Buone Feste e Buon Anno da Pratt in Venice a Tutti! Our team at Pratt in Venice wishes you good holidays, good health, and good news in 2023!
Having been obliged to cancel our program for summer 2020 and summer 2021, Pratt in Venice returned to our fragile and beautiful site in 2022. And both the miraculous site and our wonderful hosts and collaborators were there to welcome and instruct us.
Painting alongside canals, studying masterpieces up close, and exploring printmaking, Pratt in Venice students are expanding their artistic knowledge abroad.
Painting in Venice was a surreal experience. With UIA's ideal location at the water's edge, its impressively beautiful building, a travel catalogue view from the studio, and the most amazing and accommodating caretaker, Massimo, my experience as a graduate painting student and assistant was beyond incredible.
Pratt in Venice alumna ('14) Megan Kelchner was honored on Sunday night in Los Angeles at the 31st annual L. Ron Hubbard Writers and Illustrators of the Future Awards at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. The contest is specifically aimed at finding and recognizing artists and writers of the future, who have yet to be published.
The 30th annual exhibition opens Monday, November 17th, 2014, and runs all week until November 21st in East Hall’s Second Floor Gallery on Pratt's Brooklyn campus.
Diana Gisolfi, Director
Participants in the 2013 Pratt in Venice program were both thoroughly engaged in the experience and seriously productive in their work. Again a congenial mix of graduate and undergraduate students from various departments and programs at Pratt took part. Art History, Fine Arts, Library Science, Communication Design, Art Education, and Art Therapy were represented. Alumnus Joe Kopta (PiV '07, BFA/MS '10) again joined the team as program coordinator. Early in the program he organized a new, optional, Sunday trip – to Ravenna – to study mosaics earlier than any on the islands of Venice. Chris Wright’s painting class often brought easels outside – to investigate and depict in varied ways the light and reflections in Venice. Jennifer Melby’s printmakers explored etching, aquatint and other techniques. The joint final critique showed abundant, diverse and high quality works of art.
Painting Junior Luke Watson at work (photo: Chris Wright).
In Art History all enjoyed the boat trip to Torcello, where Dorothy Shepard invited Joe Kopta to lecture on the mosaics. Materials and Techniques students were able to mount to the monks’ loft in San Sebastiano and hear from conservators and Amalia Basso of the Soprintendenza about the last phase in the conservation of Veronese’s frescoes.
Special lectures included Stefania Sartori, wood conservationist, Paolo Spezzani in a lecture open to all on non destructive investigation of materials and techniques, and Robert Morgan on the Biennale. The Biennale itself was all over town, not only in the main sites at the Arsenale and the Giardini. What distinguished the Biennale of 2013 was, in fact, its installation in many private palaces around the city. This opened such palazzi to visitors and challenged 21st century artists to create installations that might interact with spaces built in the 15th, 16th or 17th century.
On trips to Padua trip and the villa Barbaro there were innovations. After the visit to the Giotto chapel and the area of the Santo, a few faculty and students went to Sta. Giustina, a 16th century Benedictine church with early Christian remains, recently unearthed. On the villa trip, after Castelfranco and Giorgione we visited Palladio’s Villa Emo decorated by Zelotti before continuing to Palladio’s Villa Barbaro at Maser and to our rustic meal and art-making on the hills outside Bassano. This addition brought universal approval and will be repeated.
Students Lilian Thorpe, Jessie Novik and Anthony Vasquez observing Zelotti's frescoes in Palladio's Villa Emo (photo: Diana Gisolfi).
We are very excited to invite you to the 29th annual exhibition. As in past years, the exhibition showcases the work of this summer’s Pratt in Venice program, featuring works in painting and printmaking as well as research projects done by current Pratt students.
The exhibition opens Monday, November 4th, and runs all week until November 8th in East Hall’s Second Floor Gallery on the Pratt Brooklyn campus. We will be having an opening party November 4th from 5-7 pm with refreshments, a slideshow of photos from this year’s program, a silent auction for the works to benefit the scholarship fund, and a chance to meet and mingle with alumni.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Highlights from the show include current junior Max Tovar’s detailed etchings that sold like hotcakes, junior Kaitlin Mazzei’s large oil canvases of realistically rendered scenes from every day Venetian life, and junior Melina DiMarco’s hazy, nearly abstract oils of Venice’s canals and natural features.
Diana Gisolfi, Director
Pratt in Venice 2012 was a highly productive year with lots of student collaboration and many memorable occasions. Nineteen participants included upperclassmen and graduate students from Art History, Fine Arts, Interior Design, and Architecture. A student from the University of Delaware and two students from Pratt at Munsen-Williams-Proctor (one on her way to Pratt, the other moving on to Maryland) joined the group. Alumnus Joe Kopta (PiV '07, BFA/MS '10) joined as chief assistant and Venice alumnus Andrew Kurczak (PiV '11) continued as communicator extraordinaire. Students Kelly Davis, Regina Dubin, Collin Hewitt and Hannah West served as course assistants.
Pratt in Venice 2012 on Palladio's Bridge, Bassano del Grappa (photo: Joseph Kopta).
Dorothy Shepard, with Joe and colleagues Jennifer and Chris, led the trip to Torcello and the visit to San Marco. All faculty and staff contributed in group visits to the Accademia and the Doges Palace led by Diana. Visiting lecturer Tracy Cooper (Temple University) shared her expertise on Palladio at San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore. Materials and Techniques visits to the San Marco mosaic lab, the Orsoni factory, and wood conservation studio with Stefania Sartori were followed by a very special opportunity to mount the scaffold at the church of San Sebastiano in Venice to study, with the help of the conservators Lucia Tito and Egido Arlango, the great range of painting techniques employed by Veronese and his assistants. A special event in the art history class was the lecture by alumna Galia Halpern (MS/MSLIS '07) in the exhibition of early maps at the Marciana Library. The lecture to the whole group by expert Paolo Spezzani on paintings in Venice and Padua studied under X-ray, infrared and ultraviolet shed light on the group trip to Padua and prepared students to understand examples to be seen on the trip to Castelfranco, Maser and Bassano. In Padua, Antonio Stevan, conservation architect, again generously hosted our early morning extended visit to the Scrovegni Chapel with Giotto’s frescoes. At Bassano all enjoyed a delicious meal al fresco prepared by Luisa and Gigi with all fresh local ingredients before seeking perches from which to sketch, paint or etch the countryside.
Tracy Cooper (Temple University) lecturing on Palladio's architecture in the church of San Giorgio Maggiore (photo: Joseph Kopta)
Jennifer Melby’s printmaking students working long hours at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica and Chris Wright’s painters working at the Università Internazionale dell’Arte and on site produced a wonderful range of work, admired by all participants in the final critique before our “Last Supper” held at Gianni’s on the Zattere after the weekend celebration of the Festa del Redentore accompanied by ceremonies, church bells, boat races and fabulous fireworks.
Colin Hewitt (Painting course assistant) presents his work at the Final Critique (photo: Joseph Kopta).
Pratt in Venice will have its first informational meeting for interested students on February 1st !
Need Art History or Studio credits? Want to spend your summer in the city of water looking at art? Pratt in Venice is holding its first informational meeting on Wednesday, February 1st at 12:30 in Main 230. This is a great chance to find out more about the program, meet the professors, and other specifics such as application procedures and dates. The program is running for its 28th year, and has a distinguished reputation among study abroad programs at Pratt. Keep a look out for flyers around campus and feel free to stop by the Pratt in Venice office in room 250B to pick up a brochure and applications.
This past summer, Pratt in Venice students were filmed for a CBS segment on American students studying in Venice during the Biennale. CBS met a group of Pratt students at the Arsenale exhibition space, and followed the group while they explored the exhibits. Additionally, the reporter conducted interviews with some of the students. It was shown on the air Sunday, November 27th. To see the full clip, click here!
Art History Graduate Students Aurelia Moser, Jessica Kloville and Alex Watkins were interviewed by CBS reporter Seth Doane at the Arsenale during the Biennale (photo: Chris Wright).
