About

Her college art education started at Rockland Community College, a small community college about an hour outside of New York City. Although, this school was dramatically less lively than a New York City Art School, their art program was driven and supported by highly passionate and dedicated artists and professors such as, Don Ianucci, John Schlezinger, and Lena Hyun. Don Ianucci, was Vanessa’s figurative drawing professor as well as her print making professor. Ianucci’s teachings have been significant in Vanessa’s journey as he taught her the significance and beauty of observation. His methods for teaching figurative based skills are unconventional in the sense that he taught more through philosophy rather than a step by step rigidly technical process. What she gained from this was an understanding that paying attention to the existing poetry in the natural world to highlight one’s own perspective is a skill in itself aside from drawing, drawing is simply the vessel. John Schlesinger a Philadelphia based photographer and installation artist, was her Black and White Film Photography Instructor. Schlesinger’s expectations were high, but helped inform Vanessa about her own opinion’s on a standard of work for herself. Schlesinger was passionate about what film had to offer over digital and emphasized proceeding with both care and commitment to the process of making photograph’s in the dark room and photo lab, but also in the relationship an artist should have with their camera and mindset when shooting. It was with Schlesinger that Vanessa began to understand the power of light and composition in art. In relation to this he emphasized the priority of “form over content” or “process over product”, mindsets’s that Vanessa still operates through til this day. In art history, Vanessa studied with Lena Hyun who really painted a vivid perspective for students about the significance in how world history and art have been deeply intertwined in communicating and documenting the ever evolving human experience throughout time. Lena was aware that Vanessa was committed to making art and took a great deal of interest in what she was working on outside of her art history class. It was with her that Vanessa was able to participate in the SUNY Student Show at the University of Albany. Although, Vanessa’s work did not win Best in Show, her work made it to the finalists and was then later purchased by her own school, Rockland Community College as a part of their collection. One of these pieces, “Synchronicity” is on view in the main entrance of the school’s Library.

After earning her Associates in Arts & Social Sciences Vanessa moved onto continuing the pursuit of her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts, with a focus in painting and drawing at California State University Long Beach.