Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Adriana G. Prat. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Adriana G., thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I had creative inclinations since my early days in Argentina, where I was born and raised. I recall I would spend hours drawing, coloring, or building craft projects in my childhood. I was shy about it, but I did it with passion. I designed and made stuffed animals with my mother’s fabric scraps from her seamstress’ shop. I thought of ideas for comic strips. I drew, painted, assembled and I thought of all the potential that resided in my hands. That was my world and I felt true and in the zone.

At the same time, my perfectionist father, an environmentalist ahead of his time, influenced me to value nature and the other species, and to be curious about the world we inhabit. Watching TV programs by American astronomer Carl Sagan and Jacques Cousteau, who pioneered marine conservation in France, also helped develop my wonder for the environment and the universe we are immersed in.

It is a shame that as children we often find creative monsters – as Linda Cameron brilliantly calls them in her book “The Artist’s Way” – who crush our creative fruits and our attempts to break old molds and be different. I found many of those creative monsters and thus my artistic identity was put indefinitely on hold and at the time of choosing a professional career, I decided to study biological chemistry. I enjoyed learning math and science, but I never felt fulfilled at a lab bench or science classroom.

After I moved to the US, and thanks to a more introspective life, I reconnected with my old love for art: going to museums, reading library books, and visiting galleries and local artists’ studios. I worked hard to believe I could become a professional artist. I learned the basics of drawing and painting in adult education centers. I painted part-time but with passion and determination, even while working full-time as a scientist and while raising a family that was always supportive of my life choices.

In the beginning I thought that my two worlds of science and art were not related, and I was often very vocal about how much more liberating art was in contrast to science where rigor and discipline are the keys to success. But in recent years, I realized that my art is informed by all my experiences, including my bicultural nature, as Latina and American, and my former life as scientist and educator.

The pathway was not straightforward, but I am enriched by the experience of having followed many paths to the professional career that fulfills me in addition to having many valuable and unique perspectives to explore my art with.

Adriana G., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an academically-trained scientist turned abstract artist and curator on a quest to inspire action for the environmental crisis.

For my own work, I create my artworks intuitively, while meditating on the urgency of the human-made environmental disruption, its impact, and the adaptation that all ecosystems must go through to survive. Massive pollution, global warming due to the unsustainable burning of fossil fuels, extreme weather, sea-level rising, widespread loss of biodiversity, and the resulting social injustice are some of the recurrent themes that inspire my work. I work driven by my emotions and by the physicality of the art materials, open to happy accidents and chance, and with a strong thirst for color and texture.

While I am primarily a non-representational artist, I typically paint abstract topographies that can be imagined either on a microscopic scale, or at a macroscopic level. Microscopically, they are evocative of the cells of organisms that I have studied and manipulated during my research days, and of the metabolic paths and intracellular structures that I have analyzed and investigated. Macroscopically, these images are reminiscent of maps, geographies, of lands or oceans, in their constant struggle to survive, morphing and adapting under the endless pressure of human-made exploitation and environmental change.

The images evoke the tragedy of the climate crisis, but I hope they also serve as reminders of what we need to save. I create worlds that, ultimately, will adjust and change and endure — but we may not be there to bear witness.

Like in other aspects of life, I face a dilemma of what materials to use in my practice that are better for the environment. In the spirit of refusing, reducing, reusing, repurposing and/or recycling, I paint on reclaimed materials: corrugated cardboard from packaging materials, rejected, used canvases, found on the curb or thrifted, or other ad hoc supports.
I believe the climate crisis resolution is an ethical and moral obligation we have for our future generations and for the other species that share our beloved planet Earth. By finding more sustainable ways to produce my art, I feel I am further minimizing my environmental impact on the world.

I have actively exhibited at galleries, academic institutions, art centers, museums, and alternative spaces, in Argentina, and the US, mostly in the greater Boston area, and in galleries in Reykjavík, Iceland, and London, UK. I am a juried member of the National Association of Women Artists (NAWA) and the Cambridge Art Association (CAA), and the SoWa Artists Guild, among others.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

As mentioned above, my goal is to inspire awareness and action for the environmental crisis through my work. In addition, I have also founded a community of artists with the same mission, the i3C (inspiring Change for the Climate Crisis) Artists Group, which I also curate.

This artist collective evolved from an idea for a Climate Action exhibit that a group of 5 of us artists friends had before the pandemic, which culminated with a show at the Multicultural Arts Center (Cambridge, MA) early in the pandemic. After that, I felt this was not enough and I had the initiative to curate the group, adding more amazing talented and multidisciplinary artists that I was networking with. In addition to the exceptional artworks the i3C artists produce, they are diverse in backgrounds and art practices, but share a personal and artistic commitment to the topic of the environmental/climate crisis.

The i3C artists group has currently over 20 multidisciplinary artists from New England, Pennsylvania, and Canada. Their art processes and visions of the i3C artists vary: Some are inspired and address the impact of consumerism and waste by reimagining and reinventing reclaimed materials. Some explore the effect of climate change in our local communities or global ecosystems and others celebrate natural beings and their interconnection, pointing to their unique beauty and vulnerabilities.

This i3C community is an evolving and ongoing project. Each iteration of the group’s exhibits is accompanied by engaging community outreach events, such as in-person or virtual panels of artists, climate crisis experts or advocates, sustainable practices workshops, etc.
Just in 2023 we had 5 group exhibits, some with guest artists, and over 10 events open to the public.

You can learn more about the i3C Artists at www.i3CArtists.com or @i3CArtists.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think that society should not take artists for granted. There are times in which I feel there is a lack of appreciation of the seriousness and labor that goes into creating art. Not all artists can depend on government or non-profits subsidies, especially in times of global inflationary concerns and geopolitical unrest. We need collectors, patrons, supporters of all sorts and we need them to continue to engage in ways to foster creatives in all sectors and all ecosystems.

Art, any form of art, finds the audience in a place of contemplation and somehow vulnerability. Art invites the viewer to feel, empathize, dream, suffer, imagine other realities and it can impact a person irreversibly to think differently, to act differently.

Artists are culture shifters, much needed in current times, and especially to find solutions for the environmental crisis. They can become social or environmental activists, to continue strengthening any type of social or climate justice movement, supporting other activists already engaged in these critical causes, and inspiring new people into the urgent need for change, acting as catalyzers of action, big or small, individual and societal.

I wish artists will continue to bring hope and promise and solutions to the planetary ecosystem we inhabit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.agprat.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agprat.art/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adri.gabi.7
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/adriana-g-prat-9480041

Image Credits
Adriana G Prat & Macromicrocosmos: Cedric Harper Adriana G Prat & Reimagining Our World: Miranda M Viskatis Adriana G Prat & Tree Ego Death: Luis J Viskatis