Edwin Pratt was born December 6, 1930, in Miami. He graduated from Clark College in Atlanta and later received his master’s degree in Social Work from Atlanta University. He worked for the Urban League in Cleveland and Kansas City before coming to Seattle in 1956. It was in his role of Executive Director, which he assumed five years later, that he developed the Triad Plan for the desegregation of Seattle schools, and later led an initiative to create equal housing opportunities.





The Center has many different programs. You can learn the ageless skills of Jewelry and Metalwork in the amply equipped specialized studio. Copper, Gold, Silver, and even Tin are transformed from shapeless metal to cast or hammered out pieces of micro-sculpture.

Glass Art is another exciting program. The studio boasts a hot shop where glass can be blown, rolled, pounded or cast. The furnaces remind you of an old tradition that still lives in our modern era. Here you can see an artist using the hot shop during a Friday open studio session.

The sculpture studios afford the student the range of choice which only seems limited by the imagination. Pratt has the ability to even cast in bronze making it a unique resource in the Seattle community. Iron working, casting, and stone carving are all learned by students from master artists in the area.

The printmaking studio is bright, airy and well laid out. Pratt has a beautiful Takatch press which allows intaglio, engraving, aquatint, mezzotint, and any other print making technic you could think of. The lab technicians are some of the areas finest young printmakers with college degrees in that tradition.

The people at Pratt are what makes this center so special. On the day I visited, the place was a beehive of activity. Yet in all their activities, they seem to always have to to help each other solve a technical problem or give an on the spot critique. This sharing is all done in the name of a man who literally lived his life that way.

Pratt Fine Arts Center does not discriminate in hiring, membership and provision of services in regard to race, color, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, political ideology, age, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, or the presence of any sensory, mental or physical handicap. Pratt's principal studio building is a facility of the


City of Seattle , Department of Parks and Recreation .