; MArch ’92 Founder, The Collective Design is about exploring many different answers to a question and being playful. Prototyping can be transformative for teams because it forces them to step away and not be so quick to solve. It opens up the potential for surprise.

Sarah Krasley, BFA Sculpture ’01 Founder, Unreasonable Women Reward success. Everyone wants to be acknowledged in a public way for their accomplishments.

By recognizing outstanding work, leaders inspire continued stellar performance from all.

Charles S. Whelan, Jr., MS City and Regional Planning ’74 President, The Whelan Group I bring people into my journey and make it OUR journey. Enabling my team to take part in the process and some decision making, they directly experience the impact of their contributions.

I work with each individual’s limitations and potential to help them take ownership of their role.

Elke Reva Sudin, BFA Communications Design ’09 Founder, Drawing Booth Hold the team to a standard just beyond their comfort zone.

This is where the magic happens.

Jeff Johnson, MArch ’10 Cofounder, The Arrivals

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Alumni advice to future leaders

Drena Fagen MPS Art Therapy ’02 Nadia Jenefsky MPS Art Therapy ’99 Cofounders and directors, New York Creative Arts Therapists

The art world looks glorious, but success comes from endless effort and creativity. Sometimes hurrying or having excessive passion can distract and mislead us. We must be patient, choose wisely, and keep an open mind.

It’s our responsibility to protect the reputation and future of the art world.

Kyung Ae Sohn, MFA ’92 Owner-director, Gallery Skape—Seoul Don’t automatically get rid of paper. It may outlast digital formats.

Stephen Fleming, MSILS ’96 Director of Global Intelligence, Young & Rubicam Group

Be curious Being the longest-standing private creative arts therapy group practice in New York hasn’t held Drena Fagen and Nadia Jenefsky back from experimenting—after all, their field is, as they put it, in its “awkward teenager phase”— prime time for taking creative risks.

“Leaders in our field need to be visionaries, because our field is perfectly positioned to disrupt and energize the traditional delivery of mental health services. Good leaders, like therapists, engage in nonstop brainstorming and problem solving. Effectively listening to stakeholders, staying curious, and giving untested ideas a chance has led us to where we are today.”

Operate from abundance The cofounders of New York Creative Arts Therapists, a business they identify as “a surprising mashup between a mental-health clinic and an art studio, run by two artists who are also licensed psychotherapists,” employs eight creative arts therapists and trains two graduate students each year. Two years ago, seeing an opportunity to weigh in on the benefits and limitations of adult coloring books, they galvanized fellow practitioners to form another, informal, collective: the Real Art Therapists of New York. The group uses the power of art in a more public and spontaneous way to reach people at free pop-up coloring bars throughout New York City (they also published an accompanying coloring book with illustrations by 50 art therapists). Giving their field the visibility and group cohesion it needs to grow is one of the things Fagen and Jenefsky do best.

How We Lead

“By being generous with our ideas, rather than protective of them, we’ve been able to create opportunities for our fellow art therapists. Tomorrow’s creative arts therapy leaders need to be audacious and operate from a position of abundance. The mental health profession is never going to run out of customers. Build bridges with other helping professionals and creative organizations.

Take risks, but avoid hubris. You may be in love with an idea, but you have to verify it. Be ready to throw a lot of things against the wall to see what sticks.”

Every challenge is an opportunity to change. Push yourself to empathize with the challenges of good design while maintaining your own point of view.

Finding the balance in this dance is where great design lives.

Jeff Johnson, MArch ’10 Cofounder, The Arrivals Be the catalysts for experimentation and play, but read the room and know how much capacity for experimentation there is.

Sarah Krasley, BFA Sculpture ’01 Founder, Unreasonable Women Trust your team and your team will trust you. You need to foster a dialogue that allows for everyone to be wrong, including leadership.

Bret Recor, MID ’01 Founder and Creative Director, Box Clever Always be open to change.

Design is an industry of constant motion and movement. It’s great to fall in love with one— or several—aspects of it, but keep in mind that there’s always something new to learn or think about around the corner.

Amarides Montgomery, MS Communications Design ’07 Art Director, Interactive Retail, Apple

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Great leadership centers around a keen understanding of the team. An effective leader is intimately familiar with their reports and sets them up for success by placing them on projects that meet their strengths and interests. Just because an individual is great at something doesn’t mean that’s what they are interested in doing. When things become monotonous the work eventually becomes beige. Interests change, and an effective leader checks in often.

Arem Duplessis, MS Communications Design ’96 Creative Director, Apple

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Leadership is not running out in front of the team. Leadership is providing inspiration, direction, and guidance while running with— and sometimes behind— the team, allowing each member to discover their skills and the team to successfully develop your plan. enore M. Lucey, FAIA, NCARB, BArch ’70 L Principal, LML Consulting 55th Chancellor of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows

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Sara Ortloff Khoury BFA Communications Design ’90 User Experience Design Director, Google

What is the best leadership advice you’ve ever received?

An altruistic individual will add way more value to the team than you will ever imagine. I’ve tested it multiple times and it has never failed me.

Arem Duplessis, MS Communications Design ’96 Creative Director, Apple

For Sara Ortloff Khoury, a foundation of classical design training was the launch pad for a career defining what it means to lead in the evolving field of user experience (UX) design. From a VP role driving UX design at Walmart Labs, to disrupting her career to help grow a 30-person startup, to blasting off at Google, Khoury’s trajectory and her leadership style are driven by a similar principle: Get uncomfortable, and see how far you can go.

Counter your own culture Varied voices are crucial to better design: “When I am hiring, I look for diversity of thought and communication style, gender, education, and cultural background. It’s true that when we work with people who are more similar to us it can feel more comfortable. But when we build diverse teams as leaders, we are ensuring that the perspectives of our team members reflect more authentically the diversity of the people we are designing for. We must also expose our teams to diverse experiences: through watching customers, working with team members with varied perspectives, or even learning about how different machines, algorithms, or materials work.”

goals when they feel that the work they do has purpose—that it solves an important problem.”

Fail better Leaders need to trust their intuition to move forward—and strong instincts are born from experimentation: “Researchers say that what people think of as intuition is, at its heart, highly developed pattern recognition. Those who have never faced a negative outcome—those who have never failed—have a critical gap in the body of experience that intuition is based on,” being able to “spot warning signs and make smart course corrections.”

Use your instincts to feel out the edges “Design is a field that continues to expand the boundaries of its role and impact in business and society. I’ve learned through experience that no one is going to explicitly ask you to step outside the perceived boundaries of your role, or ask you to create and propose a design strategy in order to build a differentiated product. To be successful in influencing strategy you must be able to form a strong point of view, based in research, and communicate effectively to challenge the status quo—sometimes even stepping into another team’s territory.

Mission ignites creative minds Don’t ask permission. Do what design “We as design leaders must connect our leaders do best: Begin.” teams to the purpose of the work they are doing. What problem does this product we are building solve for the people we are designing it for? How is a situation improved by the product we are building? I find that creative people, designers, and engineers are passionate about pursuing what seem like impossible

How We Lead

A good friend once told me, if you want to go fast, go on your own, if you want to go far, go together. As someone who is quite independent, this has always stuck with me as an opportunity to challenge my instincts.

Jeff Johnson, MArch ’10 Cofounder, The Arrivals If plan A doesn’t work out, there are many letters left in the alphabet.

Toby Neiman Berkow, MS Facilities Management ’07 Executive Director, Lupus LA Don’t undervalue your services.

Encourage your team to work from a place of confidence, competence, and worth.

Drena Fagen, MPS Art Therapy ’02, and Nadia Jenefsky, MPS Art Therapy ’99 Cofounders and Directors, New York Creative Arts Therapists Be honest about what you know and do not know. Being blatantly honest about what I was good at and what I was making up as I went helped me find mentors and advisers that helped shape my organization.

Purvi Shah, MS Communications Design ’95 Founder and Executive Director, Kids & Art Foundation Lead from behind.

Shashi Caan, MID ’86; MArch ’92 Founder, The Collective Never hurry to make decisions.

These must be founded on listening to colleagues, competitors, and the market in order to make objective decisions in line with a plan of action.

Kyung Ae Sohn, MFA ’92 Owner-director, Gallery Skape—Seoul Respect people who have led before you. Respect your team.

Respect what you do not know.

Bret Recor, MID ’01 Founder and Creative Director, Box Clever

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The key is to find good mentors—learn from them, use them as sounding boards for tough issues, and let them help you find your personal way of leadership.

Toby Neiman Berkow, MS Facilities Management ’07 Executive Director, Lupus LA

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It’s important to be not only multidisciplinary but also multidimensional—being open to seeing the world through a variety of lenses and bringing empathy and compassion to the work we do. Artists and designers are interpreters of knowledge, and it’s our job to parse and make sense of the complex and conflicting ideas in the world.

Kareem Collie, BFA Graphic Design ’01 Creative Director, Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, aka The Hive

How We Lead

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Lou Switzer Art and Design ’67 Founder, chairman, and CEO of The Switzer Group

Be an effective communicator, with the understanding that the most important part of communication is not speaking, but listening.

Mitchell Silver, BArch/MS Architecture and Planning ’87 Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation Courage is not letting fear drive your decisions. A CEO I worked for once shared with me a T. S. Eliot quote that I’ll never forget.

Whenever I’m getting too far outside of my comfort zone, I remember this: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

Sara Ortloff Khoury, BFA Communications Design ’90 User Experience Design Director, Google

Lou Switzer’s eyes have always been on creating spaces: the niches where he could make a difference, do innovative work, and champion collaboration—and the physical expanses he transforms through design. He was 17 when he started in the mail room of a design firm and, with the support of a boss who saw his talent and drive, was soon elevated to the role of draftsman. Now heading the nation’s largest black-owned interior architectural design firm—among the top 100 American design firms, specializing in corporate workplaces with clients such as IBM, Nielsen, and the Walt Disney Company—Switzer is intent to make new space for his teams to shine. He tributes the power of people throughout the arc of his career, from his earliest mentors to the collaborative minds he has brought together within The Switzer Group.

Be prepared “My background helped me see the importance of leading with care. One of the most valuable lessons I learned is to respect other people. Through handling projects and working directly with the whole gamut of professionals—architects, contractors, landlords, developers—I realized the importance of leading with an emphasis on clear communication and adept organizational skills.”

Make room for bold moves When Switzer hires, he looks for creative ability first, and liberating that talent to solve the big problems is critical. “A great way to illuminate employees’ talent is to offer them freedom to express themselves through their gifts and actualize their potential. I saw my own creativity

How We Lead

and passion flourish when someone gave me the freedom to achieve things. In addition, recognizing good work and creating an environment where mentors support and encourage new hires can be really inspiring.”

Build a team with core values Alongside raw talent, “equally important are character traits such as honesty, flexibility, optimism, tenacity, and integrity. So too, communication skills, getting along well with others, and a positive, can-do attitude go a really long way.”

Come in at 100 percent “I have a worldview about work. I operate on a high level of commitment. I work hard every day to make The Switzer Group one of the most respected design firms in the country, and I do so by showing up with full capacity, energy, and a sense of dedication to be the best I can be for my clients and my employees.” To future leaders, Switzer advises, “Be courageous. Strive to be a visionary but never abandon the traditional values that have remained tried and true, such as hard work, dedication, and quality.”

Surround yourself with people from a wealth of different backgrounds. Each person fills a niche—or 2, or 3, or 12—that needs to be covered and pieced together strategically.

Elke Reva Sudin, BFA Communications Design ’09 Founder, Drawing Booth Don’t get behind. Keep up with every day.

Stephen Fleming, MSILS ’96 Director of Global Intelligence, Young & Rubicam Group Listen—to everyone, as well as to yourself. Listening forces a person to stop and think, to show visual respect to their peers, and to allow the mind to take in new and different information and form other creative ideas from it.

Amarides Montgomery, MS Communications Design ’07 Art Director, Interactive Retail, Apple Lead by example. Do what you say and say what you mean. Use honest weights and scales when making decisions and treat others the way you would like to be treated.

Lou Switzer, Art and Design ’67 Founder, chairman, and CEO, The Switzer Group Practice emergent behaviors.

Create a culture of empowerment and creative freedom within your team by nurturing behaviors that create a space for individuals’ true selves to emerge.

This practice can foster passion, collaboration, and a stake in the game.

Kareem Collie, BFA Graphic Design ’01 Creative Director, Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, aka The Hive

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Our Torchbearers

Soon-to-be alumni reflect on the teachers who helped

them find their paths at Pratt

Great leaders shine in the glow of those they influence.

To students, professors’ guidance and mentorship can mean the courage to embrace their own ideas, the inspiration to unlock novel ways of thinking and making, and the knowledge and resources to lay a path toward a career and lifelong practice. When students go out into the world transformed, as a brand-new class of Pratt alumni will do this May, the impression of those influential educators remains.

In their final months as Pratt undergraduates, four seniors shared work that is the culmination of so many meaningful lessons and discussed some of the leading lights who helped them discover their authority as creators. They each responded to the question: Who helped you find your voice?

Clockwise from top left: EB Hong, BFA Fashion Design ’18; Bryan Cabrera Perez, BFA Painting ’18; Alexa Simos, BFA Communications Design ’18; Quinn Roberts, BFA Writing ’18

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EB Hong, BFA Fashion Design ’18

“It’s hard to pick one professor at Pratt who has helped me find my voice as a designer because all of them have influenced me at one point or another. Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman taught me the foundational skills of constructing garments and challenged me to give a reason for every design decision I make.

Gene Lakin taught me that the design process is complex and iterative. Judiann Echezabal taught me the importance of details, finishes, and treatments. I am now able to create a cohesive collection driven by ideas and an underlying concept—a potential that may not have been realized if it were not for my mentors here at Pratt.”

In the second semester of her senior year, professors Gabriela (Gabby) Galvan and Mike Eckhaus helped EB identify and resolve a challenge that would become central to her thesis collection: “Mike and Gabby are really good at pointing out what needs fixing.” Gravitating toward grids, lines, and detailed play with textiles, EB received feedback in critique that some of her pieces appeared flat. Striving to create streetwear with an energetic, active vibe, she knew she wanted to add volume and flow to her designs.

Taking inspiration from packaging nets, the flat patterns that when folded transform into three-dimensional containers, EB performed an extensive series of 2-D-to-3-D experiments with her garments (the reference material itself points to another of EB’s Pratt mentors, her father, alumnus Seungyeoul Hong, BID ’98, who went on to a career in packaging design). The process, which allowed EB to delve deeper into exploring both textiles and shapes, is one of, “as Gabby said, a million drapes.”

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Bryan Cabrera Perez, BFA Painting ’18

“Finding your artistic voice doesn’t happen in a single or even a few moments. It develops slowly, often without one even realizing how everything is coming together. The professors I have had during my time at Pratt have all been aware of this, and in their classes they aim to nurture a steady development. The best things I’ve learned have come from their recommendations and their sharing of personal experience.

“For example, Professor Catherine Redmond, my painting professor for my thesis class, has made it a point to lend to each of us in her class specific artist books and gallery catalogs from her personal collection that she feels may reveal something new to us. There was one pocket-size book on medieval painting from the series 20,000 Years of World Painting that everyone loved. It’s an old and cheap publication but it’s a treasure trove of color images—Professor Redmond’s copy was falling apart from how often she had gone through it. Three of us in her class went ahead and bought our own copies. It’s great to be able to have it handy and pull it out for a burst of inspiration. There are more books in the series, each on a different period of art history, and I now also own the copy on renaissance painting.”

In these small volumes, Bryan connected with major themes—such as how we organize our lives and construct identities—that resonated in his own painting and works throughout art history. This year, he worked on a series of linked still lifes with reference points in religious paintings such as Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation and Diego Velásquez’s Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. As his thesis developed, Bryan saw his work become more personal as he expanded his symbols and use of color, exploring his relationship to people and places he loves—from his dual hometowns of Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and New York City—layered with ideas from the canons of art, history, and philosophy.

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Quinn Roberts, BFA Writing ’18

“I found my voice in Robert Lopez’s sophomore fiction studio.

He urged me to take risks, to speak my mind, and to read voraciously. Most importantly, he taught me to never be boring, that people crave stories about sex, death, pain, betrayal, failure, and insanity. This is what life is about.”

One of Quinn’s boldest artistic leaps came in writing from his own life, uncovering and refining the authentic personal themes that would become central to his fiction: “When I first came to Pratt, I resisted writing gay characters and plotlines because I hadn’t been exposed to enough gay literature. It wasn’t until Robert Lopez introduced me to [the fiction of ] Justin Torres that I felt an imperative to tell my story as a gay man.

At first writing gay fiction felt like a risk, and I worried that I was not succeeding, but my professors kept urging me forth. ‘This is what you do,’ Lopez told me. ‘You’ve tried a lot of stuff in my class, and now you’ve hit your stride.’”

Quinn’s short story “Weak Spot,” a passage from which appears opposite, not only represents to him an important milestone in his practice—it also won him admission as a fiction contributor to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the prestigious annual literary gathering, which he attended in 2017.

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Alexa Simos, BFA Communications Design ’18

“I found my direction sophomore year in Tim O’Brien’s illustration class, and Rudy Gutierrez nurtured my talent the following year. Now, as a senior, I have the opportunity to be under these two illustrators’ tutelage again, and I could not be more thrilled.

I am a realistic acrylic painter, and I learned painting and composition techniques and tricks of the trade from both Tim and Rudy. Rudy really got to know me as an artist, and after finding out my history of working in the graphic design field, he helped me figure out how to combine elements of design with my painting skills in an exciting, fresh way.”

Alexa’s culminating work centers on eye-catching editorial illustration. From her personal reading online and in magazines, she selects articles that bring to mind an immediate image—and that she feels would interest others—then creates accompanying artwork. For her thesis, she assembled a book of newspaper clippings illustrated by her paintings, whose subjects range, much like a periodical, from sports to tech, to music, to growing up.

Along the way, the most enduring piece of wisdom she’s received has been to trust her instincts: “Rudy often says ‘Do what you feel.’ This is so important. You have to do what comes naturally to you, and listen to your gut. This is how you settle into a style, and also how you get to know yourself as a person.

And by doing this you will spread your authentic energy into the world and touch the lives of others in some way—which is something we all hope to do with our creations.”

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News

President Bronet Kicks Off Alumni Visits with Black Alumni of Pratt Shortly after taking office on January 2, President Frances Bronet began an ongoing series of gatherings with alumni groups, meeting first with the Black Alumni of Pratt (BAP) in New York City.

At a reception hosted by BAP copresidents Gerri Brown and Darius Somers at the SoHo gallery of Trustee June Kelly, President Bronet mingled with alumni and friends and addressed attendees on the importance of a creative education today, and what she hears from Pratt alumni about all the places that tutelage has taken them. President Bronet continued her alumni visits throughout the spring, meeting with Pratt graduates in regional network locations including Dallas, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles, with more stops to come.

For information on regional network events, visit www.pratt.edu/alumni.

Pratt Young Alumni Launches in New York City The new Pratt Young Alumni group kicked off with its first meet-up event on December 5. Members of the Young Alumni, defined as those who have graduated within the past 10 years, gathered on a misty winter evening in the One World Observatory in Manhattan, catching the last expansive glimpses of the city from 1,250 feet up before the clouds settled in for the night. Alumni caught up with friends and networked over cocktails, and David Erdman, Chair of Graduate Architecture and Urban Design, spoke to the crowd on the subject of urban densification and the opportunities and critical conversation surround-

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ing the topic. To learn about opportuni- ational knowledge by working in teams ties to get involved with Pratt Young to launch a business.

Alumni, visit www.pratt.edu/alumni.

The program includes a series of workshops, mentorship, and talks by Corice Canton Arman, George successful start-up leaders. Putting theKalinsky, and Wendy Kvalheim ory into practice, each team develops a Honored at Legends 2017 business plan around a viable product Pratt Institute’s Legends 2017 gala was that they will pitch to a panel of estabheld at the Mandarin Oriental last lished entrepreneurial professionals November, celebrating icons of art and at the conclusion of the program. design whose works have helped shape Information sessions for 2018–19 will the cultural landscape. The annual ben- begin in August with submissions reefit provides vital funds for merit and viewed through mid-September. For need-based scholarships that help the more information, visit ccpd.pratt.edu nearly 70 percent of Pratt students /ignitionlab. who receive financial aid to pursue their educational and creative ambitions. Last Pratt Leads in College Rankings fall’s event honored art collector and College Factual has ranked Pratt Institute educator Corice Canton Arman, photog- the top college in the country in the rapher and alumnus George Kalinsky, General Architecture and Design and and alumna and CEO and Design Applied Arts categories, and fifth for Director of Mottahedeh & Company Film, Video, and Photographic Arts, in Wendy Kvalheim for their contributions its 2018 rankings. College Factual is a to the world of art and design. Each leading source of college data analytics honoree was presented with a hand- and insights and is dedicated to helping blown glass Legend Award designed by parents and students find the right colAudrey Krumenacker, BID ’18, who had lege. The rankings are based on factors the help of her award-design mentor, such as student body caliber and educaAdjunct Assistant Professor of Industrial tional resources, and outcomes including Design Alvaro Uribe, BID ’10, and glass- graduation rates and postgraduation ware company Simon Pearce. earnings. According to the 2018 rankings, Pratt is ranked among the top 1 percent Entrepreneurship Program Opens of schools for visual arts and design in to Students and Alumni the country and among the top 5 percent This past academic year, Pratt’s Center for architecture and fine art. for Career and Professional Develop­ ment launched the Ignition Lab, an ex- DesignIntelligence Ranks Pratt periential learning program for Pratt’s Educators and Programs among aspiring entrepreneurs. Open to Pratt Best in the Country students and alumni, the seven-month DesignIntelligence (DI) named two intensive program exposes participants Pratt-affiliated educators among the 25 to the practices of creating a start-up and Most Admired Educators for 2017–18: allows them to build on this found­­- Meghan Minton, MS Interior Design ’13,

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“Pratt is one of those rare institutions of higher learning that provides students with what I call an embodied education. . . .

We build, we make, we use machines, we write, we draw, we’re critical, we’re critiqued. It’s time for us to not only own this but to share it.”

—President Frances Bronet, addressing the Black Alumni of Pratt

Legends 2017 celebrated icons of art and design with awards created by industrial design student Audrey Krumenacker, BID ’18. Photo by Keith MacDonald

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1 Fraver by Design: 5 Decades of Theatre Poster Art from Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Beyond Frank “Fraver” Verlizzo, BFA ’72 $34.99 Go behind the scenes of iconic theatrical poster design with Frank “Fraver” Verlizzo’s new monograph, an ample collection of more than 250 posters from the artist’s five-decade career. The book includes award-winning designs for legendary Broadway shows, never-before-published sketches, and insider stories and commentary. Set for release on May 28, the book is available for preorder on amazon.com, schifferbooks.com, and wherever you buy books.

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2 Knit Varsity T-Shirt by Calle del Mar Aza Ziegler, BFA Fashion Design ’14 $188 A sumptuous take on the classic ringer tee, this hand-loomed knit top from Aza Ziegler’s Calle del Mar line transitions effortlessly from relaxed to refined. Ziegler, who launched her apparel line after graduating from Pratt and receiving a Young Entrepreneur Award from the Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator, now designs in Los Angeles and manufactures her pieces in local woman-owned factories.

This knit tee, shown here in Sunshine, is available in a range of colors at www.calledelmar .us/shop.

3 Bandana by Party of One Crissy Fetcher, BFA Graphic Design ’12, Visiting Instructor of Undergraduate Communications Design Melissa Deckert, BFA Communications Design ’12 $29 Design agency Wolff Olins, where Crissy Fetcher works, teamed up with artists to create bandana designs benefiting nonprofits of their choice. All proceeds from the sale of this bandana, by Melissa Deckert and creative partner Nicole Licht of Party of One, go to the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund. Fetcher contributed a design to benefit the National Immigration Law Center. Available at paom.com /stores/wolffolins.

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4 Dakota Sunglasses in Sky Blue

by Lowercase Brian Vallario, MArch ’14 $299 In the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park, eyewear company Lowercase, cofounded by Brian Vallario, creates its line of classically styled sunglasses and lens frames on-site from start to finish. Using Germanengineered components and Italian acetate, each pair is made in a 30-step process incorporating both the maker’s hand and high-tech machine craft, and Vallario brings his architect’s precision to the finest details of production. Available at www .lowercasenyc.com (Lowercase offers a 15 percent discount with code PRATT15).

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Left to right: Tolu Aremu, Lupita Nyong’o, Becca McCharen-Tran, Tash Ncube (modeling Aremu’s work), and Danai Gurira at “Black Panther: Welcome to Wakanda” New York Fashion Week event. Photo courtesy of Tolu Aremu

Assistant Professor of Interior Design at the University of Cincinnati, and Thom Mayne, Critic at Large in Pratt’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California.

Selections were made by the DI staff with input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads, and students.

Pratt’s interior design and undergraduate architecture programs are again ranked among the top 10 in the country according to America’s Best Architecture and Design Schools 2018, the latest edition of the annual survey of industry professionals also coordinated

by DI. Pratt’s undergraduate and graduate interior design programs are ranked second and third, respectively. The Institute’s undergraduate architecture program is ranked ninth.

New York Fashion Week Black Panther Event Features Fashion Student’s Designs Designs by Tolulope (Tolu) Aremu, BFA Fashion Design ’18, were featured in the charity presentation “Black Panther : Welcome to Wakanda” as part of New York Fashion Week this spring. The red-carpet event, presented by Marvel, included fashions inspired by the blockbuster movie Black Panther. Asked to lead this project for swim and athletic wear brand Chromat, Aremu drew inspiration from her Nigerian heritage and her muse: her mother. “From the colorful gele to the bold-patterned Ankara and down to the Chromat cage and silhouette, I wanted this look to embody her colorful and bold spirit,” Aremu says.

Still from BLINK, BURN.

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UN Youth Assembly Features Urban Placemaking Faculty, Students, and Alumna Several students and faculty as well as an alumna from the Urban Placemaking and Management program in the School of Architecture appeared on a panel titled “The Social Inclusion of Cities” at the United Nations 2018 Winter Youth Assembly in New York City in February.

The Pratt-affiliated panelists were Dr. Setha Low, Visiting Assistant Professor in Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and Environment and Director of the Public Space Research Group at CUNY; Elka Gotfryd, MS Urban Placemaking and Management ’18, Senior Project Associate at the Project for Public Spaces; and Maria Gabriela Gonzalez Rausell, MS Urban Placemaking and Management ’17, and Alejandra Gomez Bolivar,

MS Urban Placemaking and Management ’18, cofounders of EPIC Placemaking. Addressing an audience of more than 400 students and young professionals representing more than 120 countries, the group discussed ways to foster social inclusion in urban environments, covering topics including LGBTQ communities, equity and economy in urban development, smart cities, and placemaking as a social inclusion tool in developing countries.

School of Information Students Partner with New York Times for Digital Archive Project Students from the School of Information teamed up with The New York Times for a Pratt photography digitization and curation course titled Projects in Digital Archives, taught by School of Information Interim Dean Anthony Cocciolo. Students digitized the analog photographs taken

by George Tames, the “Photographer of Presidents,” who covered Washington, DC, as a news photographer for The New York Times from 1945 to 1985, chronicling Washington’s changing political culture over the course of his career. The semester concluded with an online exhibition of the digital images, ready for use by New York Times editors, as well as a physical exhibition at #infoshow18 at Pratt Manhattan Center on May 11.

School of Art Students Debut Audio-Visual Works at Art Basel Miami Beach Pratt Institute and New World Symphony (NWS) presented a unique program during Art Basel Miami Beach in December featuring original video work by School of Art students and a live sound performance by the symphony. Titled BLINK, BURN., the performance at Miami’s New World Center was the result of a collaborative partnership involving seven students from the Film/Video, Digital Design, and Fine Arts programs and six NWS Fellows.

Lisa Crafts, Adjunct Associate Professor of Film/Video, led the effort, which explored the intersection of music/sound and film/video, and the creative possibilities of deep engagement between film/video artists and sound artists/musicians. Pratt student participants were Natalie Carvallo, BFA ’19; Emma Dold, BFA ’18; Holly Durgan, BFA ’19; Lou Goncalves, BFA ’19; Lauren Kolar, BFA ’18; Alexander Mejia, BFA ’18; and Christopher Thomas Rutledge, BFA ’18.

The BLINK, BURN. event was followed by a reception cohosted by Pratt Alumni’s Miami network.

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Writing Graduate Produces Collection of Work from Seniors Writing Project Maria Baker, MFA Writing ’17, compiled and edited We Live Here, a collection of prose and poetry by seniors from the Clinton Hill neighborhood that is home to Pratt’s Brooklyn campus. The book grew out of a collaboration between the Writing MFA program and local business improvement organization Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership/Agefriendly Myrtle Avenue. As part of the Writing MFA’s fieldwork component, Baker chose to work with Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership by offering a yearlong writing workshop to local seniors and then editing a collection of their work.

We Live Here was published by The Felt, a journal and press from the graduate writing program at Pratt. The book brings together writing by the core workshop participants—six women, all long-term residents of Clinton Hill, whose poems and stories give a vivid snapshot of the lively history of the area and their younger selves, as well as reflections on aging and neighbor­hood transformation.

Art-Science Residents Create Interactive Programming for Oregon Music and Arts Festival A group of artists and scientists in residence at Pratt—including graduate students Ian Montgomery, MS Package Design ’18, and Cassandra Flores, MS Museums and Digital Culture ’18, and faculty members Romie Littrell, Visiting Assistant Professor of Math and Science, and Mark Rosin, Assistant Professor of Math and Science—created a program of

live public events mixing arts, music, and play for the Oregon Eclipse 2017 Festival last August. Held near Bend, Oregon, the six-day event attracted 30,000 people, with 50 artists and scientists and more than 6,000 festival­goers participating in the art-science events.

The collaboration resulted from a $938,000 National Science Foundation grant awarded to Pratt in 2017 to develop a four-year project called “Research and Development on Understanding STEM Identity Using Live Experiences.” The goal of the project, directed by Rosin, is to explore how audiences with little or no affinity for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can become more engaged with STEM ideas.

The installations developed for the Oregon Eclipse Festival ranged from Guerilla Plastic, a homemade plastic recycling machine that recycles plastic to make jewelry, to the Entomophotron, a 1950s-style diner that serves insects and explores their role in the future of food. The 2018 residency to develop a new program of events is underway this spring.

Art and Design Education Alumni Inspire with Innovative Projects Today’s Art and Design Education (ADE) students at Pratt are gaining real-world knowledge and experience in their field with the help of the network of ADE alumni who teach in New York City’s public schools. A recent on-campus exhibition of tunnel books made by high school students taught by Laura Blau, MFA Printmaking; Advanced Certificate in Art and Design Education ’12, at Millennium Art Academy in the Bronx is an example of how Pratt’s Art and

Design Department sustains active connections with alumni. Blau also super­vises Pratt student teachers.

Two other exhibitions involving ADE alumni and students came to campus last fall: The Teaching + Learning Potential of a Re-Imaged Space, explored how a cart designed by Natasha Seng, MID ’17; MS Art and Design Education ’18, can be used by teachers to reimagine the classroom environment. The Road to Professional Certification: An Exhibition of Performance Assessment featured highlights of the performance assessment of Jillian Leedy, MS Art and Design Education ’17.

Students Arrange Art Sale for Puerto Rico Hurricane Relief Students from Pratt’s senior printmaking class organized a sale of student art­works on the Institute’s Brooklyn campus to raise funds for the Puerto Rico relief effort following the devastation caused

by Hurricane Maria in September. The October event, which featured prints and other works by Pratt students from a range of disciplines, raised over $7,000.

All proceeds went to Direct Relief, a charity based in Goleta, California, that focuses on distributing disease-prevention materials in disaster zones.

The students’ decision to arrange the sale came in response to reports of continuing critical needs on the island in the face of widespread power outages, limited access to clean water, and other challenges. Mallory Smith, BFA Print­ making ’18, and Kate Sherman, BFA Printmaking ’18, spearheaded the organization of the event, from putting out a call to students to donate work and preparing it for sale to securing a location

Art-science residents’ programming for the Oregon Eclipse 2017 Festival included Glowbiotics, which involved painting with fluorescent bacteria. Photo by Skyler Greene

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5 3-Pocket Belt by BOND Hardware Dana Hurwitz, BFA Fashion Design ’12 $295 From Dana Hurwitz’s Brooklynbased jewelry and accessories brand, BOND Hardware, comes a customizable utilitarian belt designed for hands-free smallitem storage. Worn around the waist or crossbody, the belt is part of a modular leather collection created in collaboration with Australian accessories brand YMYL. To maximize the stowing potential of the standard three-pocket design, the belt is compatible with a range of key rings, chains, and other BOND Hardware attachments.

Also available in black at www.bond-hardware.com.

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6 Sequin Ocean Pillow

by MA+CH Marika Contompasis, Industrial Design ’69, and Charles Contompasis, BFA Painting ’72 $150–$210 Siblings Marika and Charles Contompasis founded their brand MA+CH in 2002, following individual careers in fashion and textile design, to create hand-dyed clothing and home accessories such as this linen pillow in a blue ombré motif. Made to order in their Schenectady, New York, design and production studio, each piece combines the siblings’ artistic ideas with a patented dye process that helps minimize waste. Pillows are available in five sizes at marikacharles.com.

7 Black Girl Magic Mahogany L. Browne, MFA Writing ’16 $16.99 Poet, educator, and activist Mahogany L. Browne collaborates with illustrator Jess X. Snow in this book-length literary and visual celebration of black girls. Through naming and then dispelling destructive ideas about girls’ place and presence in society, Browne’s words encourage girls and the women they become to discover the innate power and promise they hold. Available at us.macmillan.com.

8 Jungle Party Notebook

by Lark + Raven Ali Macdonald, MS Packaging Design ’12 $12 The most popular notebook from Ali Macdonald’s design brand Lark + Raven offers a blooming botanical beginning for your big thoughts. Macdonald founded Lark + Raven, with its signature color-splashed Sharpie-sketched patterns, after cutting her teeth at Jonathan Adler, where her designs adorned home accessories and Paperless Post greeting cards. The Jungle Party notebook is available, along with stationery, pins, pillows, and more, at www.larknraven.com

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Printmaking students organized a sale to support disaster relief in Puerto Rico.

on campus for the event and publicizing it through word-of-mouth, posters, and social media outreach.

“This project is a great example of how Pratt students are artists of action,” said Fine Arts Department Chair Jane South. “They are caring, socially responsible artists who activate their creativity to support others in times of need.”

inally the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, or GLIS) for more than 40 years, passed away on September 14, 2017, at the age of 88.

During her time teaching at Pratt from 1968 to her retirement in 2009, she formed many lasting friendships with students and was active in both the Union and the Faculty Council.

Photography Students Present Work on Social Issues at Inaugural Gordon Parks Dialogues In October, Pratt hosted the first Gordon Parks Dialogues, in partnership with NYU Tisch School of the Arts and The Gordon Parks Foundation. The event provided an opportunity for recipients of the Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarship from Pratt and other schools to present their creative work and ideas about social injustice in a symposiumstyle setting.

The Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarships are awarded to students with significant financial need whose artistic talents reflect the passion, vision, and humanity of renowned photographer Gordon Parks, who famously used his camera as “a weapon of choice” to contest social injustice. Last year, the Gordon Parks Foundation began awarding three scholarships annually to Pratt photography students. Cheyenne Coleman, BFA ’19; Abbi Newfeld, BFA ’18; and Evalina Sundbye, BFA ’20, are the 2017 recipients.

In Memoriam Donald Axleroad, BFA Illustration ’56 Robert L. Barton, Bachelor of Electrical Engineering ’48 Edward Ciborowski, MSLIS ’02 James Ronald Colvin, BFA Communications Design ’84; BArch ’90 Ralph W. Corso, Certificate, Electrical Engineering ’40 Robert Cotiaux, Certificate, Advertising Design ’50 Herbert Danska Paul Diamond, BFA Graphic Arts ’65 Christine Ann Robinson Frese, BFA Fashion Design ’72 Janneka E. Hannay, MPS Art Therapy and Creative Development ’89 Stephen J. Lasky, BS Art Teacher Education ’63; MFA Art Education ’65 Leo F. Marrs, Certificate, Leather and Tanning Technology’50 Ralph T. Mattson, BS Art Teacher Education ’60 Martin Montag, Certificate, Advertising Design ’38 Bernard J. Ohlstein, BFA Fashion Design ’86 Janis Rozens, BArch ’67 Morris Sheppard, BID ’65 Robert Smith, Certificate, ID ’51 Cornelia Elizabeth Smollin, Certificate, Advertising Design ’50 Robert Steinman, Bachelor of Electrical Engineering ’50 Virginia Thoren, Certificate, Advertising Design ’42 Joseph Tinnirello, AAS Building and Construction ’60 Elaine Nathan Warshaw, Certificate, Painting ’44 Marilyn K. Weidner Lisa H. Weinberg, MFA ’75 William J. Young, AAS Advertising Art ’60

School of Design Welcomes New Leadership Design educator and graphic designer Jessica Wexler assumed the role of chair of the Undergraduate Communications Design Department within the School of Design last August. Wexler leads a department that includes approximately 553 students and 103 faculty.

Remembering Beloved Faculty Longtime industrial design faculty member Gerald D. (Gerry) Gulotta passed away on February 11 at the age of 97. Gulotta taught at Pratt from 1955 to 1985 while practicing industrial design with a specialization in functional objects of glass, porcelain, ceramic, silver, and stainless steel. Prior to joining the faculty, he received his bachelor of industrial design from Pratt in 1976, having studied under Alexander Kostellow and Eva Zeisel, whose ceramics course he took over following her retirement.

Anne Kelly, who served on the faculty of the School of Information (orig-

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For more on these stories and the latest updates from Pratt, visit www.pratt.edu/news.

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“I never really thought of myself as being an activist. But reflecting back through this process, I discovered I do have a lot to say about privacy as a basic human right.”

—Abbi Newfeld, BFA Photography ’18, Gordon Parks Foundation Scholarship recipient, whose work explores the idea of mass surveillance

News

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Class Notes We want to know what you’re up to, and so do your fellow Pratt alumni. See page 52 for Class Notes submission guidelines.

1940s

Elaine Nathan Warshaw, Certificate, Painting ’44, wrote: “After graduating, I went on to freelance book jacket art at Doubleday (the Crime Club imprint’s Kay Tracey Mystery series), create advertisements that were shown in the Frist Museum in Nashville, paint portraits in oil, make ads for JCPenney, and in 1970, I started a stone carving studio that ran three workshops a week for 40 years, always filled, making more than 100 carvings now in collections from Texas to California to Maine to New York. I was always able to reinvent myself as an artist with my wonderful ‘foundation’ from Pratt!” Editor’s note: Sadly, Elaine Warshaw passed away on December 1, 2017, but we wanted to share this final note. She wrote to our Alumni Relations office sharing her curriculum vitae at 93 ½ and her pride at having begun her multifaceted artistic career at Pratt, starting at the age of 10 at Saturday Art School, a program that continues today.

work to honor those lost soldiers through a career in art practice. The only living artist with a painting in the Montana Historical Museum in Helena, Zemsky has painted around the world, exhibited in numerous galleries, founded and taught painting workshops, and published several books. She will be 95 in July.

1950s Eugene Marcus, ’51, who studied in the School of Engineering and the School of Leather and Tanning Technology, writes that during his time at Pratt, “I was business manager for Prattonia, the annual yearbook, which gave me the opportunity to meet students from the other Schools. One of the Art School students painted my portrait, which is still in my family. Since the tannery [his family business] was sold in 1980, I have been a real estate broker, a chemical repackager, and a handyman, and I now work in retail sales. For all the variety and opportunity, THANK YOU, Pratt.”

which includes plans for seven tiny houses and information on solar heating, rain catchment systems, mini kitchens, and construction tips for first-time builders. This, and more about David’s work and books, can be viewed on his website and blog, www.

StilesDesigns.com and www.stiles designsblog.tumblr.com.

Robert Tennenbaum, FAIA, BArch ’59, edited and published his second book about Columbia, Maryland, a 50-year-old new city with a population of 100,000. In the 1960s, he was Columbia’s chief architect-planner and is a 50-year resident. Columbia Maryland: A Fifty-Year Retrospective on the Making of a Model City tells in firsthand essays how a new city grows and how it is to live there. The first book he edited and published in 1996, Columbia, Maryland: Creating a New City, covers the founding and early development of the new city.

Books are available in the Columbia Archives Store on www.columbia association.org.

1960s

Jessica Zemsky, Drawing ’44, has lived for 40 years in Big Timber, Montana, working as a commercial and fine artist, with a specialty in watercolor, pastel, and oil painting. Attending Pratt during WWII, she saw many classmates go to war never to return, and she made it her life’s

Prattfolio

David Stiles, BID ’59, and his wife, Jeanie, published their 25th book, Building Small: Sustainable Designs for Tiny Houses and Backyard Buildings,

Spring/Summer 2018

Louis P. Giacalone, BArch ’65, is founding partner with Russell Ehasz, RA, of Ehasz Giacalone Architects, PC (EGA) in Farmingdale, New York. Founded in 1980, EGA is an interdisciplinary group

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of experienced licensed architects, interior designers, planners, estimators, contract administrators, and construction management supervisory personnel. EGA’s 37-year career includes projects for private developers and federal and municipal agencies ranging in size and concept, from rehabilitation and renovation to new facilities design, development studies, and master planning.

EGA was recently acquired by the nationally renowned firm H2M Architects + Engineers from Melville, New York, a multidisciplined professional consulting and design firm.

Barbara Levine, BFA Graphic Arts ’64, writes: “Pratt set me on a path to a wonderful career in publishing as an art director and designer. Those years at Pratt back in the 1960s were amazing— and art continues to be my life’s work.

I paint and exhibit. Actually, I now have a piece at MoMA. I responded to a request from Yoko Ono last September for people—not necessarily artists—to complete her commissioned poster Peace Is Power, and I recently heard from MoMA that my submission was included in the exhibition.”

the Ridgefield Guild of Artists in Ridgefield, Connecticut, about her painting in their 40th Annual Juried Show. She celebrates five decades of two parallel creative careers: one as an award-winning graphic designer/illustrator/art director, the other as an award-winning visual artist and poet. Her early work in the 1970s earned her the label of NYC Feminist Artist. This work is in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Feminist Art Base digital archive on the Brooklyn Museum website. For more information, visit www.shelleylowell.com.

people who influenced me and played a fundamental role in making our home a home.” Satin’s website is satinart works.com, and she can be reached at clairesatin@gmail.com.

Below left: Shelley Lowell, Regression, oil and wax on canvas, 24"×48"

Richard D. Miller, PE, Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering ’61, has practiced as an engineer in building design and construction for more than five decades. Notable clients include Caesars World, MGM, and Station Casinos, and the $4.5 billion Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Publications include Casino and Hotel Design Guidelines and articles in technical journals. Innovative projects include solar thermal systems when the industry was in its infancy. Miller was elected a fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, an honor given for distinguished contributions in the arts relating to the sciences of heating, refrigeration, air conditioning, and ventilation.

Helaine Soller, BFA Advertising Design ’62, had her work Afternoon Light exhibited in the Plaxall Gallery (Long Island City) in Making Connections I, curated by Elizabeth Holt, director of the Godwin Ternbach Museum at Queens College. Making Connections II, with her work Hoodoos in Orange, traveled to the Henry Deford III Gallery at Citibank in Long Island City. Soller is the executive coordinator of Women in the Arts Foundation (waif.org). She actively exhibits her work, curates art exhibits, and writes about art for the WIA newsletter. Soller was recently awarded a National Park Service Artist-inResidence residency for October 2018.

Tom Leytham, BArch ’67, has had six of his watercolors acquired by the permanent collection of the Vermont State House in Montpelier, and they are on exhibit in the committee rooms. These works are from a series of large-scale watercolors documenting the remnants of the industrial revolution in the northeast that were a part of a traveling show, The Other Working Landscape. The show traveled to five sites in New England. In June, Leytham is opening a new show, Hiding in Plain Sight, at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Eric Rubin, AAS Advertising ’67, worked for 37 years in New York City as an art director in advertising and publishing before retiring at 54 from Smith Barney/Citigroup. Residing in Port St. Lucie, Florida, he went on to be AD of trade magazines and catalogs, and he owned Alliance Catalogs, a retail- Above: Helaine Soller, Afternoon Light, acrylic jewelry-catalog publisher. He designed on canvas, 36"×24" Mickey Mouse and other Disney-brand timepieces, as well as scores of logos, packages, displays, and more. Rubin won a Printing Industries of America award and two Jesse H. Neal Awards for editorial excellence. Today, he still produces newsletters, fliers, and graphics for his retirement community.

Shelley Lowell, BFA Communications Design ’67, recently did an artist talk at

Claire Jeanine Satin, MFA Sculpture ’69, is showing a selection of her book art as part of the exhibition HOME AND HOMELESSNESS at the Hebrew Union College Museum in New York City, on view through June 30. The exhibition includes works from various artists that represent the idea of home to each artist.

Satin’s piece, Family Roots 2, “features my ancestry and the generations of

Above: Tom Leytham, South Royalton Granary

Class Notes

Robert Irwin Wolf, BID ’68; MPS Art Therapy and Creativity Development ’73, writes: “Pratt provided a firm foundation, enabling me to continue my professional growth to become a pioneer in the field of Expressive Analysis.”

President of the Institute for Expressive Analysis and author of numerous articles on the subject, Wolf is a licensed psychoanalyst, creative art therapist, and doctor

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AL L A S/F T. WORTH

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P ORTL AND, OR

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YOU ASKED. WE LISTENED. Last spring, Alumni Relations surveyed the alumni NE W YORK community, receiving 1,000 responses from Pratt grads around the world. What we heard time and again became our call to action: You want to connect with one another where you are.

SAN DIEGO

Our mission was clear. We pinpointed areas with the highest concentration of Pratt grads. We put the call out to alumni in hub zones to lay the foundation for regional networks. We worked with local leaders to roll out unique, region-specific THE BAY AREA programming. We supported dozens of events and watched as new friendships and professional bonds blossomed. But this is all just the beginning.

You are the future.

DAL L A S/F T. WORTH

HOW CAN YOU GE T INVOLVED? • Attend an event—meet alumni in your area • Create connections—network, mentor, recruit, and hire Pratt talent • Volunteer for your network—generate and activate MIAMI ideas to grow the Pratt presence in your region WE’RE HERE TO CONNECT YOU. To one another. To your school. To your own Pratt experience. Visit www.pratt.edu/regionalnetworks and get connected. P ORTL AND, OR

LOS ANGEL ES

PHIL ADEL PHIA

SEAT TL E

BOSTON

HOUSTON

NE W YORK

SEAT TL E

HAVE YOU MOVED? Help us get you the regional info you want—submit your change of address at www.pratt.edu/updatemyinfo.

WA SHINGTON, D C

WA SHINGTON, D C

THE BAY ARE A

Pratt Institute, Office of Alumni Relations

BOSTON

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DAL L A S/F T. WORT

MIAMI

of psychoanalytic studies. Since1980, he has been a professor of graduate art therapy at The College of New Rochelle, and he taught in Pratt’s program from 1976 to 2015. Wolf is also a practicing sculptor and photographer. His website is www.robertirwinwolf.com.

1970s

Lisa Lyman Adams, BFA Fine Arts ’73, had a solo show at the Mystic Museum of Art in Mystic, Connecticut, this spring. In the exhibition, titled kidArt, Adams presented works of fine art and illustration that combine “super realism, collage, trompe l’oeil, and handwriting, while blurring the line between fine art and commercial art.”

Above: Lisa Lyman Adams, BOYS!, acrylic, 24"×36"

C Bangs, MFA ’75, was one of five artists to participate in a residency at The New York Academy of Medicine, in collaboration with CENTRAL BOOKING, The Space for Artists Books, Art & Science, and More in the Lower East Side (LES). Her work created during the residency was featured in the group show Plant Cure held last fall in LES.

at George Fox University in Oregon, where he taught painting, printmaking, drawing, and art history. His career as an art educator spans 43 years. His artworks have been widely featured in juried and invitational solo and group exhibitions, including the latest: After the Storm at George Fox University and Educating for Peace at Concordia UniversityPortland. His poetry has been published in numerous journals and his artwork is represented in collections such as the Portland Art Museum, Oregon State University, Ashforth Pacific Inc., and George Fox University.

Frank Rispoli, BFA Interior Design ’72; MFA Photography ’09, had a showing of his series High Heels in the exhibition Midnight Mass at Brooklyn’s BLAM Projects Gallery in March 2017.

Steven Skaggs, MS Communication Design ’77, published the book FireSigns: A Semiotic Theory for Graphic Design (MIT Press), named an Outstanding Academic Title of 2017 by the Association of College and Research Libraries. FireSigns argues that graphic design has fallen into a pattern of following trends and fashion, but that for its continued growth, design needs to be built upon a theory Carrie Devorah, Associate in of visual meaning. Skaggs introduces Occupational Studies, Illustration ’78, such a semiotic theory using the lanachieved in two and a half years the guage and insights familiar to practicing prestigious rank of Distinguished graphic designers. Skaggs is program Toastmaster (DTM) with Toastmasters head of the graphic design program at International, the 90-year-old com­ the Hite Art Institute at the University munications and leadership club. In of Louisville.

2017, Devorah coached Booz Allen Hamilton Toastmasters Potomac Club, Crystal City, Virginia chapter, to achieve Toastmasters International’s highest club distinction, “President’s Distinguished,” in a record four months, an achievement read into the US Congressional Record by Virginia congressman Don Beyer last September.

Devorah, one of the earliest members of the Licensing Industry Association, branded her club “The Little Club That Could & Did Right Into the Congressional Pages of American History.”

Constance A. Smith, BFA ’71; MID ’73, writes, “Schiffer Books is proud to announce the introduction of Damsels in Design: Women Pioneers in the Automotive Industry, 1939–1959 (2018). With over 400 photos, Damsels features the profiles and work of over a dozen notable Pratt graduates and their contemporaries.

Smith started her career in the General Motors Advanced Concepts Studio in 1973. Her group was heavily involved with state-of-the-art technologies and built and designed the first TN LCD displays introduced on the Chevrolet Corvette as well as instrument panels to incorporate the first air bags. Smith, Mary Rieser Heintjes, BFA’79; who more recently designed furniture MFA ’85, had her work Elements 26: Iron for Charles Pollock, currently works for included in the group show BIG LOVE COX Automotive.” at Carter Burden Gallery in New York City this past winter.

Douglas G. Campbell, MFA Print­ Above: Mary Rieser Heintjes, Elements 26:Iron, making ’72, is professor emeritus of art welded steel fused with glass

Class Notes

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1980s

Ney Collier, MFA Photography and Printmaking ’81, published the book Poetic Principles of Organic Architecture on the subject of Frank Lloyd Wright. The book includes Collier’s photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, some of which are in the collection of RIBA (the Royal Institute of British Architects) in London. Collier is also the author of Mending the Earth in Milwaukee, a collection of photographs and essays about individuals who have converted lawns to natural landscapes, creating environments to preserve the lives of local wildlife. Both books are available on amazon.com.

Above: Photograph by Ney Collier of the Tea Circle at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, picturing the oak tree, later felled by lightning, around which Taliesin was built.

Monica (Schwartz) Kane, BFA Sculpture ’81, had work featured in the group show Hurry Up and Wait at the Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia last fall. The exhibition explored the topic of migration and “the range of emotions, wonder, assumptions, and discoveries that make migration much more than simply a political issue.”

missioner’s Award for Excellence in Service, presented at The Cooper Union on June 14, 2017. As Manhattan Borough Commissioner for the past six years, Rebholz has been key in the planning and implementation of the “DOB NOW: Build” portal, meeting regularly with DOB NOW development teams to provide insight on how the new system can be utilized to help developers, homeowners, and design professionals. Using the knowledge he has gained by overseeing hundreds of complex building projects, he has been able to articulate complex dynamics and workflows between industry members and the department.

1990s Debra Barnett, MS Package Design ’94, was named to the 2018 People to Watch list by Graphic Design USA (GDUSA). Founder, creative director, and president of Barnett Design in New Jersey, Barnett has worked with brands including Panasonic, Volvo, and Ferrero over her 30-year career. “It is an honor to be recognized by GDUSA, but I owe a great deal of my success to my team,” she says. “It’s so important to surround yourself with good people and to listen to their ideas. As designers, we are problem solvers, and there’s more than one way to solve a problem.”

Julia Ousley, MFA ’99, had her public artwork The Ancestors dedicated in Fort Worth, Texas, last November. The sculpture is permanently displayed on the Plaza Circle walking path in Historic Carver Heights. More information about Ousley’s work can be found on her website, www.juliaousley.com.

Tina Periquet, MS Interior Design ’92, founding principal of Periquet Galicia, an interior architecture and design firm in Metro Manila, was recognized as 2016 Outstanding Professional of the Year in Interior Design by the Philippine Regulation Commission. Her work on Arya Residences condominiums previously received accolades from the Philippine Property Awards and the South East Asian Property Awards.

Current work includes interior archi-­ tecture and lighting design for the new Philippine National Museum of Natural History. Her residential work is fea­t ured in 25 Tropical Houses in the Philippines (Periplus), The Tropical House (Tuttle), and Philippine Style: Design and Architecture (Anvil Press).

2000s Chrissy Angliker, BID ’06, had her first West Coast solo show of paintings, High Season, at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, California, followed last fall by a solo show in Baden, Switzerland.

Her book PAINT/ING/S was published in 2016, detailing her distinct process: Angliker “scoops and smoothes acrylic paint, creating pools that drip down rocky surfaces. The paintings are a marriage of form and function, as they are fluid in both brush marks and subject matter.” Angliker’s work can be viewed on her website, www.chrissy.ch and on Instagram, @chrissyangliker.

Mario Naves, MFA ’87, exhibited paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York City, in January—his seventh solo show there. Last November, he exhibited work completed during his time as a painting instructor in the 2017 Pratt in Venice program in Drawings from Venice (Alex Rosenberg Gallery, Hofstra University). Naves also recently curated the exhibitions Bête Noire (Five Myles, Crown Heights, Brooklyn) and Half Human (The Clemente, Lower East Side). Naves writes about art for The New Criterion and has been interviewed on Savvy Painter and Crain’s Business New York podcasts. His writing is featured on mnaves.wordpress.com, his art at www.ehgallery.com/mario-naves.

Maya Kopytman, MFA Computer Graphics ’95, art directed a redesign of the communication material for The Rockefeller University. With her firm, C&G Partners, she developed a design concept based on scientific images interpreted into watercolor paintings. The redesign was featured in Creative Boom, Vicky Chan, BArch ’08, reports that Martin Rebholz, RA, BArch ’87, Design Week, GDUSA, and other media the AIA Hong Kong chapter awarded received the NYC Buildings Com­ outlets covering design.

Architecture for Children, the educa-

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WHAT’S THE BIGGEST QUESTION YOU’VE ASKED YOURSELF TODAY? For Pratt Institute’s students and faculty, the creative process begins with a question.

How can urban design and planning become a catalyst for community change in neighborhoods in need of revitalization?

With an increasing number of people living with Alzheimer’s, what can designers do to make life easier, not only for those affected by the disease but also their caregivers?

How can industrial designers give people superhuman abilities, and in what contexts would such capabilities be beneficial and desirable?

The Fund for Pratt supports the intellectual and creative activity required to fully explore questions like these. For an inside look at that process and to learn more about The Fund for Pratt, visit www.pratt.edu/ffp.

tional outreach program he founded in New York City and Hong Kong, with a Community Citation. Chan and volunteer Belle Tang, BArch ’09, accepted the award in person. Daewook Lee, BArch ’08, is also among the volunteers in the Hong Kong program.

Monique Glover, BFA Fashion Design ’00, presented her first full men’s and boys’ spring/summer 2018 collection at Fashion Week Brooklyn last year.

She presented again in April. After working for major brands, she has launched her own, named Zyem, inspired by growing up in her hometown (Brooklyn) and travels around the world.

Her recent work providing a Black Panther movie-inspired wardrobe for Toddlewood was featured on Inside Edition. For more information, visit www.zyem.com.

Fair, The Washington Post, Vulture, and USA Today.

Karri (Lacourciere) May, BArch ’05, has joined the Springfield office of Pinck & Co. Inc. as senior project manager.

May brings 13 years of design and planning experience to the firm, with a focus on health care, design for the aging, commercial, and higher education. She is also a frequent keynote speaker at industry and community events; has volunteered as a design mentor with CANstruction, a charitable organization for the design and construction industry; and has received several awards including being named a Woman on the Rise honoree by Connecticut Professional Women in Construction.

Ben Gould, BID ’08, and Dawn Mostow, MFA New Forms ’08, won the Wearable Technology Award for Labyrinth Gown at this year’s 29th annual World of Wearable Art (WOW) Awards, the world’s leading wearable art design competition. Labyrinth Gown and other award-winning entries were on view last fall at WOW 2017 in Wellington, New Zealand. Gould and Mostow, who met at Pratt in 2006 in an Intro to Plastics class and married in 2011, are the design team behind Dawnamatrix, a latex-fashion company producing garments that are worn by the likes of Katy Perry and Beyoncé and featured in Vogue.

Corinne Mockler, née Weiner, BFA Communications Design ’04, redesigned the cover of the 200-year-old Farmers’ Almanac, the first new cover design for the iconic brand since 1996.

The 2018 cover was nominated for an ASME award. Mockler is the Farmers’ Almanac’s art director, responsible for Liz Hannah, BFA Film ’07, had her creation of the print and digital editions, screenplay for The Post, the 2017 film related marketing materials, and online about Washington Post publisher graphics, as well as product design for Katharine Graham, nominated for a the Almanac’s store and protection/ Golden Globe for Best Screenplay- evolution of the brand. Throughout her Motion Picture and a Critics’ Choice career, Mockler has worked as a graphic Movie Award for Best Screenplay. designer/art director in the fields of PR Hannah and her cowriter, Josh Singer, and marketing, branding, editorial and also received the Writers Guild of publishing, and the nonprofit sector.

America West’s 2018 Paul Selvin Award.

Directed by Steven Spielberg and star- Gabriele Moritz, MArch ’01, Fulbright ring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, scholar and winner of the Sidney Katz The Post received a number of other Award for Design Excellence, is cooperindustry nominations and honors, and ating with Bettina Johae, founder of Hannah’s work was spotlighted in Vanity the art and architecture tour company

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Spring/Summer 2018

aplusnyc, to offer guided tours to contribute to the communication of architecture, art, and urbanism and their importance in society. For more information, visit www.aplusnyc.net.

Paul J. Proulx, MS City and Regional Planning ’03, is a partner at the law firm Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP in New York City. Proulx’s practice focuses on land use, environmental, and zoning matters. He regularly collaborates with the city’s top architects, including many Pratt graduates, to obtain zoning approvals and transfer development rights.

Randle Reed, BFA Photography ’09, was named director of community programs at Delaware College of Art and Design (DCAD) in Wilmington. Reed formerly worked in DCAD’s admissions office and was DCAD’s assistant director of student services before leaving the college to do community and outreach programming with United Way of Delaware. In his new position, Reed provides leadership and educational management for DCAD’s professionaldevelopment and personal-interest offerings and its internship program for degree students. He also plans, implements, and assesses programming and fosters relationships between DCAD and other community organizations.

Pascale Sablan, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP, BArch ’06, received a 2018 AIA Young Architects Award honoring “individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers.” Last year, she was named to Building Design and Construction’s 40 Under 40, recognized as an industry rising star. Only the 315th living African-American woman to be licensed as an architect in the US, Sablan is a senior associate at S9

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Architecture in New York City and has helped design mixed-use, commercial, and residential projects in Azerbaijan, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US. Stephanie Midolo Vaughan, MPS Design Management ’04, founder of The Morgan Leary Vaughan Fund, reported that her organization received an award from Graphic Design USA (GDUSA). Its Speaking of NEC brochure was recognized as part of GDUSA’s 2017 American Health + Wellness Awards. “As a designer myself, it is a great honor for the brochure to be recognized for its design excellence,” says Vaughan. “More importantly though, I hope that this recognition helps not only garner muchneeded attention for NEC outside of the neonatal intensive care unit but also elevate NEC in the public’s consciousness and conversation.”

Jason M. Wells, MSLIS ’07, has been named books marketing director at the American Psychological Association.

He was previously associate publisher, director of marketing and publicity at Rodale Kids; vice president of marketing and publicity at Simon & Schuster, where he announced Hillary Clinton’s latest children’s book; and before that, executive director of publicity and marketing at ABRAMS, where he worked on the blockbuster Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

especially the smaller villages where access to books or information is extremely limited.” A recent crowdfunding campaign allowed them to build and install 12 libraries and counting, toward their goal of 40 across the country.

Museum and Science Center in Binghamton, New York, last November.

Before joining the museum, Grasso served as the director of development and marketing at WSKG Public Media in Vestal, New York. During his five-year tenure at WSKG, he was responsible for Dyanis De Jesus, MPS Design overseeing individual gifts, business Management ’13, worked on the publi- sponsorship, marketing, audience sercation Orange Economy: Innovations and vices, digital media, and volunteers. The Trends in the Creative Industries in Latin Board of Trustees announced his selecAmerica and the Caribbean for the Inter- tion for the Roberson position after a American Development Bank, the national search for candidates. largest source of development financing for the region. She presented the project last October at the World Design Forum in Montreal, Canada.

Helena Duncan, BFA Writing ’17, attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College last summer. Accepted as a fiction contributor on the basis of her writing sample, Duncan had her story workshopped in a class led by author Charles Baxter, and she performed her work in one of the conference’s reading series. “It was a lot of fun,” she writes, “and incredibly helpful to get fresh eyes on a story from my thesis that I’m hoping to revise and publish.” Duncan now lives in Fujian Province, China, where she teaches English as a Second Language to children ages 4 to 16.

2010s

Laurie Alvandian, MSILS ’12, has been growing her community project Little Free Libraries in Armenia. After receiving a grant from Birthright Armenia, of which she is an alum, Alvandian and her project partner installed the first little library in Yerevan in July 2016.“We received so much positive support from the community, we decided we wanted to bring these little libraries to every corner of Armenia,

Class Notes

Vindhya Guduru, MS Interior Design ’12, started a firm, Spacefiction Studio, with her husband in India. Among the studio’s recent work, which has been covered by a number of design magazines in India, is DOCK 45, a modular bar-meets-club space in Hyderabad that incorporates “salvaged parts from broken ships, sea-life imprints on concrete, and parametric fins on walls mimicking sea waves” in a structure evocative of stacked shipping containers. The studio website is www.spacefictionstudio.com.

Amelia Golini, AIA, BArch ’10, and David Nuñez, BFA Communications Design ’09, were married at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on June 11, 2017. The reception was held at No. 7 Restaurant in Fort Greene. Devon Shaughnessy ’09 officiated the ceremony, and Julie Hagenbuch ’09 of Canister Photography was the photographer. Other alumni in attendance included Anita Ng ’08, Tara Van Der Linden ’08, and Melissa Choi ’09.

Do you have a Pratt love story to share?

Email alumni@pratt.edu with the subject line “Pratt Pairs.”

Emory Harkins and Alexa Trembly, both BFA Writing ’16, launched Los Angeles’s first mobile bookstore, Twenty Stories, in November. Operating out of a renovated vintage van, Twenty Stories offers 20 new titles each month, selected from across genres of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, as well as a range of literary and cultural magazines. Harkins and Trembly’s goal is to create community around literature in unexpected places, and to that end they’ve also started a book club that meets at a new location Michael Grasso, MPS Arts and each month. For more information or to Cultural Management ’12, was appoint- check out the online version of the booked executive director of the Roberson shop, visit www.twentystoriesla.com.

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Matt Klegberg, MFA ’15, had a solo show, Drawings, at Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston in January. The exhibition was highlighted in Blouin Art Info, which commented on Klegberg’s allusions to “Cubism, Fauvism, and various related movements to produce a colorful balance of directional forces.”

Maria de Los Angeles, BFA Painting ’13, has work featured in the exhibition A Universal History of Infamy at LACMA, where she was artist-in-residence in March; the show is on view until October 6. This spring, she had a solo show, Transcending Myths, at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon. In New York, De Los Angeles curated the exhibition Internalized Borders at John Jay College, and her work was featured in the group show People I Love Who Are Far Away, benefiting the New York Immigration Coalition, at E.TAY Gallery, and Citizen at St. John’s University.

Above: Installation view of Transcending Myths. Photo by Rae Sunwoo

Hailey McCracken, BFA Photography ’17, is Delaware College of Art and Design’s newest admissions counselor, charged with recruiting qualified students for the associate of fine arts degree program. McCracken isn’t new to DCAD; she is a DCAD graduate who went on to complete her BFA at Pratt.

Moeinedin Shashaei, MFA Communications Design ’16, held an Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, where his work was presented in the six-month exhibition, The Socrates Annual. His sculptural piece, Unum, involved casting more than 200 human mouths in concrete.

Adrian Volz, BFA Communications Design ’11, joined Stephen Stimson Associates Landscape Architects in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the firm’s new marketing coordinator.

Sofía Reeser del Rio, BFA Painting ’12, curated the exhibition Self-Organize / Auto-Organizar at Bronx Art Space last fall. The exhibition featured work “that challenges and reimagines the physical, emotional, and geographical boundaries of identity and asks us to reflect on how, what, and why we are taking matters into our own hands, through the works of artists who mobilize, respond, expose, heal, and rebuild together.” The show also raised funds to help those af­f ect­ed

by Hurricanes Maria and Irma in Puerto Rico.

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).

Tarini Sethi, BFA Drawing ’14, who lives and works in New Delhi, India, has been freelancing as an artist, displaying her work at a number of shows, and curating exhibitions for independent artists in India. In February, she organized India’s first anti-art fair for independent artists, The Irregulars Art Fair, creating an alternative space for independent contemporary artists in an empty factory space in New Delhi.

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s x e t e h m N t Gene e o c l e W ration! t t a Pr

Left to right, top to bottom: Elliot (Sinclaire Alkire, MFA ’02, and Jeffery Tyack, MSILS ’12); Alex (Tiffany G. Ahn, BFA History of Art and Design ’15); Gemma Mae (Jessica McMahon, BFA Fashion Design ’04); Evelyn Ivy (Elizabeth Rabinovici, MFA Sculpture ’13); Rosie Cat (Zaakea Al-Barati, MSILS ’09); Avila (Meera Vaidya, MS Environmental Planning ’16); Aili Frances (Emily Kangas, BFA Interior Design ’05); Evan Holden and Grace (Lisa Martinelli, MPS Art Therapy and Creative Development ’02); Jasper (Sarah Wight, MPS ’14); Henry (Lauren Helman Foley, MS Interior Design ’10); Elijah (Nicoelle Danielle Cohen, BFA Sculpture ’04); Calder (Rebecca Seeman, BFA Communications Design ’04, and Tim Seeman, BFA Film ’03); Soan Sun (Minji Jeong, BID ’14); Miles (Melanie Henderson-Alkes, BFA Communications Design ’04); Magnus (Scott Malbaurn, MFA ’04); Pablo (Carla Fuquene-Pena, BArch ’02); Page (Rebecca Seeman, BFA Communications Design ’04, and Tim Seeman, BFA Film ’03); Calvin (Sinclaire Alkire, MFA ’02, and Jeffery Tyack, MSILS ’12).

Ca t s off to you! Email alumni@pratt.edu with an update on your new addition and we’ll send a furry Pratt pal your way.

The Charitable Gift Annuity Security for You Support for Pratt Students and Faculty

Creating a charitable gift annuity (CGA) at Pratt is an easy way to support Pratt Institute students and faculty while gaining the added security of lifelong fixed annuity payments.

You can fund a CGA by transferring cash, property, or appreciated securities to Pratt. When you do, you’ll create lifetime payments for yourself, for yourself and another person, or as a gift for someone special. The amount of income generated by your CGA depends on a variety of factors, including the amount you contribute and your age at the time the gift was made, as illustrated in the sample chart.

Age CGA Rate* 65 4.7% 70 5.1% 75 5.8% 80 6.8% 85 7.8% 90 9% To learn more about how a CGA could help secure your future and Pratt’s, contact Drew Babitts, Director of Planned Giving and Major Gifts, directly at 718.399.4296 or at dbabitts@pratt.edu for a personalized CGA proposal. *These rates are for illustration purposes only.

Actual rates may vary.

LEGENDS 2018 10.25.18 SAVE THE DATE A SCHOLARSHIP BENEFIT SUPPORTING PRAT T STUDENTS AND HONORING CREATIVE ICONS 6 PM C OCKTAIL RECEP TION 7 PM DINNER AND AWARDS CEREMONY WEYLIN 1 7 5 BROADWAY BROOKLYN, NY LEGENDS PROCEEDS BENEFIT PRAT T INSTIT U TE S CHOL AR SHIP F UNDS.

INFORMATION AND TICKET S: WWW.PRAT T.EDU/LEGENDS 7 18.399.44 8 6 LEGENDS @PRAT T.EDU

Alumni Day 2017

On a luminous autumn day last October, more than 700 alumni and guests convened on the Brooklyn campus to experience Pratt as it is today. Open galleries, guided tours, and group gatherings welcomed back those who used to work and dream within the gates.

Exhibitions curated by a committee of alumni featured a broad survey of work by

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renowned Pratt artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe; Paul Rand; and Pat Steir, BFA Graphic Arts ’62. Reunions took place around campus, including the 50th Reunion honoring the class of 1967, held in the Pratt House and attended by Provost Kirk E. Pillow, who served as Pratt’s interim president last fall. The evening before, a crowd of architecture alumni celebrated

a special milestone of their own at the Undergraduate Architecture in Rome Program 40+4 Anniversary Reception.

Alumni Day 2017 was capped off with the presentation of the 2017 Alumni Achievement Awards, feting Lillian Benson, ACE, BFA Art and Design Education; Charles Churchward, BFA Communications Design ’71; William Porter, MID ’58; Jean Shin,

Spring/Summer 2018

BFA Painting, MS Art History, and Criticism ’96; and Frank Verlizzo BFA Communications Design ’72.

The accompanying event, themed Dîner en Noir, saw alumni sporting their finest all-black attire for an evening of dinner and dancing into the night.

Photos by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead

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Celebrate the “Best in Class” at Alumni Day 2018 Pratt invites all alumni back to our beautiful Brooklyn campus for Alumni Day 2018. Come celebrate alumni excellence with former classmates and professors at the annual Alumni Achievement Awards, take a guided tour of our historic campus and renowned sculpture park, sketch live horses on campus, and attend creative sessions, special receptions, workshops, and much more!

Saturday, September 29 11 AM–11 PM Pratt Institute 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205 Registration opens in July.

For more information, please contact Alumni Relations at 718.399.4447, email alumni@pratt.edu, or visit alumni.pratt.edu/alumniday.

We look forward to seeing you at this all-day celebration.

Pratt Institute Office of Alumni Relations Institutional Advancement 200 Willoughby Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205

About the cover Frances Bronet, the 12th president of Pratt Institute, brings new leadership to a community of creative thinkers, makers, and innovators.