Karina Sharif, BFA Fashion Design ’08, was featured in Curbed. “Her peacock-like chair is captivating; it fans out dyed cotton paper along its solid steel frame; those delicate shell shapes in deep blues allude to the water that the artist (a former fashion designer) wanted to reference.”
The Daily Hub
A roundup of ideas and projects from around the Institute
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Adjunct Professor – CCE of Industrial Design Irvin Tepper was featured in a Wall Street Journal article about his collection of fountain pens. “Writing with the German-made pen, Tepper says, is ‘almost like riding a wild horse’ because it’s a larger pen with an extremely smooth nib.”
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Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice Carlos Motta was named the 2025–26 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism from Bard College. As the Keith Haring Chair, he will be a fellow at Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) and the Bard Human Rights Program, will teach a class across departments, and will deliver a lecture in the spring. Motta will continue to do his work at Pratt simultaneously with this fellowship in the spring semester.
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The Chicago Reader reviewed Cornerstone, a solo exhibition in Chicago’s Hyde Park Art Center by Yasmin Spiro, BFA Fine Arts (Painting) ’99; MFA Fine Arts (Painting and Drawing) ’04. “Sound and smell aren’t the only senses Spiro engages to focus attention on the question of home. For her, materiality is central; each element of her work is layered with reference, history, and memory, revealing how our ideas of home are bound by our relationship to the land and the things we build upon it.”
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Nat Mesnard, visiting instructor of associate degrees, describes how they developed the role-playing card game Assemblage in an article for Edge Effects. “Beginning with archetypes, Dream Askew invites players to develop the game’s narrative foundation through emergent conversations on character relationships. Assemblage, I decided, would be similar: in conversation, my players would define not just single characters, but entire species—a collection of simultaneous, overlapping ‘we’ voices.”
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Edel Rodriguez, BFA Painting ’94 and Visionary Awardee 2019, created the most recent cover of The New Yorker entitled “Mayor Mamdani,” depicting incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani smiling on a crowded subway. For more examples of Pratt alumni and faculty who have contributed to the magazine, see the recent story “Pratt and a Century of the New Yorker”.
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Swarali Karulkar, MS Dance/Movement Therapy ’16, is premiering her documentary film, Body Unveiled, at the upcoming New York Documentary Film Festival, with its world premiere to follow at the Awareness Film Festival. Body Unveiled explores how trauma is stored within the body and how the key to reclaiming agency and healing lies within. Karulkar produced the film to raise awareness—especially within the South Asian community—about the powerful role movement and the body can play in healing deep-rooted trauma.
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Fine Arts alumnus Mario A. Robinson was selected as the first-ever Save Ellis Island artist-in-residence. “Mario Robinson is the perfect artist to interpret the south side of Ellis Island. His sensitivity to American history is beautifully told through the stillness found in his paintings,” said Jim Dessicino, museum creative director for Ellis Island.
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Four Pratt faculty and alumni were featured in the 40 Under 40 North America list by the World Architecture Festival (WAF), in collaboration with The Architect’s Newspaper: Laura Salazar-Altobelli, assistant professor of undergraduate architecture; Erik Martínez, BArch ’10; Juan Sala, BArch ’16; and Isaac Michan, MArch ’13.
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Kay Moon, BFA Fine Arts ’25, received the Sculptors Guild Roosevelt Scholarship. Their work Beings of Light and Fire is on view at the MORA Museum of International Art in Jersey City, NJ, through December.
More Pratt Institute News
Celebrating Creative Legends
Legends 2025 raised vital funds for student scholarships and honored distinguished creative icons Jeremy Scott and Mavis Wiggins, with awards presented by Heidi Klum and Cindy Allen.
Architecture Students Make Strong Debut at Design Competition
From Pratt Institute News
The Pratt team earned national recognition and the honorable mention award for a project centered on food, culture, and connection in Kansas City.
Nurturing Exquisite Relations
From Pratt Institute News
Cocreated with alumni, faculty, and students across the Institute, a recent exhibition presented by Pratt’s School of Art embodied mentorship, collaboration, and support for the LGBTQIA+ community.