Leonard R. Bacich is honored with the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award
Lenny was my former professor of three dimensional design at Pratt Institute. He passed away last year, and has been recently recognized with the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award. Now that I am teaching the elements of form to my students at Western, I think of Lenny often and can still hear his words echoing in my mind.
"LOOK at it. What do you see?"
"Precarious balance is like Martha Graham, the dancer, think of a dancers' pose when creating your forms."
He encouraged me to go into teaching and is part of the reason why I am a design professor.
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| Wire/Curve study by Thomas Kloucek, Western Washington |
"For almost a quarter of a century, Lenny Bacich epitomized the rigor and magic of great teaching. He said: "The WHAT and HOW issues of three-dimensional design are explainable and teachable. The WHY is the challenge of teaching the course." Lenny taught courses about abstraction and simultaneously planted physical understanding in his students' minds, eyes and fingers.
Lenny initiated Pratt's exchange program with Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, in 2004, offering students from the disciplines of communications design, fine arts, industrial design, and digital arts the chance to study there. In 2006, DesignIntelligence named Lenny one of the "most admired industrial design educators in the country."
Lenny graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School. As a student of Rowena Reed Kostellow's at Pratt, he earned a bachelor's degree in industrial design degree in 1963 and a master's degree in 1971. He first taught at Rowena's alma mater, Kansas City Art Institute, and then worked as director of education at Knoll throughout the 1980s. Bruce Hannah recruited him to the Pratt industrial design faculty to teach the Foundation course. Lenny followed his mentor Bill Fogler as coordinator of the 3-D program.
Lenny was born on February 4, 1942, and coincidentally died on February 3, 2010, one year before the awards ceremony.
Past recipients of the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award are Gina Caspi, Ivan Rigby, Eva Zeisel, Gerald Gulotta, William Fogler, Eugene Grossman, Ralph Appelbaum, James Fulton, Louis Nelson, Judy Collins, Bruce Hannah, Ted Muehling, Lucia N. DeRespinis, and Tom Patti.
These teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, and designers embody the mission of the fund: to encourage and guide a systematic educational approach to all forms of visual expression inspired by Rowena's teaching.
Every year the trophy is made from one of the best examples of Pratt student 3-D design exercises. Adjunct Professor Kathryn Filla, Department of Industrial Design, worked with her students to transform their sketches into a limited edition trophy."
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