Art | Nathan Prouty: A New Kind of Living

Nathan Prouty is a ceramic artist based in Athens, Ohio. Below is his artist statement for a series he produced in 2014 titled, A New Kind of Living.

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.

Nathan Prouty earned his BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and received his MFA from Ohio University in 2014. He is the co-founder of Bandipur Studios and is working on a line of ceramic housewares.

Featured image: Nathan Prouty, Dank Nug Globe, 2014. Photographs courtesy of the artist.

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