Artist:Frederick Prescott
Title:Happy Days
Image Size:26"x24"x8½"
Medium: Kinetic Sculpture
Edition:Artist Hand Signed and Numbered Limited Edition to 125
About the Artist: Life and art join to reveal a dynamic partnership in the art of Fredrick Prescott. The joy and animation seen in Prescott's sculptures result from the artist's outpouring of individual perceptions creating a captivating, multi-dimensional art form. Using the visual and emotional impact of brilliant color on moving steel, the artist produces sculptures that reflect his singularly fantastic interpretation of the world around him. Prescott's childhood experiences foreshadow his innovation of his unique art form, which he describes as kinetic scenaries and kinetic landscapes. Born in Palo Alto, California in 1949, the oldest son of the chief inventor and owner of the Universal Coin Meter Company, Prescott began working with metal at the age of six. In a playground of band saws, punch presses, and grinders, the artist spent countless hours honing the skills he uses to transform metal into art by cutting, bending and welding. By twelve, Prescott was enrolled in a watercolor painting class where he immediately developed a passion for color. Both sculpting and painting became important means of creative expression to the young artist. Prescott is constantly inspired by all that surrounds him. The vibrant colors, which find their way into his art, are drawn from the distinctively electric palette of the contemporary world around him. The artist's subjects reflect his experiences as he transforms them into half- real and half-fantastic images of a creative sensibility, which finds joy and humor in all that it perceives. Prescott embraces the most technologically advanced tools to transform raw sheet of metal into three-dimensional canvases. Each image is hand-painted with a fast, loose brush stroke that further identifies the animated figures and objects, and reveals the narrative. Although each image may not move. With a controlled gesture, Prescott flicks thin fluid lines of color over the shapes. The eyes follow lines from side to side, mimicking the waving action that the moving images make. Movement, or the illusion of movement entrances viewers once the brilliant colors and delightful subjects have captured their attention. Prescott attributes his appeal to "the primitive need people have to laugh and have fun. You must touch a Prescott sculpture. Movement is the extraordinary bonus of kinetic sculpture, he urges the viewer to go ahead - Touch it!