Nathan Prouty received a BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an MFA from Ohio University. He has worked in various capacities at galleries both in Boston and Philadelphia, as a miniature model-maker for film, and most recently as a teacher of drawing, ceramics, and sculpture in continuing adult and higher education. Prouty works in ceramics and mixed media, using glitter, glaze, resin, and anything else that fits the bill. Prouty, his partner and their five animals live in Cincinnati, Ohio where Prouty is a Visiting Artist at University of Cincinnati and teaches in UC’s DAAP Ceramics department.
I am overwhelmed.
The incessant input of stimulation – ideas, conversations, revelations, objects, sounds,
images, and reflections – are often too much to bear. Systems of understanding and
history are dragged from one person, one family, one culture, to the next; prejudices,
traditions, and values hitched along for the long journey forward in time. We cling to
ourselves often to the exclusion of true logic, collective progress, or common sense,
resisting anything that even hints at a risk to our sense of self. Distilled from years of
cultural memory in all its various forms, the modern human condition is just plain nuts. The
accompanying ideas of conflict, angst, optimism, desire, frustration, longing, fury, loss,
and potential-but-thwarted humanistic development are my obsessions and baggage.
My current work is an attempt to harness the power and anxiety of these uncertainties
from behind a self-defensive position of the dumb and frivolous. Packaged in slick,
colorful, concentrated bundles nodding to both the knick-knack and the souvenir, I
attempt to both mask and reveal my unease with the world and culture around me from
behind a disarming disguise of foolishness. Instantly read as odd, funny, weird, or goofy, I
think of my work as the punch line delivered before the set-up. In working backwards
towards discovering the actual joke, confusion, uncertainty, and disorientation take hold
— if only for a brief instant — and the darker things bubble up and momentarily gain
prominence.
Through humor, one is able to linger just a bit longer in what would otherwise be
dangerous territory. When wading in these murky waters without such a protective
layer, I feel that I have overstayed my welcome. In order to cope, I bundle and
combine stuff, associations, and histories into surreptitious tableaus that seek to
undermine one’s self-assured understanding of identity and experience. Ultimately, I
am a stand-up comedian who doesn’t want the attention.