Over four weeks this summer, Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn campus became a place of creative discovery for a group of over 200 high school students exploring new materials, new ideas, and new ways of seeing themselves as artists and designers.
As recipients of the The Black Alumni of Pratt (BAP) Summer PreCollege Scholarship, Okalani Logan, Darwin Chavarria Mendez, and Brianna Nix lived on campus and took intensive, credit-bearing courses alongside students from around the world. Their work was featured in the annual PreCollege exhibition, marking the culmination of a summer of experimentation and exchange.
BAP provides a number of full-ride scholarships for Black and Latinx students based in New York State to attend Pratt’s PreCollege program each year. Many scholarship recipients have gone on to attend Pratt or other art and design colleges. This year’s recipients were selected based on the strength of their creative portfolios and they each enrolled in two classes of their choice.
During their time on campus, the scholars experienced the rhythms of college life: attending studio classes, navigating the neighborhood, visiting cultural institutions throughout the city, and building friendships with peers and roommates.
Painting and sculpture shaped Mendez’s summer. His interest in painting began in high school, after joining an art club gave him room to experiment without the pressure of graded class work. At Pratt, he found greater structure in his process, particularly through still life painting exercises that emphasized moving from broad shapes and composition toward smaller details.
“It made me more mindful of everything that I do,” Mendez said. “I never realized how important it was to go from broad to specific until this class.”
Sculpture offered another kind of discovery. Learning to make molds and work with plaster encouraged Mendez to consider volume and space in ways that complemented his painting practice. “I usually think of things in a 2D way,” he said. “Now I’m starting to think in 3D.”
Logan also used the summer to move beyond her usual creative toolkit. A student at a high school focused on digital arts and technology, she came to PreCollege with interests in film, game design, and comics. Her 2D Animation and Foundation courses gave her the opportunity to learn new skills and perspectives.
For Foundation, she primarily focused on building shapes and understanding how to visualize objects. In her animation class, Logan animated a bouncing ball on paper using different methods.
“Instead of using art programs we used a light box to see the keyframes of our animation,” she said. “We continued to work on the basics of animation using an industry standard animation program called Toon Boom Harmony for the rest of the month. We worked on walk cycles, emotional change/facial expressions, body language, and our final project was an Anijam where we all animated three second sections of a full project and put it together to flow as one animation.”
Living on campus was equally meaningful. “It’s a sense of freedom that I never really had before,” she said. “I like being independent, thinking for myself, figuring out what to do next.”
Nix arrived with a longstanding interest in digital arts and graphic design, drawn to the fields’ combination of technology, visual expression, and problem-solving. She sees design in the city all around her, from posters and branding to the campaigns that help organizations communicate with their audiences.
“Everywhere you look there is a poster or brand campaign,” Nix said. “You could be walking in downtown Brooklyn and see how your work is being displayed.”
The PreCollege program gave her time to focus on her work while also encouraging her to speak up and trust her perspective. “This experience took me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to share my ideas and trust my voice,” she said. A class visit to Poster House in Manhattan further revealed how visual communication changes across time and responds to cultural context.
Just as important was the community she found among her classmates. “It was incredible to be surrounded by so many different stories and perspectives all in one place,” Nix said. “This program definitely showed that the community and environment you put yourself in is so crucial, especially in the art space.”
Logan and Mendez also appreciated the community they formed this summer.
“I really want to stay in touch with the other scholarship recipients because I feel like we’re all going through this experience together,” Mendez said. “I feel like we’re all gonna do great things in art.”
“I like a lot of my classmates, and I really like my roommate,” said Logan. “I love the environment at Pratt. The campus is nice, and all the professors are really good.”
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![A young person with dark hair and glasses is sitting at a craft table, smiling and holding a blue, clay figure with eyes. They are wearing an apron over a black t-shirt and have paintbrushes and paint tubes in front of them. The background shows other people working and a variety of art supplies scattered on the table.]()
Mendez working on a sculpture in PreCollege -
![A colorful mixed-media artwork featuring two hands protruding from a black background framed by red curtains. The left hand is purple with an open mouth showing teeth, while the right hand is blue with a pair of cartoonish eyes. The piece combines vibrant colors and playful elements, creating an engaging visual effect.]()
Sculptures made by Mendez in PreCollege -
![A young woman with long, dark hair is seated against a white background, smiling and holding a colorful poster featuring a large, artistic eye design in shades of blue and purple. She is wearing a black t-shirt and light blue jeans.]()
Nix holding a painting she made during PreCollege -
![A young person with shoulder-length curly hair is pointing at a storyboard mounted on a wall. They are wearing headphones and a t-shirt with cartoon characters. In the background, there is a warning sign regarding safety protocols. A part of a brown bag is visible on the left side of the image.]()
Logan in PreCollege
Their work in the PreCollege exhibition reflects the range of the PreCollege experience: the close observation of drawing, the process-driven experimentation of printmaking and sculpture, and the visual thinking that informs digital art and design. Together, the projects offer a view of artists at an early but consequential stage of development as they test ideas, develop skills, and find inspiration in one another.
As Nix put it, becoming part of the BAP legacy means joining “a network of people who inspire each other.” The exhibition closes out the summer, but the connections, confidence, and creative momentum built on campus will continue well beyond it.
PreCollege is where high school artists, designers and innovative thinkers develop their skills and creative voice, and create work for their college admission portfolio. Learn more about The Black Alumni of Pratt, the Pratt PreCollege program, and Pratt Undergraduate Admissions.