Artist Statement
Raised in Central-west Alabama, educated in Virginia and Tennessee, her work has grown out of areas with rich storytelling traditions juxtaposed with histories of prejudice and strife. As a child, Pruitt was drawn again and again to the tales of high sea adventure and daring escapades illustrated by N. C. Wyeth in the early 1900s. The landscapes of those illustrations took on a physical role in Pruitt’s mind as much as the characters traversing them. In Pruitt’s own illustrative work, the landscapes and characters of her stories are rooted in the places she has lived, but are viewed through the lens of a hopeful magical realism. The landscape and characters of her traditional illustration and comics are both familiar and fantastical. With a diverse cast of characters, Pruitt’s work presents the world as it should be; a world of representation, accessibility, adventure, and hope.
Zinester Statement
Getting out into the world, meeting new people, and making new memories is inherent to making a “Memphis Adventure zine". Each story is inspired by an actual event then embroidered and embellished. The dialogue is presented in snippets like fragments of conversations overheard in passing. The anthropomorphized animals populating the artist’s narratives spring from personal interactions. In this way, the population and places of these narratives are both real and fictional; they walk the streets of Memphis and they stumble through the alleys of the artist’s mind.