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Examples of the basics of hand-drafting assignments during the period Pellino attended Parsons. The long rectangular objects crossing one another recur often. Pellino writes: "In the '80s religious kitsch was very much in the atmosphere and this idea meshed nicely with the need for freedom and transgression that often occurs within young people from middle class families when they leave home for the first time."

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Examples from drawing classes Pellino took over the course of various semesters at Parsons. Pellino found the process of learning to draw from life quite challenging. "At the time we were encouraged by our instructors to draw loosely," Pellino writes. "Although I was not fully conscious of it at the time, the theme I was exploring in many of these projects had to do with being educated within the context of modernism while still attempting to grasp traditional forms, techniques and ideas."

Scope and Contents

Pellino created this traditional intaglio and aquatint print work before he started his Foundation year at Parsons.

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This first year project consisted of three plates: a series of context photos arranged in a grid, a plan study, and a loose perspective drawing (the perspective is not included here). Pellino's intention was to express the tension between memory (embodied in both the written word and the site, which held personal significance for him), the ephemeral nature of constructed environments, and the sense that "over time all writing, all memory and all building will disappear."

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A first-year drawing exercise for students to hone their skills working with color media, this assignment involved selecting a documented interior space that made use of color. Pellino chose Carlo Scarpa's Banco Populare di Verona, making a series of intaglio prints that capitalized upon the skills he'd learned the year before he started the degree program at Parsons. He used etching, aquatint and drypoint, later hand-coloring some of them in watercolor. "The large interpretive drawing was less successful," explains Pellino, "perhaps because my research and documentation of the actual space were not complete. Lacking an understanding of Scarpa’s concept I developed a loose interpretation and rendered it in mixed media."

Scope and Contents A second year project, this house was sited on the roof of Laurie Hawkinson and Henry Smith-Miller’s residence at the crossroads of Mercer and Howard Streets in New York City. As in other projects, Pellino wanted to explore the theme of the new American family (the clients were two women in a committed relationship). Of the project Pellino writes: "At the time, certain designers were using very heavy, patinated industrial materials such as cast iron plates, cor-ten steel, etc. in their work. . . I scoured SoHo to find contextual materials that could be used in this building, coming up with diamond-plate steel of various patterns (hence the charcoal rubbings) and bullet glass used in vault lights. At first I had planned to make the building a kind of projector from which films would be projected onto a screen set on a rooftop across the street. The project did not gel until I envisioned the structure as a kind of brutal tower silhouetted against the western sky strongly visible...

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A quick study project assigned in Pellino's second year. The actual memorial in lower Manhattan was either under construction or had just been completed. The charcoal sketches here express the concept of a central pentagonal monument with facets facing each borough of New York City, with glass walls radiating out toward the birthplaces of those lost. Includes a copy of the measured drawing done for the final presentation.

Scope and Contents

In this first year drafting project Pellino analyzed a gravesite at Woodlawn Cemetery, a place he enjoyed visiting. He selected a moderne-era monument: "The design of the site is very simple, but grand," Pellino writes. The groundskeepers provided him with a copy of the site plan, which Pellino used to model a vault in which he placed a miniature skeleton. For the class presentation, he adopted the persona of an undertaker. Pellino writes: "The design of funerary monuments has always fascinated me."

Scope and Contents This first-year assignment was to select a challenging public site in Manhattan and design a solution to improve the space. Pellino chose a small site in a part of Greenwich Village that had very little park space. The side wall of a townhouse adjacent to the site faced Seventh Avenue and acted as a billboard. Pellino's solution to the assignment was to create a small garden memorial to the many Village residents who were ill or were dying of AIDS. The looming wall provided a map to help visitors find their way through the Village's tangle of streets. "I was very impressed when a fellow student presented a final submittal in front of us all that stated there was no viable solution for his site," Pellino writes. This finding aid formerly indicated that the title of this project was, "Park for Lower Seventh Avenue," but the archivists are revising the title to reflect Pellino's wishes, as well as the inscribed title on one of the drawings, and have added the address, as well, because...