48
KEANmag
Kelly Rapkin
(Kean Ocean ’14) actually began her quest for a career in
art before she could read; drawing illustrations of the stories her older
sister read to her from books in their Tom’s River home. It took her a few
decades to get from scribbles on notepaper, to using a digital stylus on
the iPad Pro in her office at Grounds for Sculpture, a garden-like gallery,
museum, and education center near Princeton, where she is the chief
graphic designer. And that path was forged through Kean Ocean.
“I didn’t grow up in the most affluent family,” Rapkin says. “So when it
got to college time, my parents told me, ‘We can’t pay for you to go. And
we really don’t recommend that you take out a lot of loans.’ But there’s
this program in New Jersey called NJ Stars. If you’re in the top ten or
fifteen percent of your class in high school you can go to community
college for free.
Rapkin enrolled in Ocean County Community College. She took fine arts
classes in her five semesters there, but at times thought of switching to
a more practical field. Because her grade-point average remained high,
she got the chance to pursue a bachelor’s degree tuition-free in the NJ
Stars program. She moved on to Kean Ocean and continued with art
studies. “I was able to take a bit of a risk,” she says. “I never felt better
than I did in my first semester of art classes at Kean.”
One of her first teachers at Kean Ocean was Deborah Rivera, a 1996
graduate of Kean, who is a partner and creative director at Square Melon
Communications, a Westfield-based agency that she co-founded.
“Oh my goodness, the drive that kid had,” Rivera recalls of Rapkin. “She
had to do better; she had to do more. Everything was always above and
beyond what was asked for. And it was just natural with her. She didn’t
want extra recognition. She just had this drive inside her that you don’t
see in many students.”
Courses in the practical aspects of commercial art showed Rapkin that it
was important to build a portfolio of work that would be her calling card.
With Rivera’s help, she got her portfolio reviewed by top professionals at
the Art Directors Club in Manhattan.
“Deb helped expose me to so many students who were the same age,
and in the same place, but had just killer portfolios. And she would tell
me, ‘You could be doing that. There’s no reason you can’t compete with
students from the top design schools.’ And I realized that, even though
I was going to a state college and living at home with my parents, there
was no reason why I couldn’t make my education a top design school
education. Kean was very supportive of that.”
Staying
Grounded
One contact made during a portfolio review led to an entry level job at a
New York advertising agency before she had even finished her classes to
graduate. The long arduous commute and some family issues convinced
Rapkin to give up the Manhattan job and find work closer to home.
After a two-year stint designing packaging for a chocolate company in
Lakewood, the Grounds for Sculpture job came up. “I had always wanted
to work at a museum,” she says, “so I jumped for it.” Rapkin now lives
in Asbury Park, about three blocks from the sea. A lifelong beach lover,
she says, “I don’t want to live any further from the beach than I am now.”
One night a week this spring, Rapkin will leave work in Princeton – where
on the park-like property she regularly encounters peacocks when she
steps out of her office for lunch – and drive to the Kean Ocean campus in
her hometown to teach the next generation of designers.
“What really worked for me at Kean,” she says, “is that there’s a real sense
of professor and student respect. A lot of the teachers are working in the
field and coming to the classroom straight from work, like me. There’s a
transparency and a real lack of pretension. You’re not on a high horse,
and you realize you have to roll up your sleeves and work.
“I always see a little bit of myself inmy students,” adds Rapkin, who along
with that older sister who read to her as a child, became the first in their
family to graduate from college. “They always seem very appreciative
of their education. I think that will always be a thread at Kean – that we
acknowledge and appreciate our opportunities.”
“I know I had a great experience here. I think I was a different person
before I started going to Kean Ocean,” she says. “Before, I was a college
student through and through. When I got to Kean, I became a designer.”
“She just had this
drive inside her that
you don’t see in many
students.”
- Deborah Rivera
