Navel

Carol Prusa, artist

born 1956

Navel, 2011

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: titanium white pigment; internal light; acrylic; silverpoint; acrylic binder; graphite

Dimensions:
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): sphere 40.64 x 40.64 x 40.64 cm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 16 x 16 x 16 in

Credit line: Museum purchase: Friends of the Art Museum

Accession number: 2012.0074

On display: Loo Gallery

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Exhibition Label:
“Holding Pattern: New Works at the Spencer Museum,” Sep-2014, Susan Earle and Cassandra Mesick
Mysticism, mathematics, string theory, the ethereal, and the slowness of painting: these are some of the ideas that make up this internally lit sphere. Meticulously made with twelve layers of paint and the ancient technique of silverpoint, with sections both amorphous and precise, Navel is mapped with tiny, gridded lines to suggest the heavens and the interconnectedness of everything. The work was inspired by the minimalist pencil-paintings of Agnes Martin and by Newtonian and quantum physics, oscillating between macro and micro scales and possibilities of multiple universes. Navel also represents an umbilical cord of sorts, as well as a Klein Bottle, which is a non-orientable surface on which you can move from outside to inside without crossing an edge. More than a globe, the work encompasses an empire of ideas, from the celestial to the tiny/human. Miami critic Elisa Turner described Prusa’s work as “a fierce and exquisite portrait of organic change.”