Carol Prusa is a contemporary artist known for her meticulous silverpoint technique and use of unexpected materials from sculpted resin and fiberglass to metal leaf and LED lights. In the 2015 catalogue essay for the exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, Bruce Weber called Carol Prusa “one of the most innovative artists working in metalpoint today.” Born in Chicago, Prusa lived and worked in South Florida until her recent move to North Carolina. She exhibits internationally, including Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (MIami) and Bluerider Art (Taipei). Her work is included in excellent public and private collections, including the Perez Art Museum (Miami), The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Telfair Art Museum (Savannah), and the Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz Collection.
Carol Prusa had a major solo exhibition at the Boca Museum in 2019 and recently a solo exhibition, unknowing, at Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens and Museum in West Palm Beach. In 2018, Prusa was exhibited alongside Stanford Biggers, Cauleen Smith, Josh Faught, and Lauren Kalmar in The Future of Craft (curated by Shannon Stratton) at The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), and she also participated in FLATT??? (2018), curated by William Stover. In 2017, Prusa was featured in Glasstress which included artists Petah Coyne, Michael Joo, Vik Muniz, Cornelia Parker, Thomas Schutte, Fred Wilson. She participated in the 2015-2016 Miami Biennale (curated by Adriana Herrera), along with twelve other artists, including El Anatsui and James Turrell. In 2015 Prusa was one of 40 artists chosen by the American Academy of Arts and Letters to exhibit in the 2015 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts (NYC). She was nominated by Judy Pfaff, and the selection committee that year was chaired by Eric Fischl. In 2014, Prusa’s work was exhibited alongside works by Louise Nevelson, Nick Cave, Julian Opie, and George Segal at the Jewish Museum of Florida in an exhibition titled The Chosen. Other notable group exhibitions include Luminous Line (2010) at Scripps College (where Prusa exhibited with Morgan O’Hara, Lucy Pullen, and Marietta Hoferer), Set to Manual (2009) at Girls Club (with Vija Celmins, Annette Messager, Kiki Smith, and Jessica Stockholder), and Starry Messenger (2009) at the Louisiana Museum of Art and Science (with Vija Celmins and Eva Lee).
Carol Prusa received a SECAC Artistic Achievement Award in 2017. She was previously awarded a Brown University Howard Foundation Fellowship and nominated several times for a USA Artist Fellowship. Prusa has also curated notable exhibitions, including co-curating Pour (2013) at Lesley Heller (NYC) and Asya Geisberg Gallery (NYC), featuring works by David Reed, Carrie Moyer, Roland Flexner, and Jackie Saccoccio, among others. And she regularly lectures about her work at such venues as Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh), University of Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa), and Parsons School of Art and Design (NYC).
In a 2014 feature in Elephant magazine, Margherita Dessanay writes that Carol Prusa uses art to investigate “the boundless wonders of the universe.” And Kara Walker-Tome, writing for The Art Economist Magazine (June 2011), states: “Carol Prusa creates a new vision of the powers of the universe in each artwork she makes. Inspired by cosmology and all of the natural sciences, Prusa creatively explores these practices, arriving at pictorially stunning re-interpretations of their theories.” Logan Royce Beitmen opens, in the catalog essay for Dark Light published by the Boca Raton Museum of Art (2019), with, “Carol Prusa is a visual alchemist whose work harnesses cosmic chaos and makes invisible forces materialize before our eyes.”
Recent curated group exhibitions include Tenacity at the Chautauqua Institution, New York (2021), IS Projects at the Coral Springs Art Museum, Bluerider in Shanghai (2021). In 2021 Prusa made an editioned artist book, unknowing, at IS Projects through a grant from the Knight Foundation. Current investigations include utlizing Deep Dream/Google to create work in conversation with AI/machine learning, supported by a creative activity grant. Prusa was awarded an artist residency at Djerassi in California and the Golden Foundation Residency in New York, May/June 2023. Currently her work is in a solo exhibition in Shanghai (the Bund) and is in a four-person exhibition at the Macon Museum of Art and Science in Georgia and a group exhibition at the Golden Foundation in New York. Prusa was just awarded a WNC artist grant.
