Carol Prusa
Carol Prusa was born in Chicago. With a deep desire to understand the world around her, she went to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana to study chemistry. Although enamored with the paradox of the particle in the box in chemistry, art presented the possibility of a life where she would have to wake to questions that couldn’t be answered every day and prompt her to keep learning new things. She combined her interests in art and science and received a B.S. degree in Biocommunication Arts in 1980 from the University of Illinois Medical School but turned down a choice medical illustration position at Mayo Clinic because she could not imagine making what other people wanted. Later, she went on to receive an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from Drake University in 1985 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Known for large-scale use of silverpoint, recently exhibited work consists of acrylic hemispheres and spheres ranging from bowl-sized to five feet in diameter, articulated with intricate silverpoint drawing, deepened with graphite and heightened with white paint on the convex illuminated skin, punctuated by programmed patterns of fiber optic lights, with some work incorporating video. These works are intimate and inviting.
Like scientists and mathematicians who strive to model emergent behavior, she seeks to realize a radical vision, one that takes into account the chaotic interactions that are central to formation of the universe and plumb their vital beauty. She joins the most advanced dreamers – the artists and scientists who seek to explain our place– those who imaginatively visualize a creative matrix and explore otherworldly possibilities – those who embrace indeterminacy and the fundamentally unstable boundaries between infinitesimal and immeasurable realms.