Features

Named as MFA Illustration as Visual Essay’s chair last summer, artist and 1996 program alumnus Riccardo Vecchio—who has been an SVA faculty member since 1997—has made a substantial mark at the College in short order. Not only the successor but a former student and colleague of the MFA program’s founding chair, the late Marshall Arisman, Vecchio collaborated with SVA Galleries and Arisman’s widow, writer Dee Ito, to produce “Does That Make Sense?”, the exhibition of some of Arisman’s lesser-seen artworks, which opened in January and is on view through Saturday, March 9, at the SVA Gramercy Gallery. Now, Vecchio is the latest artist to create a poster for the College’s long-running “subway series” of advertisements designed for display in New York City’s subway stations. 

Vecchio grew up in Italy, outside of Milan, and came to New York in 1994, and his adopted hometown has informed much of his work since then. His SVA poster, which began appearing on subway platforms earlier this month, features a large, photorealistic painting of a circular pencil shaving, whose interior void hints at the outline of the SVA logo, originated in 1997 for the College’s 50th anniversary by the designer and former faculty member George Tscherny, who died last fall. The minimalist composition and two-word tagline, “Stay sharp,” are deliberately spare, he explained, the better to catch the harried commuter’s eye.

“The fact that we walk by from one train to the next, from one station to the next, I kept in mind that it should be readable fairly quickly, that the tagline has to be pretty straightforward, roll off your tongue pretty quickly,“ he says.

The simple, striking image refers not just to the labor that goes into creative work, but the artistic philosophy behind it as well. 

“There is something about pencil shavings,” he says. “The fact that you have to continually sharpen your senses so you can define a little bit better what you’re trying to do.”

Vecchio says that joining the illustrious ranks of all the SVA poster artists who have come before him is a moment of pride, fitting with this newest chapter of his long-running association with the College. “I distinctly remember the first SVA posters [I saw], and the fact that I’ve been asked by SVA to do one obviously fills me with joy,” he says. 

Check out a video on Vecchio and his work below, and look out for the spring 2024 SVA poster, on view throughout New York City’s subway system until early June.

Elements of this article appear in the upcoming spring/summer 2024 Visual Arts Journal.