Prescott architect, sculptor and painter Carol Russell doesn’t just observe, she sees. You can tell by the light in her eye that the very essence of what she is looking at comes through to her and is polished by her imagination.
This was the case when she participated in the Natural History Institute’s Green Guardians: Artists Standing Strong for the Verde River in 2024, and was intrigued by Shawn Skabelund’s piece La Línea Esmeralda, Emitido Desde el Tierra. “What I found compelling about this work was his imaginative and striking use of altered natural materials arranged to tell a story — a story that invites the viewer to engage with it within the context of the whole exhibit as well as their own life experience. A year later, when I applied to have a show at the Art Hive, I invited him to collaborate on an installation exhibit with me we are calling Tending Place.”
Tending Place
This is a collaborative exhibition containing four site-specific, place-based installations. Combining figurative painting with sculpture and using collected natural materials, the artists have created living ‘landscapes’ that contemplate loss, adaptation and renewal. The exhibit allows viewers time and space to think about the communities and ecosystems they inhabit. The art initiates playful consideration, thoughtful inquiry and heartfelt engagement, reminding viewers of our connection to community and our place on Earth. “There are a lot of narratives that can be expressed that include the natural connection and human impact happening in our environment,” said Russell.
The artists
Russell is a former sculptor and current painter working in oils, and a registered architect in private practice since 1989. She earned her architecture degree with a focus on solar engineering and has practiced her art for many years. She has been in multiple juried exhibits across the US, received many awards, and is currently represented by Van Gogh’s Ear in Prescott and West of the Moon Gallery in Flagstaff.
“The world astonishes me. Whether landscapes, found objects, fellow humans or the more-than-human world, I’m drawn to the beauty and metaphor of the ordinary, and attuned to the narratives of this place I call home,” Russell says.
Skabelund earned his BFA in drawing from Utah State in 1987, taught at NAU for years, and since 1993 has exhibited drawings, sculptures and large-scale, site-specific, place-based installations at venues across the US. “The landscapes I live in become my studio, but rarely do I use them as subject matter, nor do I draw or paint in them. Instead, I wander in and observe, spending years collecting indigenous natural materials to create ‘new landscapes’ and new forms. I began in figure drawing, but it was when I discovered the work of Joseph Beuys, a German artist and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology, that I chose to focus on installations.”
“This type of place-based work often requires two to three years of research. Since this was scheduled only about a year ago, we decided on the Prescott ecosystem focus because of time, which accelerated the creative process quite a bit. There are a couple edges to the collaboration that have been interesting for both of us. One of them is bringing the figure or human presence represented in the paintings into the installations — figuring out how we’re going to meet in the middle, incorporating architectural space, sculpture and painting. We have defined four installations as expressive of Prescott. One is corn, so we’re looking at the impact and benefit of small urban farming. We’re looking at Coyote, which is expressive of adaptation. Coyote also looks at the juniper, which is struggling to adapt. So there’s kind of a vision of how things shift as humans are impacting the natural world. Adaptation is an important consideration. We’re also looking at riparian environments and the preciousness of water that flows in these kinds of narrow ribbons of life through this part of the world, expressing itself in terms of the cottonwood tree as the subject. The fourth installation is also about riparian, but it’s more of a sculptural piece,” commented Skabelund.
Tending Place, a collaboration between Prescott-based painter, sculptor and architect Carol Russell and Flagstaff installation artist and sculptor Shawn Skabelund, opens October 23 at the Art Hive Gallery, 203 N Cortez St in Prescott.
