School of Architecture and Design Director Scott Poole approached Pritchett again this past spring and asked him to teach an architecture design studio the following semester.
“Probably 25 percent of our faculty are adjuncts,” Poole said. “And when we find someone who’s a really good influence and might be interested in teaching ... we try to provide them with an opportunity.”
Pritchett accepted the invitation, although he admitted to being intimidated.
“I didn’t want to take on a job where I was going to do people harm,” he said.
Making a bad screen print of a poster is disappointing, Pritchett explained, but that graphic failure doesn’t affect another’s personal wellbeing.
“I figured if I don’t tell these guys the right thing or if I don’t push these guys hard enough, I’m doing them harm,” he said. “That’s a year out of their life — nine months out of their life — that I haven’t helped them.”
But he said he thinks he has helped them, and one of his second-year architecture students, Bob Vance, agrees.
Vance said since Pritchett is graphically based, the students have been challenged to communicate their design projects in engaging ways.
“Architecture is great,” Vance said, “but if you can’t, you know, convey your thoughts well on a board in a presentation, then it doesn’t really matter because no one understands what you’re doing.”
Pritchett currently teaches screen printing, and Vance is one of nearly 30 students. But next year Pritchett will step down to once more follow his wife — this time to Sweden. She is a molecular nutritionist, and the University of Uppsala located in Southern Sweden offered her a position.
Pritchett is exploring two opportunities in nearby Stockholm.
One is a teaching position at the Royal Institute of Technology. He’s been in contact with a Tech graduate who now heads the institute’s School of Architecture.
And specifically regarding screen printing, Pritchett hopes to garner attention from Iaspis, a residency exchange program that strives to create a global artistic dialogue. He’d have a small studio space and slim funds to execute his screen printing ideas.
“For international people, it’s invitation only,” Pritchett said. “So there’s no way that I’ll be invited because they don’t know who I am. So I am in the process now of putting together packages where I’m going to send them stuff every week for the next six months just to let them know that I’m interested.”
One of the first packages includes portraits, predominantly of students. Pritchett asked interested participants to take headshots in a photo booth. From that reel of pictures, he’s used the screen printing process to transform them into saintly figures.
And those images likely won’t be the final tokens of his tenure at Tech. He and his wife plan to keep their house and return stateside after one year.
“I hope to continue a relationship with Tech,” Pritchett said. “I’d like to pick up where I left off.”
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