The Art of: Russell Prather (Excerpt 18 min)

Описание: Recorded from a conversation on June 24, 2021, this program highlight's Russell Prather's exhibition, AND THE HEART IS PLEASED BY ONE THING AFTER ANOTHER, on view through August 15, 2021, at the Dennos Museum Center.

Russell Prather makes visually volatile renderings of simple forms and ordinary objects from layers of transparent and translucent media. He creates these layers using both additive and subtractive methods: painting tinted acrylic medium onto sheets of transparent polyester film, or cutting out shapes from sheets of insect screening another materials. He then aligns these layers on metal rods and suspend them from the ceiling, or stretches them on aluminum screen frames that he mounts on light boxes that sit on the floor.

Prather studied philosophy and animation at the University of British Columbia, and literature and writing at the University of Washington. A self-taught artist, his creative practice has been influenced particularly by the illuminated books of eighteenth-century artist and poet William Blake. Prather’s work has been exhibited at the Muskegon Museum of Art, Museum of Northwest Art, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Truman State University in Missouri, Finlandia University, the Duluth Art Institute, The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Michigan Technological University, the Chicago Art Department Gallery and Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. He has shown internationally at Yorck Studios in Berlin, Venice International University, John Moores University in Liverpool, and Hong Kong Baptist University. He has solo shows upcoming at Hatch Art in Detroit and Caza Sikes Gallery in Cincinnati. He teaches British literary and visual culture, and modern art and film, at Northern Michigan University in Marquette.