FACULTY AND STAFF FOCUS

Frank Lind, M.F.A.’74

Professor, Fine Arts
Former Dean, School of Art and Design
 

How does it feel to be teaching again after 10 years as dean of the School of Art and Design?
To be teaching again is a joy. In administration, one tends to see only problems. Now I can enjoy working with the wonderful students we get at Pratt.

What accomplishment do you take most pride in during this time?
I believe I was accessible to students, faculty and staff; I was a full-service dean, as it were. As a strategy, and knowing that resources are always finite, I devoted much effort to identifying, hiring, and then empowering good people in key positions throughout the school. Empowering meant acknowledging the virtues of these people and then trusting them to do their jobs. It also meant creating, through persistent effort, assistant personnel positions to make good education possible. I tried to create an administrative culture of respect and support. And for a long time, I succeeded.

How do today’s students take to your “slow painting” approach?
So far, so good. The response from students has been very encouraging. They can see the results.

What’s the most important thing you want fine arts students to learn from you? 
Have a strategy, then acquire the knowledge and skills to implement it.

Your seascapes and studies of the human form reflect a deep familiarity with the art of the past. Do you encourage students to follow your example by visiting museums? 
I am forever talking about permanent collections and shows in the museums and galleries of the vast resource that is New York. I also bring to class books, catalogs, and other reproductions of good art. One of the outside assignments in my classes is to make a copy, in oils, of a master painting.

What has most inspired your own creativity in recent years?
Seeing great paintings, working directly from nature and the figure, being in an environment like Pratt where art is recognized as important, and being married to someone who is a protean artist herself and who supports my work.

Do you believe the type of realist painting that you do will always have a future, even in this post-modernist era? 
Of course I do. People will keep making music, writing, cooking, making love, and painting, among other things.

What would we be most surprised to learn about you?
I am the proud stepfather of Chad Vader. (Google him.)

Photo: Andrew Yonda

FACULTY AND STAFF NEWS AND NOTES

An installation by Melissa Barrett, assistant chair, Digital Arts, titled Jules Verne nativity, was featured in a November event at Parlor Antics in Brooklyn. Earlier this fall, Barrett’s work was included in a benefit exhibition in New York City for History Starts Now, a nonprofit ministry that fights domestic trafficking of children and helps to empower women who have been victims of trafficking and domestic abuse.

This past November, Steve Diskin, chair, Industrial Design, gave a keynote speech on the irrationality of the creative process, titled “Off with his Head!,” at the ALICE symposium (Architecture, Landscape, Interiors, Culture and Emotion) in the city of Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia. Diskin also recently wrote the preface, “Getting to know Niko Kralj,” for the first monograph on Slovenia’s renowned designer Niko Kralj, titled NIKO KRALJ by Jasna Hrovatin.

Gary Fogelson and Phil Lubliner, visiting instructors, Undergraduate Communications Design, judged the Midwest category of Print magazine’s 2010 Regional Design Annual.

Michael Gerbino, adjunct professor, Undergraduate Communications Design, art directed the new Communications Design website prattcomd, which was designed by Gina Capozza (Communications Design ’11) and coded by Sam Stroube (Communications Design ’10). 

Mark Goetz (B.I.D. ’63), adjunct professor, Industrial Design, will speak on March 24 as part of the Museum of Arts and Design’s new public program series, “The Home Front: American Furniture Now.” Goetz will speak on a panel, titled “After Class: The First Steps of the American Designer,” moderated by Interior Design magazine editor Annie Block.

Bruce Hannah, professor, Industrial Design, was quoted on coffee table design in a December 29, 2010 New York Times article. 

Deb Johnson (B.I.D. ’86), academic director of sustainability and visiting associate professor, Graduate Center for Planning, is quoted on Pratt’s sustainability initiatives and the first Academic Summit on Sustainability in Art and Design Education in a recent Communications Arts column, titled “Thinking in Systems, Design and Otherwise.” 

Principal designer of Why Not Smile LLC Hoon Kim, visiting assistant professor, Graduate Communications Design, created a visual representation of the three meanings of “Art Works” that is now available on the National Endowment for the Arts website.

Work by Haresh Lalvani, professor, undergraduate Architecture, is on display at de Castellane Gallery in Brooklyn through January 30. The work is an exhibition of sculptures inspired by designs in nature. 

Dennis McNett, Tom Little Vital Vessel (installation view), 2010, carved wood, woodcut prints, and screens, 52 x 84 x 20 inches. Photo: Courtesy of Joshua Liner GalleryDennis McNett (M.F.A. ’04), adjunct assistant professor, Fine Arts, is showing new works on paper and freestanding sculpture in an exhibition, titled “Reaping Waves and Vital Vessels The Passing of the Wolfbats,” at Joshua Liner Gallery in Chelsea through January 22. 

Mario Naves (M.F.A. ’87), adjunct professor, Fine Arts, recently received a Distinguished Alumni award from The College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah for his efforts and accomplishments in art and art criticism. This past year his works on paper were the subject of a one-person exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery in Manhattan. Naves were recently awarded a grant for $12,000 by The Pollock-Krasner Foundation.

Paintings by the late Pratt Distinguished Professor Mary Buckley Parriott celebrating the life of St. Columba were recently displayed at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan. In her 37 years as a professor of art and design at Pratt, Buckley served for many years as a coordinator of the Foundation Art program. She developed the basic course in Light, Color, and Design for freshmen in 1960, followed by color concepts courses for upperclassmen, a color course for the graduate industrial design program, and an experimental color course for the School of Architecture. She was honored as a Distinguished Professor at Pratt Institute in 1992. In 1975, she authored Color Theory, published by Gale Research Company. Her articles on color have appeared in Time and Life magazines, and she was a contributing editor on color for the Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques. To view more works by Buckley, visit marybuckleyartwork.com.

Mary Buckley Parriott, Quarry Landscape III, 1962, oil on linen, 38 x 44 inches

Cristina Pattuelli, assistant professor, Information and Library Science, has been awarded the OCLC/ALISE Library and Information Science Research Grant to support her research, titled “FOAF (Friend of a Friend) in the Archive: Linking Networks of Information with Networks of People.” The grant supports independent research that helps integrate new technologies and contributes to a better understanding of the information environment and user expectations and behaviors.

Work by Sheila Pepe, special assistant to the dean for academic affairs, will be displayed at Sue Scott Gallery on the Lower East Side as part of the exhibition “A Room, in Three Movements.” Pepe’s piece A Mutable Thing, made from silk, cotton and metallic thread, begins as a response to the architectural detail of the gallery and will morph through movement to something wearable. Three times during “A Room, in Three Movements,” the location of each sculpture will change, prompting the artists to improvise a response to each other’s work. The exhibition runs from January 20 through February 27.

Sheila Pepe, A Mutable Thing, 2011, silk, cotton, metallic threadJanice Robertson, visiting associate professor, History of Art and Design, will deliver a paper, titled “Look, Listen, Speak, Text, Link, Draw: VoiceThread Changes the Balance of Power,” in a session on Technology and Collaboration in the Art History Classroom at the 99th Annual Conference of the College Art Association in New York City on February 9.

Aileen Wilson, associate professor, Art and Design Education, is co-curating a group exhibition, titled “Neo-nomads: What travels with you?” with Anne-Laure Fayard and Baseera Khan. The exhibition runs from January 20 through February 26 at Bric Rotunda Gallery, the contemporary art space of BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn. “Neo-nomads” poses a question addressing the transient nature of contemporary life in the 21st century: What does one take and carry as a neo-nomad? Uzma Rizvi, assistant professor, Social Science and Cultural Studies, and McKendree Key, visiting instructor, Art and Design Education, are also taking part in this project.