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As the daughter of an art professor who works in ceramics, Rosina Bosco ’06 (Millburn, N.J.) grew up in a world of museums, studios, and discussions about the merits of paintings, sculptures, and other works of art.
“The art mentality kind of rubbed off on me,” she says.
Bosco, whose father, Frank, teaches at Rhode Island School of Design, is building on that foundation as an art major and EXCEL Scholar at Lafayette.
In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. The program has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.
Since January, Bosco has been working with Ed Kerns, Eugene H. Clapp ’36 Professor of Art, in Lafayette’s Williams Visual Arts Building, producing digital images that are combined with intricate layers of acrylic paint on giant panels. Included are frogs, bugs, and other biological images that will be used in a display for the biology department.
“We’ve even done eyeballs,” she says. “Some of the images are ‘out there,’ but they’re cool.”
The work offers intensive experience in graphic design, a field Bosco has loved ever since her first year at Lafayette, when she took a sophomore-level graphics class with Lew Minter, media lab director at the Visual Arts Building. The course clinched her decision to major in art.
“It was great because the art professors took me seriously as a freshman,” she says. “They gave me a chance.”
Kerns says Bosco, who hopes to have a career as an animator, is “very, very special” because of her strong background in art.
“She has a strong graphic design sense and ability to understand the core identity of the concept we’re working on,” he explains. “She understands the visual context of the work.”
In addition to helping produce the images, Bosco serves as Kerns’ assistant, contacting museum curators and suppliers and helping him market a line of museum-quality products, including scarves, shirts, hats, sketchbooks, and calendars.
An internationally known abstract painter, Kerns has mounted more than 30 one-person shows and participated in more than 150 group exhibitions in the United States, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Mexico. His work is in numerous public and corporate collections and has been reviewed in many journals and magazines.
“I get to see what it’s like to have the busy artist’s life,” Bosco says.
A graduate of Millburn High School, Bosco is historian for her sorority, Pi Beta Phi, and plans to study in Florence, Italy, next spring.
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Forty-two students were accepted to present their work at the last annual conference in April.