Carol Prusa creates symbolically charged work responding to liminal locations, using graphite pours and silverpoint drawing in a dance between the known and unknown to create erotically charged portals to new possibilities. Unknowing (between day and night) articulates emergent forms, offering insight into the mystery of our existence while embracing the magnitude of the universe with the lawlessness of imagination to distill the sacred.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
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. I desire to manifest the most complete understanding of my world, offering new ways of knowing. Specifically, digesting contemporary theories in physics and seeking liminal spaces (like eclipses), is resulting in work that creates worlds with erotically charged geometries. Known for large scale silverpoint drawings incorporating sculptural forms and new technologies, I yearn to realize a radical vision that takes into account chaotic interactions central to the evolution of the universe, to unearth its vital beauty. I seek to give form to thin spaces that evoke the dark matter that both surrounds and binds 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.”
Recent work consists of fiberglass forms, acrylic circles, acrylic hemispheres and spheres ranging from bowl-sized to five feet in diameter, 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). Current investigations include copperplate etching and making an editioned artist book. A new focus is working with Google Deep Dream to have a conversation between AI /machine learning and my work.
Bernice Steinbaum writes, “Her domes evoke ideas of origin, mysticism and sacredness. The effect of examining the beautiful intricacy and interconnectedness of Prusa’s forms is that we become aware of the impact we leave on our own globe.”
