Scope and Contents In the 1980s, Pellino writes, "artists and designers were exploring kitsch as a way to infuse humor into their work as well as to force a kind of freshness into design," which they felt tended toward the polite and staid. Pellino followed suit in this first year project, using a Roman Catholic icon in a transgressive fashion as the façade of a tacky souvenir store on Sixth Avenue. Pellino's project was poorly received by his instructor, who Pellino believed "was not ready to give up on good...

Scope and Contents In this first year project, students were asked to produce loose sketches as a way to conceptualize more complex designs. Pellino created a simple timeline for each member of an imagined nuclear family, using graphite on paper and collage elements. Pellino started out intending a humorous theme (the cleric, ostensible head of this new-fashioned family, studies nuclear arms), but the final project was far darker. Pellino writes: "Living in New York had exposed me to some rather detached...