Pratt TV may be dead now, but here is a video of Pratt students from simpler times. Judging by some of the faces in the clip, and from some evidence in the background, I have to say that this sequence has to be from 2005 or 2006. Give it a look, because the folks you see in the frame are, perhaps, even dorkier than we’ll ever be today.

-GH

The Statistics Issue is here! If you were not lucky enough to find a paper copy for yourself, which I’m sure are still around in one or two corners of the campus, you can view The Prattler at your leisure online. Just click the link below “Archive” on the right-hand margin of the page. Enjoy!

-GH

Today was the second installment of Career Service’s DIY: Lecture Series. This segment was all about Etsy.com, and making the site work for Pratt students. For anybody who does not know Etsy (eht-szee), it is a website where people sell their handmade goods. Everything from photographs and fine art, to knitted scarves and wooden furniture is sold on Etsy.com. Etsy is an online community of artists and crafters who sell their wares, and chat and learn with and from one another. There are three million registered members and 200 thousand active artists on the site.  Each month, Etsy has over 500 million page views, 23 million visits and 8.3 million unique visitors. Etsy began in 2006, with annual sales of $3.8 million dollars. Through August of 2009, Etsy has already made $100 million worth of sales this year. The massive amount of business that Etsy does means one thing: you should check out Etsy.com, and see if using it to sell your products is right for you.

The way that Etsy works is that each user sets up a “shop,” which shows announcements, a banner, a profile, and selling/buying/shipping policies. Sellers create a name for their shop (it can be their own name, or something more creative), and can then post items for sale in their shop. Etsy charges twenty cents to list an item for four months. This means that if you are listing three of the same purses, it will cost you sixty cents. After the four months, you must renew the listing. If you sell an item, Etsy also charges a 3.5% commission.

Two women from Etsy, Anda Corrie and Danielle Maveal, spoke to students in a lecture room in the basement of the Activities Resource Center. They explained the five steps to using Etsy:

• 1. Develop a product line—Make something new and unique, or upcycled.
  2. Name your shop—Choose a name that is easily able to be Googled (i.e. not “Soap,” because that will turn up too many unrelated hits). Check to see if any other businesses already use this name. It is not a bad idea to just use your own name. Use the same name for Twitter and Facebook. This way they are all linked together.
  3. Photos—Take good ones. Show details of your work, including the back, etc. Pay attention to lighting, and make sure the product is clearly exhibited. Etsy has high photo standards (compared to eBay, for instance).
  4. Tell your story and show your style—Art tells the artist’s story. You can speak in the first person in your shop descriptions.
  5. Enjoy the community—You can chat with, critique, and promote other’s work. You can also join “Teams,” which are based on common interests, location and genres of work. Use the human connections to your advantage to promote your work.

Corrie and Maveal included some other tips in their presentation. They talked about using the Etsy Showcase to promote your work. To be part of the Showcase, you pay $15, and are then showcased for a day on the site’s homepage. This ensures that everybody going to Etsy.com that day will see your product. You can also pay $7 to be featured on a certain community’s page for a day.

Another tip was to tag your work with keywords. Most Etsy.com buyers search the site for keywords (like “purse” or “wedding invitation”) to find what they’re looking for. You can have up to fourteen tags per item.

If you have your own website, and would like to promote your Etsy shop, you can create an “Etsy Mini” widget to showcase your work and link to your Etsy shop from your main website.

Etsy has a whole bunch of information on their site about classes that they teach, and information about how to be a successful online artisan, so explore it if you have some time.

Next Tuesday, there is another lecture for Seniors about Applying to Graduate School in Career Services, East Hall 1, from 12:30-1:30.

By Natalie Apuzzo

Dudes and dudettes,

For any of you with a penchant to expose yourself on campus, let me now avert your attention to the EastOne and FishBowl galleries. Located respectively in the Career Services office and the Student Lounge, both spaces are still taking submissions from artists, like you, to exhibit your work. Applicants can be young and old, ugly and beautiful, so just be sure to get in contact with Micah Bozeman at micah.bozeman@gmail.com before January 4^th.

-GH

Sure thing, Amyel.

Top 5 Meal Deals Around Pratt 1. Associated Supermarket’s Lunch ($3.50-6)- So every weekday there’s prepared hot lunches from 11-2 depending on how quickly it runs out. The lady who serves it to you probably cooks it, because it’s homemade, and she’s always the one there. Here’s the deal, you have a choice of varying meats that change day to day whether its beef, chicken, goat or lamb. Small portions come with rice; larger portions come with rice and an option of two sides. The meat is always tender and the taste reminds me of home on those cold rainy days.

2. Taqueria Tepango’s Super Taco ($5)- A foot-long soft taco with choice of meat, caramelized onions and spices with a side of Pico de Gallo and guacamole and chips. This footer is essentially an amazing burrito disguised as a taco.

3. Zaytoon’s Falafel Sandwich ($4)- Really filling for so little money. Also, it’s great to have for a sit-down meal with decent ambiance, because with tip it only comes out to about $6 bucks!

4. Pioneer Supermarket’s Hero Sandwiches ($6)- One word: Massive. The sandwich comes with a side of soda. This baby is damn good and will last you two decently sized meals.

5. Bergen Bagel’s Bacon, Egg and Cheese ($3.50)- This deal doesn’t apply on weekends or past 11am. However, if you catch it, it’s a damn good brunch.

Autism is not a very beautiful word, but for Stephen Wiltshire, a London based artist, it’s what he is has and what makes his memory so beautiful. This past week, the Juliana Curran Terian Design Center Gallery was fortunate enough to have Wiltshire create a work of Art on site to be exhibited. Both Wiltshire and Pratt were featured on the CBS Morning Show every morning for the past week. Audiences, either behind a TV set or the velvet ropes in the gallery, watched in awe as Wiltshire created his reproduction of New York City from an aerial view. The completion of this piece will complete a series of nine works that include the most iIconic cities around the world. What makes Wiltshire so extraordinary is his ability to photographically recollect and reproduce cityscapes after only viewing them briefly. Artists have a gift of being able to reproduce pictures from memory, but rarely as intricate in detail and architecturally accurate after only brief observation.

As with most people with aAutism, he excelled in another one mental capacity because of a lack of another. Communication is one of the most challenging things for those with Autism, and for Wiltshire. Luckily, he was able to use his artistic ability as an outlet to express what he could not in words. As a child he communicated through drawing animals, busses, and then eventually moving to bBuildings. It’s interesting how those like Wiltshire are often creative people. For sure, creative people have a different way of thinking and looking at the world. Wiltshire’s mind is definitely unique, and has helped him be called one of the most influential artists today

The whole experience of this exhibit was inspiring. When you walk into the gallery, you are enveloped in by this a very small, white space that is filled with light up to the cathedral ceilings, because which emanates in of from the large window that this makes the entirety of the far wall. Set against a bright day and a view of Pratt’s campus was a roughly thirteen- foot curved canvas, on which Wiltshire had half his piece donedrawn.  From behind the velvet ropes that surrounded the piece it looked like an almost perfect representation of the city, down to the last window in the Chrysler Building.  It’s almost as if it was rendered by a machine. But on closer observation, you see that this amazing amount of detail was done by hand and in a very expressive stroke, almost like a gesture—; impressionistic even. He seemed to know where to put every stroke. You find yourself gazing at a perfect picture of planned chaos.  There was no pre-planning involved, just a man whose passion for drawing was bigger than any disability.  But, he is after all, an artist after all, s. So, he does take creative license at times and makes small changes in size to better his composition.

Just before the gallery closed he appeared, very quiet and humble. He smiled at all of the people that stood to admire his work, repeating polite responses that he had been taught. Perhaps he could not fully understand the comments and questions asked to him, but he could understand the smiles that graced everyone’s face. Those smiles are what keep Wiltshire creating.  That’s the key to Autistic minds, understanding by visualization.

Perhaps it was the permanent child within him that allowed him to understand these happy faces as well as create the beautiful work that stood before us. His work was almost childish up close, with scribbles that formed something bigger, something that looked nothing like a scribble at all. This piece helped him discover new ways of creating his art, exploring a looser stroke. He drew with ease, moving his pen rapidly and with assurance as if he knew exactly what needed to be put down, until he finished and moved to another spot that seemed to be at random. He never once referred to notes, sketches or photographs.

When asked when he began his work, he said at five years old when he attended Queensmill Sschool in London and how much he loved it and that he hasn’t stopped since. His passion for drawing was clear. He loved to draw and that’s what he does best. Perhaps, in this case, aAutism and creativity were a match made in heaven. Which is a rare thing to say, at the very least.  But out of an unfortunate circumstance, came a wonderful man and the pictures he loved to make. While Wiltshire is very high- functioning as a professional artist, he still has a disability. This disability allows him to have incredible patience and diligence with something. By the look of it, it would take a very dedicated person to be able to complete a work so ambitious. But, he doesn’t view it as work, but as a labor of love.

Watching Wiltshire was one of the most remarkable experiences. To see a man who seemed to have no future, because of his incapacity, come so far, is inspiring. He may not understand everything you say to him or be able to answer easily, b. But the emotion and movement that he puts in something that could be so static is extraordinary. There are beautiful minds that are overlooked and wasted because they lack the skill of being able to talk about it. For so many people like him, there are no opportunities to express and develop the gifts that they have. With him, it was his older sister Annette, who has since become a proud sister and travel companion for Stephen. She explained that like so many others, they told his family that he would never be able to function in society alone. Now he not only travels the world as a successful artist, but he has his own galleries and has showed the world that nothing can hold a creative mind down.  She also explained that he is mostly self taught and did not have any formal training until he was quite a bit older, when he was able to get the social skills he needed to be in such a setting. Growing up with autism was challenging, but with the support of his family he was able to achieve what he has today. When asked to describe his life in a few words he said “ Keep doing what I do best… drawing.”

By Gina Capozza

Pratt Institute Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Kalup Linzy, video and performance

Kalup Linzy, video and performance.<http://www.kaluplinzy.net/>

12:45pm – 1:45pm

371 Engineering Building

Ubiquitous Submission Deadline

Ubiquitous is now accepting artwork and writing for the upcoming Fall 09 issue! THE DEADLINE IS OCTOBER 23RD.

The magazine accepts different forms of creative writing (poetry, fiction & non-fiction, plays, essays, hybrid works, etc.) and artwork (drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, models, jewelery, illustrations, etc). Image submissions need to be 300 dpi or greater and in BLACK AND WHITE, or work well in B&W.

You can send your submissions to: ubiquitous.submissions@gmail.com, or leave them in our mailbox in Chapel Hall. If you have any questions, let us know.

Materials Swap!

In celebration of National Sustainable Campus Day Envirolution is hosting a materials swap!  Find new inspiring materials and give away all that cardboard cluttering your closets on October 21st from 12 – 5pm outside of Engineering.  This event is open to all departments, students and faculty.  We welcome any materials for the swap and will also be holding a small scale electronics recycling station.  Bring your goods and an eye for treasure! For more information or for assistance transporting materials please email Lauren Turnbull, lturnbul@pratt.edu.

By Coreene Suhr

Missing the beach already?  Well, just a short walk away from its Brooklyn Campus, Pratt Institute students can now enjoy an NCAA-regulation sized pool through an agreement with nearby Long Island University Brooklyn.

The LIU pool, which opened in January 2006, was built with Thornton-Tomasetti as the engineering firm at a cost of $45 million.  The combined recreation and health facility is 112,000 square feet including the eight- lane large pool. Two-thirds of the swim land area is five feet deep, or shallower, in the pool, and some lanes are always reserved for those who do not want to swim laps.

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There are a few swim supplies available for sale, including swim goggles.  Activities that have taken place at the facility include aqua aerobics, private and group swim lessons, lessons for novices, Mommy & Me, and even aqua basketball. The facility has an Aquatics director names Bryna Gunter, so there is a full- time focus on these services.

Looking at the attractive pool area, one can admire the work of New York-based design firm Arquitectonica. The facility supports a variety of sports and exercise: a 17,000 square-foot basketball arena, the eight-lane swimming pool, another pool for therapy, two different weight rooms, and an aerobic room.

You can reach The LIU Wellness, Recreation and Athletic Center by calling: 718-780-4072 or 718-408-1030. Visit their website for more information: www.brooklyn.liu.edu/wrac.