Spooky action at a distance
Drawn to the unknown, I studied chemistry, titrating answers in the lab becoming an artist to create outside limits. Like scientists, I seek new ways to explain our place and manifest the most complete understanding of my world, offering new ways of knowing.
I find art is the freest place for me to explore and communicate my ideas.
My recent show at the Boca Raton Museum of Art focused on the foundational contributions of women astronomers and astrophysics to our understanding of our universe.
I am primarily known for large scale silverpoint drawings incorporating sculptural forms and new technologies, my darkly lit worlds distill disquieting possibilities brought to mind by recent observations of the Higgs boson – the metastable “God” particle in physics that might instantaneously blip us out of existence (as well as eruptive political and environmental events), that fill my mind with dread. 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 and give form to thin spaces that evoke the dark matter that both surrounds and tethers us together, echoes from billions of years ago.
As a visual artist, I continually seek new ways to represent my understanding of the world. Each work I make is its own world, sustained by its own logic. Initiated in silverpoint drawing, these circles, domes and spheres give form to thin spaces that evoke the strange beauty of being alive.
Silverpoint, more commonly used in the fourteenth century, is a thin wire of silver I use to draw with on my gessoed surfaces. Each mark I make is like a breath. My worlds are often based on divine geometries and harmonic ratios.
Stirred by my place between knowing and unknowing, as Mary Oliver beautifully wrote in her book Upstream, “ Its (arts) concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.”
I am constantly seeking new knowledge to come to terms with this edge and give form to what cannot be represented.
This led me to my newest series Spooky Action comprised of six drawings done in ink, graphite and acrylic paint on Yupo paper, (each is 39 x 26 inches).
Albert Einstein said “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
The global culture of science in the twentieth century has led me to respond to “advances” that describe our world and our place in it. Like scientists and mathematicians, I am interested in envisioning the governing theories of our universe although, I am known to skeptically critique claims of complete knowledge (truth) and embrace relativity or mystery. My current work visualizes possibilities in this new century where re-visioning the strange and paradoxical is necessary as major scientific theories collapse under their own construction and deeply held beliefs are challenged.
Einstein referred to quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance”. Entanglement is a phenomenon by which one quantum particle can effectively “know” something about another particle instantaneously, faster than the speed of light, even if those two particles are separated by a great distance.
Absorbing theories of everything – historic, alchemical, scientific – from wave theory to black holes to dark energy become my alembic (alchemical vessel) to distill the last image. This image has no writing or equations. It is purely visual and generous. All these drawings point to my liminal location between knowing and not. My approach is fluid so I can float in the strangeness of it.
Carol Prusa, Professor of Art at Florida Atlantic University
Spooky Action At a Distance
Bio/Statement:
Known for my intensive silverpoint technique combined with contemporary strategies, the Weber catalogue essay for the National Gallery exhibition Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, called me “one of the most innovative artists working in metalpoint today.” Living and working in South Florida, I exhibit internationally, represented by galleries in Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States. My 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.
As a visual artist, I seek ways to represent my understanding of the world. Each work I make creates imaginative portals to new worlds from erotically charged geometries. Initiated in silverpoint drawing, these circles, domes and spheres give form to thin spaces that evoke the strange beauty of being alive. 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.”
In a 2014 feature in Elephant magazine, Dessanay writes that Carol Prusa uses art to investigate “the boundless wonders of the universe.” And Walker-Tome, writing for The Art Economist Magazine 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.”