We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carol Prusa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carol below.
Carol, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
Raised on the creation myth, the Big Bang theory introduced in sixth grade opened my mind to new ways of thinking about our world. Since then I have been intrigued by the thinkers who put out big ideas as comprehensively as possible as a “Theory Of Everything.” I think art is like that too as I create a complete world in each of my works with the fullness of what I know (at least for that moment), sustained only by the logic internal to the work – so it is a complete system, my TOE. In college I started by studying chemistry but science has a rigor that has methods and parameters. I met someone studying art and wanted to understand how she came to her solutions and came to understand that art is a place of most freedom – that it didn’t have to follow any logic outside of itself – it only answers to itself. This put my mind on fire, using my mind most fully, and it started a pursuit that hasn’t ended, to wake every morning to something new. It is thrilling to pursue art.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Through my art I seek to communicate what cannot be seen but felt, the vibrations that are part of us all, including echoes from billions of years ago. Drawn to the unknown, I studied chemistry, titrating answers in the lab. I became an artist to work outside limits and established methods. Like scientists, I seek new ways to explain our place and manifest the most complete understanding of our world. Specifically, digesting contemporary theories in physics, seeking liminal spaces (like eclipses) and riding my bike at night, is resulting in work that creates scotopic worlds with erotically charged geometries. Known for large scale silverpoint drawings incorporating sculptural forms and new technologies, I yearn to realize the strange beauty that takes into account chaotic interactions central to the evolution of the universe and awe that we are even possible. I seek to give form to thin spaces that evoke the dark matter that both surrounds and tethers us together. As Mary Oliver beautifully wrote in Upstream, “Its (arts) concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.”
My work consists of cradled panels, acrylic circles, hemispheres and spheres, fiberglass and ceramic, articulated with silverpoint drawing and ground graphite washes heightened with white, often punctuated by patterns of light (from fiber topics, internal programmed lights, video or reflections on aluminum leaf).
My newest work deepens my exploration of shimmer using metallic pigments and layers of acrylic medium. This body of work explores the idea of “strange attractors” and the beauty of being alive swimming in euphoria.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
There are different levels in making my work work. First requires skill in the materials and methods I employ and took years to develop. I am very rigorous in my approach and have a strong work ethic. I am willing to pursue it until it feels right. I will push hard to get through the foundational skill/craft of making a piece to get to the part where it really unfolds itself. I am so driven to get to that point of unfolding, that I will do the long haul to get there. Then I get to the point where it is really the final painting on top, where the thing is really going to manifest, where I will see what the thing is really going to be. It’s always a question of whether it is going to be anything. It might not materialize. That point uses my sensibility so fully that everything else drops out. That is a state of meditation. The direct relationship between me and the work, where nothing else matters, and my brain is totally connected— and it is either bliss or acceptance that the work didn’t manifest. It’s hard, because with my work, it’s not until the final layer that I know whether or not it’s going to happen. When it fails, it is really disturbing. I will try so many different solutions to try to bring it back or make it into something, and I have learned that you can only go so far. Some things just do not work. But in the process of trying to bring them back, I do learn a lot. And I will try risks and problem solving that I might not otherwise have done. I always learn a great deal from failed pieces, but they are crushing. I do mourn them, because they are an investment and a piece of me. So, the three qualities are the willingness to practice and hone my skills for the attempt to make art, the rigor and diligence to push hard and put in the time and acceptance that sometimes there is failure but that usually generates new ways of thinking and making – so I adapt and move on. I do like creative problem solving and that can serve everyone well, so my advice to emerging artists is to push and persevere until you see what you need to see, knowing everything you need to be you already are.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
I think the story of Caroline Hershel pointed me to seeking to learn about the women who significantly engaged in astronomy and astrophysics and in reading about Maria Mitchell, early American astronomer and educator, I became fascinated with what we know about our universe because of the work they did (and I also traveled to observe the total eclipse of 2017 to Nebraska and in 2019 to Chile. I am constantly seeking to understand why we are the way we are and how could there be “nothing” before the Big Bang. These women, like Henrietta Leavitt (Leavitt’s Law), who gave us the ability to measure the distance of variable stars which led ultimately to our understanding that there are stars beyond our galaxy, take my breath for their brilliance and rigor. And, more recently, Vera Rubin whose ground altering work confirmed dark energy (constituting 68 percent of the energy out there) and like the eclipse I observed along the North Platte River in 2017, caused me to lose my grounding as I swam in these new possibilities, where these women map what cannot be seen. One of the books that best summarizes the ideas that have stimulated and propelled my thinking is “Mapping the Heavens; the Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos” by Priyamvada Natarajan. (as well as “The Glass Univverse: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars” by Dava Sobel) But more poetically, the poems of Anne Sexton and the writings of Agnes Martin. Martin wrote, “My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.” Also, she said, “When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.carolprusa.com
- Instagram: Carol Prusa
- Facebook: Carol Prusa
Image Credits
Portrait image: Richard Walker
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